What Drugs Killed Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson died of severe propofol intoxication on June 25, 2009, at the age of 50, in Los Angeles, California. The issues began when the celebrity was up late practicing for his last This Is It tour. When he returned home, weariness, fatigue, exhaustion, and insomnia troubled him. On the morning of June 25, 2009, Dr. Murray delivered a variety of sleep-inducing medications to Jackson over a period of several hours. These medications included propofol, benzodiazepines such as midazolam, lorazepam, and diazepam, ephedrine (a stimulant and suppressant of appetite) and lidocaine.

Jackson’s inability to leave his room eventually prompted concern. That afternoon, his doctor, Conrad Murray discovered Jackson in his bedroom on North Carolwood Drive in the Holmby Hills neighborhood of the city with a weak pulse and not breathing; he tried to resuscitate him with cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) but with no success, and the security contacted 9-1-1 at 12:21 p.m. PDT (UTC–7). Jackson was managed by paramedics at the site, but he was declared dead at 2:26 pm at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Westwood. Murray’s efforts to resuscitate Jackson were questioned and criticized, notably his decision to conduct CPR on the singer on a soft surface rather than a solid one, which rendered the technique ineffectual.

Murray later stated that he did not know the address well enough to call paramedics because there was no telephone in the residence. As a consequence, thirty minutes had passed before security at the celebrity’s residence contacted paramedics.

Based on the autopsy report of 2009, the singer’s abolishment or cessation of breathing was caused by acute propofol intoxication, and Michael Jackson’s drug death was confirmed. In addition to propofol (a hypnotic medicine utilized for sedation, general anesthesia, and in veterinary medicine), the examiner discovered minute amounts of lorazepam (a benzodiazepine medication used to treat insomnia and anxiety), midazolam (another benzodiazepine usually used for medical sedation and insomnia), lidocaine (a local anesthetic frequently combined with propofol to alleviate injection site pain), diazepam (a benzos derived sedative, generally used to manage generalized anxiety disorder) in the blood circulation of Michael Jackson.

The medical examiner concluded that propofol and benzodiazepines were given by a third party in order to justify the claim that the death was a homicide. Propofol was given outside of a hospital environment without a valid medical reason. The standard care for propofol administration was not observed.

Jackson’s death was probed by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD); the former agency had the responsibility to investigate matters normally shielded by doctor-patient nondisclosure, enabling it to track down the complicated trail of prescription medications provided to Jackson.

The DEA largely focused on at least 5 doctors who provided drug prescriptions to Michael Jackson, attempting to ascertain if they had a “face-to-face” interaction with him and provided a legally needed diagnosis. At least nine physicians were being investigated. The police wished to interview thirty physicians, nurses, and pharmacists, among them Arnold Klein. Klein stated that he had sometimes given Jackson pethidine to put him to sleep, but nothing stronger and that he had provided the forensic pathologist with his records.