Prince died amid frantic plans for drug addiction treatment

[octoberlib]

Last edited Wed May 4, 2016, 10:39 AM - Edit history (1)

Source: Minneapolis Star Tribune

Prince was found dead one day before he was scheduled to meet with a California doctor in an attempt to kick an addiction to painkillers, an attorney with knowledge of the death investigation said Tuesday.

Dr. Howard Kornfeld, a national authority on opioid addiction treatment, was called by Prince representatives the night of April 20 because Prince “was dealing with a grave medical emergency,” said William Mauzy, a prominent Minneapolis attorney working with the Kornfeld family.

Kornfeld, who runs Recovery Without Walls in Mill Valley, Calif., could not clear his schedule to meet with Prince the next day, April 21, but he planned to fly out the following day.

So he sent his son, Andrew Kornfeld, who works with him, to Minnesota, with plans for him to go to Paisley Park to explain how the confidential treatment would work, Mauzy said.

Read more: http://m.startribune.com/addiction-doctor-was-to-have-seen-prince-just-before-his-death/378051471/

---

Andrew Kornfeld was the one who found him in the elevator. Prince's staffers were extremely distraught so Kornfeld called 911. That's why the 911 caller didn't know the address.

[potone]

1. How very sad.

This is why cannabis needs to be legalized. It is very helpful in getting people off addictive pain medications. His was a needless death.

How many more people have to suffer and even die unnecessarily until the federal government removes cannabis from the list of prohibited drugs?

[The2ndWheel]

2. Are you saying Prince couldn't have gotten pot?

[potone]

4. No, but I am saying that all pot is not equal...

and self-medication is not the way to go if you are struggling with a serious addiction. He needed to be in the care of a physician who had experience in using cannabis to wean people off opiate drugs. That is all.

[greymouse]

8. I agree that medical help is needed

but this subthread sounds like advocating pot like some people blame everything on Obama.

[restorefreedom]

20. also, being a strict jw

he may not have been comfortable using it illicitly. and as you point out, it won't necessarily work willy nilly even if he was willing to go that route

decriminalize and utilize.

break the bigpharma stranglehold

rip prince

[ToxMarz]

5. Perhaps it could have played a role in his initial pain treatment

and the doctors coud have avoided starting him on opioids rather than defaulting to it.

[Bluenorthwest]

12. It's partly his religion and his own mindset, he trash talked pot smokers and carried on about

being super clean and drug free. He was very, very judgemental toward cannabis users.

[Jackie Wilson Said]

26. Elvis used similar rational to go on about the drug problem while taking more than

most 20 people combined .

[Person 2713]

14. He spoke out previously against illegal drug use . Don't forget these are medications and some

people just start on them for pain and a real doctor prescribed themnever realizing they have way worse side effects than the illegal pot and more physically addictive
Look into how pot was used before US federally outlawed- a lot of past use was medicinal

[Sunlei]

31. I agree it could be helpful but addiction & symptoms of withdrawal from opioids is a harsh process.

Doctors who gave prescriptions have to have known a person can become addicted.

[Sunlei]

3. Wonder how many dosages of opiod pills the Drug Corp sold wholesale in America over the past decade?

I bet it was billions of doses, even at wholesale price major profits raked in for years.

The Drug Corp had to have known the amount 'sold' to the Medical industry/Medical Corp. was excessive.

[hedgehog]

19. I think this same premise applies to gun dealers and manufacturers

who are accused of knowing that they are flooding a market for guns.

[Sunlei]

24. I'd like to know how many doses. I'd also like to know how many went 'missing' from shelves in

hospitals and wholesale shelves before they were even scripted to individuals. The Drug Corp knows how many they sold.

The addictions and medicine for sale on the streets seemed to ramp up during the bush war years. IMO, a lot of the wholesale codeine was stolen? from hospitals, including the Veterans hospitals.

I know people were Doctor hopping over state lines to acquire more prescriptions but that seemed more like for personal use. When Obama took office the Admin computerized Doctor prescriptions and that type of abuse was slowed quite a bit.

The Corps know who they wholesale sold thousands of shipments to and those sales should be matched to legit dispensing of medicine. Someones criminal heads should roll.

[hedgehog]

28. I've thought this to be the case for many years.There has to be a connection between

manufacturing more than could ever be properly prescribed and seeing all the drugs on a black market.

[hollowdweller]

6. Percocet is so low voltage it's still hard for me to figure out how he OD'd on them.

You'd think the Tylenol in them would have caused his liver to go out before he would have OD'd you'd have to take so many.

[Kelvin Mace]

9. Well, since we still don't know the mechanism is his death

we can't rule out liver failure.

[octoberlib]

10. The toxicology report should be out in a couple weeks. There may have been other drugs involved

in his death.

[me b zola]

22. This was my thought as well

I really hate that big pharma combines Tylenol with opioids for this very reason. If someone is going to overuse their pain meds they are in grave danger that does not need to be.

[JDPriestly]

23. Maybe no one wants to admit that he might have committed suicide?

If he was Jehovah's Witness or raised in that religion, he may have been very ashamed of his drug dependency and depressed.

Addiction is a medical problem, and we should treat it as such. There may be psychological and spiritual aspects to drug addiction, but we can't get to them unless we also treat the physical aspect of addiction.

My heart goes out to his family, his friends and his fans. All of them. It's a great loss, a needless loss.

[Miles Archer]

27. He wasn't raised in it

He was "indoctrinated" into it by Larry Graham, who he considered to be his "musical and spiritual mentor."

Bassist: Prince found 'real happiness' as Jehovah's Witness

https://www.yahoo.com/music/bassist-prince-found-real-happiness-jehovahs-witness-062937999.html

MINNETONKA, Minn. (AP) — Music megastar Prince was known for throwing parties that stretched into the wee hours of the morning, but his faith and the Bible could also keep him gabbing until sunrise, according to his longtime friend and "spiritual brother," bassist Larry Graham.

Prince, who died last month at 57, became a Jehovah's Witness later in life, and that helped shape his music as well as his lifestyle, according to Graham, who first met the star decades ago and became a confidante and tour mate.

Prince would knock on doors, talk with visitors at his studio-compound Paisley Park in suburban Minneapolis and even share his faith with small groups after a show, said Graham, the 69-year-old bassist best known for playing in the funk band Sly and the Family Stone and with his own group, Graham Central Station.

"That brought him joy. That brought him real happiness," Graham said in an interview with The Associated Press on Monday.

[hlthe2b]

7. Just when I think it can't get any more heart-breaking...

Despite their respective various "issues", I feel like the deaths of Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson had really hit me hard when they happened... and then we lost Prince, who seemed impervious to the worst of what can befall a major talented artist/celebrity. This makes it all the more difficult, since we are left with... "if only"....

[octoberlib]

11. That struck me ,too. It's so tragic that the person who was sent out to help him

was the one who found him dead.

[hamsterjill]

13. I tend to agree.

Such great talents lost way too soon.

I'm only recently being acquainted with Prince's past. I didn't know that he and Mayte had lost a child. I've watched some old interviews with Prince, and he really had some profound insights into life, etc.

I grieve the loss of all of them.

[Person 2713]

15. His reps waited too long. No judge I am sure they were torn between loyalty and intuition that it

was getting too bad. Loving someone doesn't give you all the answers and I am sure they did not want him to die, but they waited too long not really knowing how bad it was . If he was still in control perhaps he was naive how deadly it could be and too messed up before asking for help or wanting to stop. One day earlier and he would be in alternative opiate treatment .

[octoberlib]

17. I agree.

From the article : Howard Kornfeld also is known as an advocate for the expanded use of Suboxone, which contains buprenorphine and curbs opioid cravings. The drug has been underutilized, in part, because many doctors haven’t completed the federal training that is necessary to prescribe it.

From what I've read , there is very little training in pain management in medical school. In fact, some medical schools don't teach it at all. This is one reason for the over prescription of opioids. Another is that insurance companies stopped covering alternative treatments because prescribing a pill is cheaper for them.

[Richard D]

29. I've know several people who got hooked on suboxone

Last edited Wed May 4, 2016, 08:52 PM - Edit history (1)

during drug treatment. They called it a new level of hell, in many ways worse than opioids. Very difficult to get off it it.

[octoberlib]

34. Well, suboxone doesn't sound very promising either then.

Maybe that's why they make doctors who want to prescribe it go through training.

[awoke_in_2003]

39. One of the drugs my wife had to try was suboxone

She could have slept 20 hours a day on that crap. Of course, that was better than Lyrica. She was at work, just wondering what it would look like to take a razor and slice her coworkers face. She wasn't agree in the least, just an almost impossible urge to see. She told her boss what was up, left work, and called her doctor.

[Person 2713]

16. How do these drugs work ? You are functioning but building up a bigger tolerance that is needed for

the same pain ?
http://www.medicaldaily.com/opioid-painkillers-vicodin-and-percocet-accounted-68-er-overdose-patients-308108


Prescription opioid overdoses are now one of the leading causes of death in the United States, and those who abuse these drugs are more than a number in a statistic. They are your neighbor, your bus driver, your daughter per a recent national study of hospital emergency department visits from 2010

Opioids are prescribed to relieve pain because of their ability to reduce the intensity of pain signals reaching the brain. They are also able to affect the areas of the brain which control emotion, thus further diminishing the effects of pain, according to The National Institute on Drug Abuse. Some of the most recognizable of these drugs are hydrocodone (Vicodin), oxycodone (OxyContin, Percocet) morphine, and codeine.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Thomas Frieden has described prescription drug overdoses as an “epidemic in the United States.” They are responsible for the majority of hospital admissions for overdoses, and according to the study, these hospital admissions cost the hospitals $2.3 billion. Even further, a separate study from the National Center for Health Statistics found these prescription opioid-related deaths have increased four-fold in the past 10 years.

[freebrew]

36. Opioids are the new 'evil' in the drug war...

some people really need them. Opium is cheap, natural and effective if used properly.

Now that cannabis is becoming legal, more transparent, etc.
The government's role in the scam has become public. The DEA needs a new enemy.
Pharma likes the idea because the replacement drugs are WAY more expensive and deadly(see tramadol).

I've been taking opioids for decades. Not addicted. Not dead.
There are mental issues at the center of these deaths. You can't blame a substance for it.

Substances can not be evil.

[BootinUp]

18. Another tragic story of one of our famous entertainers. Sad indeed.

[restorefreedom]

21. damn. just damn. nt

[Odin2005]

25. I was right, fuck.

[emmadoggy]

30. As if his death wasn't heartbreaking enough,

this just makes it that much worse.

FUCK.

[maxsolomon]

32. Looks like TMZ was right all along

I'm waiting for the multiple retractions that are now due.

[rusty fender]

33. I was just thinking that!

I remember that self-righteous posters were jumping down the throats of others here who, after reading reports on the internet, posted that Prince was abusing drugs. And now there are reports that Prince was using cocaine!

Where are the apologies

[maxsolomon]

35. good job, Prince staffers

1. knew he was on opiods.
2. knew he'd OD'd the night before
3. left him alone.
4. with access to more opiods.

[MuttLikeMe]

43. Yep. Pisses me off.

[Skittles]

37. what I don't understand

is if he was is such grave danger from his addiction that his plane was forced to make an emergency landing, why didn't he hire around-the-clock medical supervision in his home?

this was senseless

[octoberlib]

38. He also refused to be hospitalized when he overdosed on the plane.

Maybe he didn't really want help. Dr. Kornfeld said he never talked to Prince on the phone , just his staffers. Of course it might be normal for Prince to have his staff set up appointments. Some commenters on the Tribune article were blaming his staff for not staying with him but maybe he made them all go home. We don't know what happened. I agree about the senselessness of it all. Didn't have to happen.

[Skittles]

40. maybe there was a fear of hospitals

that's not rare

still, why he did not consider a private nurse will always be a mystery

very sad indeed

[restorefreedom]

41. i read recently

sorry cant provide a link...been reading so much prince stuff.....

anyway, when he was young he had seizures and his parents did not know how to handle it..apparently they sometimes took him to the hospital. i imagine treatment for a child with seizures 50 years ago was not like it is now...must have been very scary for him. as a result, this article said he had a strong fear of doctors and especially hospitals.

understandable and possibly why he resisted rx for so long. as to why no nurse at the house, i don't know.....would seem to be a compromise position, but with people with a phobia, even that may have been too much

[Manifestor_of_Light]

42. I had read that he needed a hip replacement.

And refused to get one because he might have needed a blood transfusion. JWs refuse to get blood transfusions due to some bible verse about eating blood, and sometimes they die from the lack of one.

[Corey_Baker08]

44. Does Anyone Have Any Thoughts On His Fear Of Elevators & The Fact He Was Found Dead In An Elevator?

Just Want To Get An Outsiders Take....