Michael Jackson and Working Memory
Michael Jackson’s death a few days ago has shocked the world. Like everyone else who grew up in the eighties, I listened to his music, and even saw an advance screening of the Thriller video when it first came out. He was not just a great singer, but a once great businessman, recognizing valuable investments before anyone else did. So how did someone that was once so successful die broke and overdosed on drugs? One possible reason is related to his working memory. The autopsy on the King of Pop showed that he had taken a dangerous cocktail of opiate based drugs, including OxyContin and Demerol. Opiate based drugs impair your working memory, affecting your ability to mentally store and manipulate information. Scientific studies show that those who take opiates struggle to remember even a simple list of words a short time after they have taken opiate-based drugs. It does not need to have been suicide as many people are suggesting. By taking OxyContin and other opiates, Michael Jackson might, quite literally have forgotten how much he had taken, and taken even more – enough to overdose. This seems to have happened more than once as his nanny claims to have pumped his stomach to save his life numerous times. Excessive use of opiates would also explain his problems in controlling his spending as his working memory that would help him evaluate his financial decisions would be lost when under the influence of such drugs.
