One of Michael Jackson‘s less glamorous moments, the Pepsi fire incident in 1984, is at the center of a new documentary. And according to some of the people closest to him—they look at it as the start of the King of Pop’s major issues that ultimately led to his downfall.
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If you don’t know what we’re talking about, allow us to give you a quick refresher. In January 1984, Jackson was shooting a Pepsi commercial with his brothers when his hair caught on fire due to a pyrotechnical fire. Though he initially kept it going, after a few seconds, he was overtaken in an attempt to put the fire out on his head.
As a result, he was taken to a local area hospital in Los Angeles and suffered severe second and third degree burns to his scalp, per the BBC. He was also introduced and sent home with opioids to help him with pain management.
Jackson and PepsiCola eventually reached a settlement, the monetary value of which went to charity. There was also an agreement that the footage of his burn would never see the light of day, according to the documentary. However, the footage was uncovered within the last decade.
Jackson family lawyer Brian Panish said the Pepsi incident was the impetus for the “Billie Jean’s” singer’s demise as it relates to his eventual drug dependence, per TMZ’s new documentary “Michael Jackson: 30 Fatal Seconds.” The project takes an in-depth look at the shocking incident and makes the argument that is was the impetus for Jackson’s self-image issues, drug abuse, and his eventual fatal overdose in 2009.
“He had severe pain. I believe the Pepsi commercial led to the severe downfall of Michael,” Panish said in the documentary. “He underwent extensive plastic surgery, skin grafting, where they took skin from another part of his body to fix the areas that were damaged. He had severe pain, he had debilitating pain, he had neuropathic pain which is nerve pain in the scalp. The pain led to anxiety, it led to really, most importantly loss of sleep. The pain, the inability to sleep, causes the pain to be worse.”
He later added of Jackson’s drug use: “The patient shouldn’t be the one telling the doctor the drugs that they should have. The doctor should be in charge. And I think in this case, Michael became the one that was in charge. And the doctors, whatever he had asked, were giving in. Violating their rules that they should follow and continued the addiction and not helping him.”
Panish went on to say definitively that the Pepsi commercial and the injuries Jackson endured kickstarted his addiction to painkillers and that it was excerbated by his anxiety, flashbacks and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) of the event as the years went by.
Jackson’s family has yet to publicly comment on the new documentary.
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