Hollywood’s Dark Side of Doctors and Drugs: ‘Not Going Down to Skid Row’

Experts talk to Newsweek about how the King of Rock-n-Roll, the King of Pop, Matthew Perry, and other celebs all died at the hands of doctors who prescribed them illicit drugs.

Hollywood and medical providers have had a secret, yet widely known interwoven relationship since the early days of show businesses.

“Like the rest of the public, doctors get stars in their eyes, and in Hollywood, there’s lots of stars, and there’s lots of celebrities that want lots of drugs. Unfortunately, there are doctors who, for either profit reasons or because they just like being close to a famous person, go ahead and prescribe and overprescribe,” investigative journalist and author Diane Dimond tells Newsweek.

Dimond is best known for breaking the story of child molestation allegations Michael Jackson and for her subsequent coverage of the criminal trial.

“They’re not going down to Skid Row to buy them from some homeless person off the street,” Dimond added.

George Nichopoulos, better known as Elvis Presley’s personal physician Dr. Nick, was stripped of his medical license 18 years after the icon’s 1977 death. Presley died of heart failure on August 16, 1977, at his Graceland home in Memphis. He was 42.

His death highlighted the darker side of fame, including struggles with addiction and mental health. This opened up conversations about the pressures faced by celebrities, influencing how the media and public perceive celebrity culture. Graceland also became a major tourist destination for fans around the world to visit.

Conrad Murray was Michael Jackson’s personal doc on the day of his 2009 death. Three years later, Murray was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the Thriller singer’s death and went on to serve about two years of his original four-year prison sentence.

On June 25, 2009, Jackson died of cardiac arrest in his Los Angeles mansion at age 50, which was caused by a lethal combination of sedatives and propofol, an anesthetic, and was ruled a homicide.

His death brought attention to just how impactful corrupt doctors can be in a world full of Hollywood yes men.

And then there’s Matthew Perry. The beloved Friends star died from the acute effects of ketamine on October 28, 2023. Five people, including two doctors and an alleged drug dealer known as “The Ketamine Queen” are changed in his death.

Perry was found dead in his hot tub at his Los Angeles home. His death came as a shock to fans, especially after he detailed his addiction, which he claimed was behind him, in his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing.

Bob Forrest knows addiction firsthand.

The 63-year-old recovering drug addict and recovery advocate is perhaps best known for his work on VH1’s Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew Pinsky. Forrest, who also played in bands including Thelonious Monster and The Bicycle Thief, is now the co-founder of Oro House Recovery Centers in California.

“I grew up with the Chili Peppers and Jane’s Addiction and those types of bands,” he tells Newsweek. “We were all young and ambitious and making records, and as we started to make more money, we started to hear about these doctors, two in particular.

Both Anthony Kiedis and Hillel Slovak of the Chili Peppers struggled with debilitating heroin addictions. Slovak died of a heroin overdose in June 1988.

Jane’s Addiction singer Perry Farrell was a fan of “speedballs” of heroin and cocaine in 1993. Guitarist Dave Navarro previously struggled with heroin.

The band recently made headlines after canceling its reunion tour after Farrell punched Navarro during a Boston concert.

“People would tell you, like, ‘Hey, there’s this doctor. You can go to out in the Valley on Ventura Boulevard,'” Forrest recalled hearing in the late 80s.

“You’d go there and see all the other members of other bands, like Ratt and Guns N’ Roses. You’d see the other musicians in the lobby at this doctor’s office. It was pretty strange. The doctor would prescribe Suboxone, which is now legal. Then, he would give you bags of benzos in a paper bag. He just wanted to come to your concert.”

Guns N’ Roses drummer Steven Adler experienced a two-decade-long cocaine and heroin addiction. Other members of the band also struggled with these drugs, as well as pills and alcohol.

Ratt members Robbin Crosby and Stephen Pearcy struggled with heroin addictions. In 2002, Crosby died of a heroin overdose.

“They really wanted to be a part of rock and roll,” he said about the doctors he experienced at that time. “They wanted to be there backstage. All you do is give them a backstage pass, and then they’re going to prescribe you wherever they want, whatever you want.”

Doctors Turned BFFs

Now on the other side of addiction, Forrest says he’s seen his fair share of “medical kind of manipulative addicts.”

“They realize once they’ve got the doctor on the hook, they can’t go away because all that patient has to do – all Matthew Perry has to do is go tell another doctor what that doctor did, and they’ll be up in front of the board. There’s this weird unspoken blackmail that goes on.”

“I’ve heard of clients meeting doctors in parking lots in Century City, and they just get a pile of pills with no name on it. Once a doctor does that or has a nurse at their office do that, or leaves pills at the front counter for a celebrity addict to pick up they’ve crossed the line and now the addict has them do it again and again.”

Forrest also told Newsweek about a 2007 incident where he had to remove a doctor from his rehab because of “boundary violations” and the physician thinking “they’re such close friends” with their celebrity client.

“This guy would come and visit and say ‘I’m not here in a professional capacity’ and me and Dr. Drew would be like, ‘Well, then what the f–k kind of capacity are you in here? You’re the doctor who got him addicted to Oxycontin.'”

“He’d say ‘Oh, I’ve been trying to get him off and blah blah blah,” Forrest recalled.

Michael Jackson’s Drug Use ‘Got Worse and Worse’

Dimond has written several books, including Be Careful Who You Love: Inside the Michael Jackson Case which chronicles his battles against child molestation charges from 1993 to 2005.

Records Dimond’s reviewed state three doctors overprescribed narcotic drugs to Jackson throughout his life: plastic surgeon Steven Hoefflin, dermatologist Arnold Klein, and cardiologist Conrad Murray.

Hoefflin performed Jackson’s scalp surgery in 1984 after the pop star’s hair caught fire while filming a Pepsi commercial with his brothers. After this surgery, Jackson’s drug abuse “got worse and worse.”

“It wasn’t just Hoefflin [giving Jackson drugs],” Dimond said. “He moved on to get several plastic surgeries with Dr. Arnold Klein, whose nurse, Debbie Rowe, openly talked about giving him injections of narcotics.”

“Hoefflin used to give his celebrity people goodie bags of Demerol syringes to take home with them,” she continued. “But it wasn’t until Conrad Murray that anybody ever did anything about the doctors that were overprescribing and it sadly took his death to get some charges filed.”

Who Is To Blame For Fatal Celebrity Overdoses?

“I’m an old-school junkie. I always just think, as an experienced drug user, you know the dangers of it,” Forrest tells Newsweek.

“Matthew Perry knew the dangers of it. I was acquainted with him. He was pretty sophisticated, so I always place the majority of it on the addict. That’s neither fair nor not fair, but I do believe these doctors are supposed to be held to a higher standard.”

Those revealed to have been arrested in Perry’s death are Dr. Mark Chavez and Dr. Salvador Plasencia.

The actor’s live-in personal assistant Kenneth Iwamasa, Erik Fleming, who was a friend of Perry, and Jasveen Sangha — an alleged drug dealer known as the “Ketamine Queen of Los Angeles” — were also arrested.

Plasencia and Chavez allegedly charged Perry $2,000 for a vial of ketamine that would cost Chavez about $12. As his addiction grew, Perry went to the streets for his supply where he ultimately bought the drugs that resulted in his death.

“Plasencia saw this as an opportunity to profit off of Mr. Perry. He wrote in a text message in September 2023, ‘I wonder how much this moron will pay,'” law enforcement authorities revealed last month.

Dimond says Plasencia “has hung himself” by sending that jaw-dropping text.

“That means he’s in it for profit. He’s not in it to do no harm or to help someone with a medical problem,” she says. “That doctor just shut the cell door behind him with that. That was an incredibly stupid thing for anybody to put in print.”

Forrest adds: “The medical profession needs to steer clear of addicts. I hate to say it because I’m an old punk rocker, but then these doctors need to be made examples of so that it scares other doctors to stay away from addicts.”

A spokesperson for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office told Newsweek in a statement, “Doctors who knowingly overprescribe or unnecessarily prescribe medication to their patients, place those patients’ well-being and lives in danger, contrary to the doctors’ moral and ethical responsibilities, and will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”

“Our law enforcement partners take these allegations seriously and appropriately investigate when there are allegations or evidence of such abuse,” the statement continues.

“In February 2011, our office charged Dr. Conrad Murray in the death of Michael Jackson. He was found guilty by a jury of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to four years in state prison in November 2011,” it concludes, also pointing Newsweek to the 2011 press release from Murray’s conviction.

Newsweek has also contacted the Los Angeles Police Department for comment about what law enforcement is doing about crooked doctors and celebrities.

Kelly Osbourne’s Stints in Rehab

Kelly Osbourne, the daughter of Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne, has been to rehab seven times. The 39-year-old has openly dealt with addiction to painkillers, recently telling TMZ that it “started off with Vicodin and ended up with Oxycontin.”

Osbourne claimed she simply “said I was in pain” and a doctor wrote her a prescription for the drugs at 13 years old.

While she can’t say “with 100% certainty” that her famous family influenced doctors’ decision to supply the youngster with any drugs she wanted Osbourne said, “it very much felt that way.”

Osbourne maintains that she would and an older friend would go to the pharmacies themselves to fill the prescriptions.

“In retrospect, when you say this now, it’s so crazy because there’s no way a 13-year-old will be able to go into a pharmacy and just pick up this kind of medication without having a parental figure there in some way,” she told the outlet.

Some of the rehabs she attended weren’t much better. Osbourne says, “The first rehab I went to was like a university on how to be a better drug addict.”

“I learned so many tricks, so many things that I never even thought of from my fellow addicts that were in there,” she said.

Osbourne claims even centers that are designed for people to receive treatment could find access to illicit drugs.

“I’ve also seen people threaten to leave until they got given what they wanted, whether it be ambient sleep or valium for nerves,” she said, agreeing with TMZ founder Harvey Levin’s question, “The rehab facility is faced with either give me the drugs or ‘I’m gonna leave and you’re gonna lose your $100,000?'”

“Mmhmm,” Osbourne confirmed. “Body brokers – they’ll sit outside of AA meetings looking for weak and vulnerable people that they encourage to go and relapse so they can then take you off again.”

“I swear on everything that is true, and it’s heartbreaking,” Osbourne doubled down after Levin’s disbelief.

Newsweek has contacted reps for Osbourne for comment.

Ozzy Osbourne has a long history of drug use, beginning in his youth. His substance use escalated during his time with Black Sabbath, leading to chaotic performances and erratic behavior.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Ozzy Osbourne’s substance abuse included alcohol, cocaine, and prescription drugs. He faced numerous personal and professional challenges due to his addiction, including health issues and failed relationships.

His drug use led to several notorious incidents, such as the infamous bat-biting episode during a concert and his erratic behavior in public. These moments contributed to his image as a wild rock star.

As Ozzy’s manager, girlfriend, and then wife, Sharon Osbourne also found herself having issues with prescription drugs and alcohol. Ozzy, Sharon, and Kelly Osbourne have all completed at least one stint in rehab.

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