Did Michael smoke?

[Tess66]

If there was ever a person who deserves to chill out with a drink or a smoke, it was Michael. It doesn't change who he was. I mean, come on, Michael wasn't a monk, he was a normal person with extraordinary talents and a heart of gold, but he was still a human being. Just because someone has a few cocktails, or lights a smoke, doesn't change who their are in their soul. I drink, I smoke on occasion, doesn't mean I'm a "bad person", doesn't change who I am.

He also definitely earned the right to tell a few (at least) people who entered his life to F off and go to hell, don't know if he did or not, but I sure would have, wouldn't you?????

If he wanted to sit somewhere at Neverland, get a little tipsy or whatever, while trying to relax and enjoy his land, I say "Good for you baby, rock on"!!

 

[83magic]

There's that word 'normal' again. Are you saying that anyone who doesn't enjoy smoking and drinking isn't? Does 'normal' equal right?

There are other ways to unwind that don't involve any of that. In fact there was a quote were Michael said that he didn't even like the word 'high', and that if he wanted to experience that feeling, he would lay down with a good book, look at a beautiful painting - which would inspire him to write a song (I believe 'Don't Stop Til You Get Enough' was conceived this way).

I think some are trying to force their own ideologies onto Michael instead of paying attention to what he said, or how things actually played out. Boyz II Men recently did an interview where they said they tried to get Michael to curse, and the worst he would say is 'fudge'. This was during 'History'! Even when he spoke of the joy of being at Studio 54, it was about the dancing, lights, and costume characters. Not the drugs and carrying on. In fact a DJ reported that Michael mostly stayed in the booth with him dancing.

The bottom line is that he had a moral standard that he tried his best to live up to. Maybe he slipped every now and then, who knows? I don't understand why some would like to impose destruction upon him - especially considering the way things turned out

 

[Tess66]

There's that word 'normal' again. Are you saying that anyone who doesn't enjoy smoking and drinking isn't? Does 'normal' equal right?

There are other ways to unwind that don't involve any of that. In fact there was a quote were Michael said that he didn't even like the word 'high', and that if he wanted to experience that feeling, he would lay down with a good book, look at a beautiful painting - which would inspire him to write a song (I believe 'Don't Stop Til You Get Enough' was conceived this way).

I think some are trying to force their own ideologies onto Michael instead of paying attention to what he said, or how things actually played out. Boyz II Men recently did an interview where they said they tried to get Michael to curse, and the worst he would say is 'fudge'. This was during 'History'! Even when he spoke of the joy of being at Studio 54, it was about the dancing, lights, and costume characters. Not the drugs and carrying on. In fact a DJ reported that Michael mostly stayed in the booth with him dancing.

The bottom line is that he had a moral standard that he tried his best to live up to. Maybe he slipped every now and then, who knows? I don't understand why some would like to impose destruction upon him - especially considering the way things turned out

I'm not imposing destruction at all, quite the opposite! I agree with everything you said. I don't know if Michael smoked or drank, it really doesn't matter, my point being, even if he did, it doesn't take away from the person he was. An exceptional person, exceptional beyond just his talents, exceptional in his soul, in his heart.

No, drinking and or smoking doesn't imply that you're "normal", I know quite a few people who have never done either and are quite normal, everyday folks, they just don't care for those things.

I guess my point was that whether he indulged or not, he was still a beautiful person, a special person, someone who was inspirational, nothing can change that.

 

[AliCat]

Paul and Linda McCartney were regular marajuana users. Michael was a guest in their home so who knows who introduced Michael to marajuana.

Michael probably enjoyed the clean living that he had learned growing up as one of Jehovah's Witnesses. Even though he probably thought what a double standard the Witnesses had about the use of the gun, as some do go hunting and a gun is used to kill the animal.

Now, Prince, on the other hand, never left the organization of Jehovah's Witnesses, once he became a member.

Michael did read the Bible every day and he probably kept his clean living life style, which is why he preferred the company of innocent children over immoral adults.

 

[GGVVGGCC22331122]

In think threads like these are part of a deeper issue within the fan community. Some are ashamed of who Michael really was, or at least how he presented himself. So much effort is put into trying to ‘catch him out,’ or digging for  clues to find things that aren’t there....This is why they’ve created their  own version of him. In their minds, he’s a deep-voiced, profane, alcohol-guzzling, muscular, “macho” womanizer!!! Isn’t it odd, that these stories from so-called “friends” only surfaced after he passed? This attempt to ‘normalize’ him is actually hurtful and insulting. It undermines him, and erases ALL that made him unique. I thought that fans —— out of ALL people —— would love all the things that made him special.

Great post, @83magic. But, instead of saying, or even implying, things about him having “presented himself” a certain way to the public while being totally opposite in private, why not just admit that he just simply WAS the way he was at all times, and leave it at that?

However, in spite of my little bit of a disagreement with you on this one point (not intended for you to take my disagreement as nit-picking, here, which is not the case), I completely agree with everything else you brought out.

It seems like people are SO thoroughly confused, discombobulated, bamboozled, flabbergasted, and can’t even make up their minds about which “version” of him —— depending upon whether either end of one extreme or the other comes from overzealous “fans” or from ignorant, dumb “haters,” when it comes to Michael’s personal life —— was the real one (and, closer to the truth about him), as the “haters” want for him not to have been interested in any women/Females at all, and for him to have been any and every which-a-way BUT the 100% “Straight” MAN he was through and through, even though he NEVER fit into any dumb, ignorant, stupid, and long-since-outdated “machismo” stereotypes of so-called “Adulthood” and “Masculinity” in any aspect of himself, whether it was physically/bodily, behaviorally, in his interests, or in other such aspects. His Autopsy Report had finally put the rumors and LIES about him to rest, and it proved that the “haters” were ALL the way WRONG, by its results showing what happened with certain “bodily functions” (....shall we say) immediately after his body had otherwise expired.

Meanwhile, the more extremely fanatical members of Michael’s fan-base, on the flip-side of the “haters’ ” view, are just as extreme on the opposite side, in their imagining of various different aspects of him as this individual who (supposedly, allegedly) behaved with and around unrelated women/Females in his own adult life no differently than what his father, Joseph, and his older brothers did,* earlier in the brothers’ professional career as a group, while away from home and travelling on the road (*without his wife and their mother, Katherine, having known exactly where they were and what they were doing). Nothing could have been any further from the truth, as he never was intimately involved with nor messed around with any other women before his marriage to Lisa Marie, despite all those made-up fantasies from women who had all of a sudden come out of the woodwork to make up stories of their once having slept/been intimate with him.

THE ONLY children he ever biologically fathered were his eldest son Prince Michael, his daughter Paris, and his youngest son “Bigi,” regardless of whether or not they look like exact duplicates/doppelgangers/replicas of him during his and his brothers’ “Jackson 5”/“Motown”/“Jacksons” days prior to “Off the Wall” in 1979. SO WHAT, if they don’t!!! The three of them are still HIS children in every single way, not just in the legal sense from his having raised them in his home until he passed. So, neither Brandon Howard, nor Omer Bhatti, nor anyone else that these “fans” claim are his offspring are actually his, and they never were. To make such claims is as silly, dumb, stupid, and WRONG, as claiming that anyone who closely resembles him —— during any time in his career and life, even people who make their living imitating/impersonating him —— that “they must be his children,” just because they so happen to look a certain way, which is absolutely ridiculous.

Other points you make are in regard to his outward physical appearance and the sound of his voice. He was a very small-built, naturally skinny man. And, he was a dancer for the majority of his life. WHY believe these phony and fake “tapes” uploaded and posted on “YouTube”® and other Internet Web sites —— of someone having tried as hard as possible to mimic and imitate the sound of his speaking-voice, making some “fans” believe that this impostor/imitator was supposedly “Michael” talking to a “friend” of his in the Early-1990’s, to a woman who was clearly not a professional journalist in the media (as well as people who had never met him, let alone had neither ever examined him nor diagnosed him with anything, yet falsely claiming that he had just about every mental-health, psychological, and emotional issue known to humankind simply because he had cosmetic surgery [no different than a lot of folks in show-business, most of whom had many more surgeries done on them than what he ever had done on him, often with even more bizarre-looking results], and because he wasn’t this big, huge, heavy, muscular man who constantly, compulsively, overate, who gorged himself on food and was greedy/over-indulgent with his appetite) —— when many, many interviews exist of the REAL Michael Joseph Jackson having given interviews to the media over the course of his career?

Those of us who KNOW good and well what his actual voice sounded like (the tiny fraction of a second/an instant we hear it) are neither going along with false stories and made-up anecdotes of him “putting on an ‘act’ for the public” that claim he had a voice as deep and heavy-timbred as Tito’s was —— when, in reality, after puberty it was the same pitch as oldest brother Jackie’s was and still is now, just a much lighter-timbred, much, much more “androgynous” and “childlike”/“younger”-sounding voice than the stereotypical one expected of him to have had, for his natural birth-gender and at whatever “post-puberty” stage of his life he was, at any given point —— nor are we allowing ourselves to be SO easily fooled by an impostor’s voice that some “fans” have often heard on these fake “tapes” assuming it was Michael’s voice, when it really wasn’t of him at all.

 

[mj_frenzy]

@GGVVGGCC22331122, keep in mind that Michael Jackson himself revealed that his high-pitched voice (on many public occasions) was an act on his part.

One example was on February 28th (1984), when he was speaking with a fake, high-pitched voice while he was accepting the Grammy Awards for his 'Thriller' album.

Also, Michael Jackson smoked marijuana weed together with his close friend Frank Cascio, as revealed by Frank Cascio.

Rotten marijuana weed was also found in the singer's home after his death.

 

[GGVVGGCC22331122]

@GGVVGGCC22331122, keep in mind that Michael Jackson, himself, revealed that his high-pitched voice (on many public occasions) was an act on his part.

One example was on February 28th (1984), when he was speaking with a fake, high-pitched voice while he was accepting the “Grammy”® Awards for his “Thriller” album.

Also, Michael Jackson smoke marijuana weed together with his close friend Frank Cascio, as revealed by Frank Cascio.

Rotten marijuana weed was also found in the singer’s home after his death.

There you go AGAIN, as usual, @mj_frenzy, with your same old shenanigans. I wouldn’t put anything past you at this point, and I really don’t believe any of the sensationalistic garbage being spewed out through tabloid stories in the media, by people who (supposedly) claim to have been “friends” with Michael when he was alive, only for such so-called former “friends” of his to turn 180-degrees around on his reputation —— and, who try to disgrace his memory —— when he has long since passed and is in no position to defend and speak up for himself.

Umm....Since when, did he tell anyone anything about his voice, or reveal any deliberate fakery on his part? As for the marijuana/“weed,” how come it wasn’t found in his body (the strong smell of it being even worse than tobacco/cigarettes, which also smell pretty badly in themselves), nor any noticeable physical effects from it that caused damage, when his body was examined and the autopsy performed? Surely, the coroner would have noticed or seen those physical effects, and put the results of what was found in the Autopsy Report, as they would have been obvious. Someone else was probably smoking it, and left it in his house and room, for all we care. There is absolutely NOTHING you can “prove,” in this case.

Why can’t you just accept that his voice just naturally, and simply, was the way it was, and that he didn’t fit into any kind of stereotype, no matter how much or how badly you want for him to have been a certain way? Accepting him without criticism and negative judgment is way too difficult for you, I guess....

 

[etoile 37]

Someone else was probably smoking it, and left it in his house and room, for all we care. There is absolutely NOTHING you can “prove,” in this case.

Frank Cascio did say in his book that he (Frank) kept a stash of pot hidden at Neverland. So yeah, there's no proof that the pot that was found in Michael's house actually belonged to Michael, considering all the people that stayed at his place on the regular. Same thing for the empty packs of cigarettes, they could have belonged to anybody, including his ex-wife Lisa-Marie who did smoke. If Michael had been a smoker at the time of his death, they would have found cigarettes, not empty packs, and they would have found fresh weed, not old rotten weed that Michael clearly didn't even know was there, or else he would have thrown it away when it started to rot.

From Frank Cascio's book, about the 2003 raid:
One of the first things I’d done when I’d arrived at the ranch was check to see if my small stash of pot was still in its hiding place in my room. I was worried that the police might have found it in the raid and that somehow it would be used against Michael.

Umm....Since when, did he tell anyone anything about his voice, or reveal any deliberate fakery on his part?

That's from the book "Honoring the Child Spirit" by Shmuley Boteach:
Michael: "I did something that was bad. I'm a natural tenor but I used to force my voice to go higher because I never wanted to grow up. I always wanted to sound like a kid. And when I won my Grammy Award for Thriller, if you listen to me speak, I sound like a kid, and that's when all the jokes and the teasing began and people imitating me. Then I got to the point where I decided, no, I'm just going to talk like me. And when I started talking like me, I couldn't sing in the key I used to sing in, so I sing lower now. I just wanted to be a kid."

 

[mj_frenzy]

@GGVVGGCC22331122, keep in mind that Michael Jackson's fake, high-pitched voice (on many public occasions) was also confirmed by Reverent June Gatlin.

Reverent June Gatlin was one of his closest spiritual advisors, and she used to provide him with spiritual counsel (such as, readings of scripture, meditation, etc).

That's from the book "Honoring the Child Spirit" by Shmuley Boteach:
Michael: "I did something that was bad. I'm a natural tenor but I used to force my voice to go higher because I never wanted to grow up. I always wanted to sound like a kid. And when I won my Grammy Award for Thriller, if you listen to me speak, I sound like a kid, and that's when all the jokes and the teasing began and people imitating me. Then I got to the point where I decided, no, I'm just going to talk like me. And when I started talking like me, I couldn't sing in the key I used to sing in, so I sing lower now. I just wanted to be a kid."

Thank you @etoile 37.

This is the quote that I was referring to.

 

[GGVVGGCC22331122]

So, no, there’s no proof that the pot that was found in Michael’s house actually belonged to Michael, considering all the people that stayed at his place on the regular.

I strongly believe that this may likely have been true, @etoile 37. So many countless numbers of people probably came to and and went from* “Neverland” (*in and out, constantly, as if the entrance to the house had a kind of continuously revolving door that kept letting people inside and outside, so to speak) that even Michael, himself, may have found it quite difficult, sometimes, to keep track of what actually belonged to whom, just that something didn’t belong to him, personally. Not to mention that visitors might have stayed overnight, or for a longer period of time, whatever the case. He also had more than a few people employed as part of his Staff, too. Who knows, if any one of them may have unintentionally left something of theirs behind, when they left the premises of “Neverland” and returned to their own homes?

Hmm....Speaking of the Rabbi, I don’t really trust that he is telling the truth about Michael, anyway. For one thing, he taped conversations that were probably supposed to have been private between him and Michael, to go public with them and air them on national T.V., on such network broadcast programs as “Entertainment Tonight,”® to use for writing his books. Some questions are:

• “Did Michael know that the conversations were being tape-recorded in the first place?”
• “IF he knew that he and the Rabbi were going to be tape-recorded, did he approve of it? And, if he was really unaware, had NO prior knowledge of the tape-recording, and found out that the conversations were not going to be as private between them as he thought they were, how did he react?”
• “Are there actual tapes that exist of the quote you cite from the Rabbi’s book, tapes proving that Michael had (supposedly, allegedly) said what he said, or was the Rabbi just making things up and putting words in Michael’s mouth that he probably NEVER even said at all?”

Also, remember that, during the whole “L.N.” fiasco in 2019, the Rabbi turned a complete 180-degrees against the man (Michael) who once considered him as his “friend” when he was alive, and said he believed the two “L.N.” accusers!!! The Rabbi had clearly taken advantage of the fact that, coincidentally, it was ten years since Michael had passed, at the time, when the first installment of “L.N.” had prémiéred at the film festival in Cannes, France. This ex-“friend,” the Rabbi, has since changed his views and flip-flopped yet again. Why should anyone trust what he says anymore? He has proven that he can’t be trusted, and is not a reliable person, no different than mostly anyone else coming out of the woodwork since Michael passed.

 

[etoile 37]

• “Did Michael know that the conversations were being tape-recorded in the first place?”

He knew he was recorded, because you can hear him say at one point (when talking about Madonna), "I hate to say that on tape." But that also indicates that he didn't want that specific part of the tape to be released, or else he wouldn't have expressed concerns about saying that on tape. Interestingly, I couldn't find the part where Michael says "I hate to say that on tape" in the book, it's only in the audio tapes. Then there's also this in the book: "He felt that he was this young stud. He was too cool to be Dad. He was Joseph. I would hate him to hear me say this..." This shows again that although he knew he was being recorded, he did not want everything he said on those tapes to be released.

• “Are there actual tapes that exist of the quote you cite from the Rabbi’s book, tapes proving that Michael had (supposedly, allegedly) said what he said, or was the Rabbi just making things up and putting words in Michael’s mouth that he probably NEVER even said at all?”

I don't recall hearing that part in the audio tapes that were released, although it's been a long time since I listened to them so I could be wrong.