Illustration by Lusco y Fusco
Prince — who suffered from incapacitating hip pain due to years performing in high heels — died from an accidental opioid overdose, the Midwest Medical Examiner’s Office revealed Thursday.
Yes, the toxicology report is finally in, and Prince self-administrated an overdose of fentanyl.
Fentanyl is the strongest opioid of them all. Stronger than heroin. It usually comes in patches but sometimes appears in pill form. It is often given to cancer patients who are in crippling pain.
Prince’s larger-than-life, animated performances were vivacious, frolicsome, and taxing on his hips. He danced and jumped around onstage for more than 40 years, back when he first started making music.
Speculation has run wild since The Purple One’s death on April 21, when he was found unresponsive in an elevator at his Paisley Park estate in Minnesota. Six days before he died, Prince’s plane made an emergency landing in Moline, Illinois, where he was taken to the hospital unresponsive. Reportedly he was being treated for potential overdose of medication. He may have been weak: At five-foot-two, Prince weighed in at 112 pounds at the time of his death.
And just a day before he died, Prince’s team called an addiction specialist, according to an attorney working for the specialist. Was there going to be an intervention? We don’t know. Many further questions remain. Did he have a prescription? How did he obtain it? Is there a doctor involved?
But what we do know now is this:
Not unlike David Bowie, Prince is gone too soon. He made 37 albums, about one every couple years since the early days. That’s hundreds of songs. A gargantuan body of work. And all of it avant-garde.
Just take a look at his Super Bowl performance from 2007. Prince at the top of his game. No one could replicate his signature guitar solos, peacockian sense of fashion, and the way in which he commanded the stage. Even his use of the color purple was unconventional. Most people pick red or blue or green as their favorite color. Not Prince. Prince was purple through and through. Purple and addicted, just like us.
