Booze, Painkillers & Syringes: Michael Jackson's 25-Year Secret Addiction Exposed

Fans were shocked when Michael Jackson succumbed to a drug overdose on June 25, 2009. But the King of Pop's tragic death was no surprise to his small inner circle, who knew he had been suffering from a debilitating addiction for years.  In their new book, 83 Minutes: The Doctor, the Damage, and the Shocking Death of Michael Jackson, authors Matt Richards and Mark Langthorne reveal signs of his sad fate.

Suffering from third-degree burns on his scalp, Jackson was offered painkillers at a Los Angeles hospital. "Initially he refused, having never taken narcotics of any kind before, but with the pain so intense, he finally accepted and took the painkillers Percocet and Darvocet," Richards and Langthorne write. "The drugs eased the pain, but they were also the catalyst for a tragic chain of events."

In November of that year, close friend Elizabeth Taylor sent him to rehab in London. But he didn't seem to focus on recovery, instead marrying Lisa Marie Presley just a few months later.

Jackson's relationship with pills again spiraled out of control in 2003, when British journalist Martin Bashir aired a shocking, embarrassing documentary about his life. "It killed him. He took a long time to die, but it started that night," his then-manager Dieter Wiesner reportedly told The Sun. "Previously the drugs were a crutch, but after that they became a necessity."

By 2009, his children's nanny revealed she regularly pumped the singer's stomach after he had ingested too many drugs. The caretaker, Grace Rwaramba, even alerted Jackson's mother, Katherine, and beloved sister Janet to his serious addiction problem.

That March, Richards and Langthorne claim, Jackson showed up drunk to a press conference announcing his upcoming London performances. "He couldn't even fix his cufflinks unaided owing to the state he was in," the authors write.