In this 2026 interview, Boteach looks back on becoming Michael’s spiritual adviser and discusses his concerns over Michael’s relationship with prescription medication.
According to Boteach, trying to challenge Michael about his lifestyle eventually damaged their friendship.
He later recalled warning Michael that he was “poisoning” himself and said people who confronted the superstar risked being pushed out of his inner circle. Boteach believed some doctors and people surrounding Michael were enabling behavior that desperately needed intervention.
There was independent evidence that Michael had struggled with prescription medication long before his death.
In 1993, Michael himself publicly announced that he was receiving treatment for a dependency on pain medication, which he said had originally been prescribed because of severe pain following scalp surgery.
Then, on June 25, 2009, Michael died after his physician Conrad Murray administered propofol and other sedatives while trying to help him sleep. Murray was later convicted of involuntary manslaughter.
That does not mean every dramatic story told about Michael’s drug use is automatically true.
But Boteach’s warning is difficult to ignore because he voiced it years before Michael died.
Fans saw Michael Jackson walk onto a stage and become unstoppable. His former spiritual adviser remembered worrying that once Michael walked off that stage, the medications and people enabling