Singer’s not all he’s cracked up to be George Michael’s battle against crack cocaine addiction has seen him in rehab… again. By Alison Boshoff
FOR MONTHS, a chorus of insistent voices have been saying the same thing: that George Michael, an enthusiastic user of cannabis for decades, has moved on to dabble with a deadly selection of new narcotics.
The singer, who dropped out of public view after releasing an album last year, was said to be smoking crack cocaine instead of class B cannabis. “He spends all day in a dark room with a pipe,” I was told. “It’s his addictive personality – everyone is scared to death about him.”
Another confidante was told the star was “slamming tinas” – slang for injecting crystal meth. “A friend saw him and he looked like Frankenstein; he was the most peculiar grey colour,” the source said.
This gossip wasn’t a complete surprise – Michael said in an interview four years ago, with blithe unconcern, that he had recently tried crack cocaine.
Naturally, given his wealth and fame, it must be questioned whether there has been an attempt to hush up the crisis.
Michael’s publicist and friend Connie Filipello told me in March: “I am pleased to say he is on good form… he decided to take some time for himself and is considering and working on new projects.”
However, there were reports that he was already in rehab, at the Kusnacht practice in Switzerland – and had been for months.
After reports emerged last month that he was in rehab, Connie added: “Contrary to some of the reports in the press, George has not just entered rehab, but is spending time in Europe. He is well and enjoying an extended break.”
This statement was followed up with a legal letter of some ferocity, intended to dissuade anyone from reporting the suggestion that he was in rehab.
However, following a sensational interview in the Sun on Sunday with Jackie Georgiou, the wife of Michael’s cousin Andros, and the mother of one of Michael’s godchildren, there is very real concern about the true state of the singer’s well-being.
She claimed that the former Wham! star was, indeed, addicted to crack cocaine among other drugs when he was admitted to the Swiss clinic last year.
“He was smoking crack. Before he went away, he’d got to the point where he would be shaking, saying: ‘I need it,’ she revealed. “There were parties where he was taking drugs and collapsing and being picked up off the floor. Waking up in vomit, horrible things. He was so thin, so ill.”
She went on: “It’s crack, it’s marijuana, it’s drink, it’s coke. It was pretty dark and things were getting darker. He was going to end up locked up or dead. I’m petrified he will die.” Her account is that Michael’s acknowledged taste for anonymous gay sex is what led him to experiment so dangerously with new drugs.
“He’s a very addictive person. He was always sneaking off. It got riskier and riskier. It was not just in bathrooms, it was in bushes and parks. In the end, there were rent boys involved, and that’s when he got heavily into the drug use.”
Georgiou seems to have decided to speak out over fears the softly-softly approach of the clinic – which has allegedly been treating him for a year – is not working. She says she was dismayed to find he was drinking alcohol when she visited him there last month on his 52nd birthday.
However, representatives of the star described Georgiou’s account as “highly inaccurate”. They said: “These stories have been apparently provided to the press by the wife of a very distant family member, neither of whom has had any dealings with him for many years. It is therefore unsurprising they are so incorrect.”
Georgiou’s apparent intervention recalls the blunt interview given by Boy George’s brother, David, who told a newspaper in 1986 that the singer was addicted to heroin. It was an effort to shock him into getting clean – “Junkie George has eight weeks to live” screamed the headline.
He went to rehab – though it took another 22 years before he conquered his drug problems.
It seems Georgiou, who is a friend of Boy George, hopes this interview will shock Michael, and those around him, into taking his problems more seriously. But can anyone help the star?
A source told me: “George has pressed his self-destruct button so many times. The point about the drugs is that this is not a new thing – it has been going on for years. He was into crack and then I heard he had started injecting crystal meth. Elton John has been trying to reach him for about four years – he extended an olive branch and George snapped it off in his face. The frustration was that no one could get to him.
“His close friends were called the ‘ leave George in peace’ brigade. He really sees nobody – only his friend David Austin, a photographer pal called Caroline and his PA. That’s it. His ex-boyfriend Kenny Goss kept him sociable, with one foot in the real world at least, but he has really retreated since they split.”
There was an alarming incident last May, when an ambulance was called to Michael’s North London home at 8am.
After four hours of treatment for an apparent collapse, he was admitted to hospital for further monitoring or treatment. Perhaps the Kusnacht practice will have the answers. As well as alcohol and drug addiction, it treats “eating disorders, gambling compulsivity, depression, trauma and internet compulsivity”, and is said to cost an astonishing £190 000 (R3.6 million) a week.
Patients have a butler, housekeeper and chauffeur, and the emphasis is on “individual” choice rather than enforcing the law. While some “tough” rehabs demand you are clean, Kusnacht clients can drink and smoke during treatment.
This might explain Michael’s occasional appearances in recent months in Zurich, drinking wine in a restaurant or at the Savoy bar in the Baur Au Ville hotel.
Evidently, Georgiou has her doubts that the rehab has worked.
Certainly, Michael has been in an unhappy spiral of grief, anxiety and drugs for a very long time. He spent many years declining help and saying he was in control of his lifestyle, and that there was nothing to worry about.
Of course, this is despite plenty of cause for concern. In 2010,he was jailed for crashing his Range Rover into a shopfront while under the influence of drugs. He later explained that he had been addicted to sleeping tablets.
In 2013, he was said to be in rehab at the Sanctuary Clinic in Australia, being treated for emotional anxiety and “other problems”. Not long afterwards he fell out of a car on the M1 and was airlifted to hospital with a head injury.
Georgiou said: “I think he was off his nut and threw himself out of the car. Over the years he’s fallen asleep at the wheel twice, gone to jail, almost died of pneumonia and thrown himself out of a car. People had to intervene before he died.”
He nearly died after contracting pneumonia in 2011, and later claimed the illness had given him the impetus to quit smoking dope. “It was just a very, very unlucky accident, so I’ve put it behind me, thank goodness,” he said, adding: “I decided to change my life and haven’t touched it for well over a year-and-a-half.”
But was cannabis replaced with crack cocaine? In 2014, Michael released an album, Symphonica – but stayed away from the numerous launch parties. Even the photographs which were released were old ones. For whatever reason, any public scrutiny was avoided.
It is easy to forget, given the years of scandals, that Michael’s career began in the most gilded of fashions. A sensation in Wham!, he successfully transitioned to become an internationally best-selling solo artist with artistic credibility intact.
His woes began with a costly fight with record label Sony over his solo career. The deaths of his boyfriend in 1995 and his mother, Lesley, in 1997, appear to have devastated him. He started to rely on Prozac and cannabis, smoking up to 25 joints a day. He had a major back operation, which left him in pain.
Then came his arrest in Los Angeles after being caught engaging in a lewd act by an undercover police officer in a public toilet. – Daily Mail