It sounds like he wasn’t willing to rest his bones and was taking an excessive load of pain pills to try to keep moving on and on and on, even as his bone condition got worse.
That’s maybe understandable for a fellow whose life was driven from fame, but it’s also the pride that goes before a fall. We’re mortal and, short of the rare divine miracle, we don’t just leap up after taking a serious hit.
In this case I’d say the pills were actually being used to a purpose. It’s the purpose itself that was wrongheaded. He didn’t need this sort of heroic pain relief for the situation he was in — and by the way I would never ever begrudge it to the terminally ill, as if utter pharmaceutical virtue on the way out were the cat’s meow. That’s hyper-puritanical and wrongheaded. But Tom was in a different situation. He needed rest.
Perhaps performing was the drug. Being on stage, being the center of attention on screen, in the press, as a politician, actor, sports figure, mega church pastor, international businessman, etc.
All of these things at all levels, local, state, national, international can be highly intoxicating. If seen as a means to an end, they can become addicting to the point where humans will go to any extreme to stay in the limelight. We see falls from grace in any and all walks of life. As The Apostle Paul stated, “ there but for the grace of God go I”.
Rest In Peace Tom Petty
Opioids are not the crisis, a loss of conscience fed by a people who no longer live with a holy fear of the Lord is. Without a moral compass, physicians will treat with disregard for harm for $$. People will push beyond normal boundaries and limitations for they choose only to live for the present with utter disregard for the future. Moral uprightness demands one to be moderate in all things concerning living. Not living to dangerous or careless extremes.
So back to the premise, is the crisis opioids, or is the choice to live without boundaries the crisis that fuels the search for the elixir of life? That one might feel or believe immortality is just a cocktail away the crisis? All these choices must come to a people to whom ‘God is Dead’ for there is no hope for any other way to live. But Christ came that we might have life and have it more abundantly, what will you do with so great a salvation?
Prayers for the Petty family and the Petty musical family. Amen.