A journalist claims Prince once visited his apartment just to gorge on his stash of prescribed opioids.
In “This Thing Called Life,” author Neal Karlen recounts his decades-long relationship with the musical superstar.
In 1997, Karlen writes that he had broken five bones in his leg while Rollerblading and was housebound for months. One day Prince called — the two hadn’t chatted for four months — and had a conversation about “a dozen topics” including Karlen’s “unlimited” supply of Percocet pills that he had been prescribed post-surgery.
The “Let’s Go Crazy” singer said he wanted to come over immediately which Karlen notes, “was not in character.
“He’d been to my apartment but not for a few years, and for him to schlep so far to pay a little sympathy call felt … meaningful.”
Turns out it was meaningful for a different reason. The diminutive rocker wanted the pill supply.
“I didn’t even have time to offer him a glass of water before he spied the white Walgreen’s bottle of pills in my living room,” he writes.
“Prince gobbled a third of the bottle like they were M&Ms, and my heart sank. It was f—king true. I’d heard rumors for years that he’d been off and on heavy painkillers ever since the ‘Purple Rain’ tour a dozen years before,” he continued.
On April 20, 2016, Prince died of an accidental overdose of fentanyl. He was 57.
A spokesperson for the singer’s estate declined to comment.
“This Thing Called Life” is in bookstores now.