Recent posts here have explored the concept of addiction as self-punishment and mentioned that Elvis Presley — one of the entire world’s most famous people ever — has attracted particular scrutiny in this regard.

When he died at age 43, the singer/actor had packed a lot of life into relatively few years. For his uninhibited dance moves, he was coloquially known as Elvis the Pelvis, and here is an ironic digression about that. The infamous overprescriber Dr. George Nichopoulos first started treating him in 1967, for a medical condition called saddle pain, which occurs in the anatomical area that contacts a horse saddle or a bicycle seat — also known as the pelvic floor region.

A couple of years later, Dr. Nick became Presley’s personal physician and retained that distinction until 1977, when they were separated by the patient’s death. During his final year on the planet, Elvis was prescribed boatloads — more then 10,000 doses altogether — of both uppers and downers, all by Dr. Nick. When news of his death hit the airwaves, it was widely assumed that he had succumbed to a condition technically known as “too much drugs.”

After all, he had been hospitalized before, both for being addicted and for overdosing. He had been prescribed meds against depression, pain, anxiety, and inability to sleep. His history with recreational grass, blow, and speed dated back to high school. He was familiar with amphetamines as stage performance energy boosters.

At any rate, when Elvis passed, some details of the case were legally held back by the family, meant to remain unknown for at least for half a century. As could be expected, there have been leaks, so when the document is unsealed in 2027, the element of surprise might be disappointingly tame.

An immediate autopsy pointed to cardiac arrest. As it turns out, there was a lot more to that pronouncement than met the eye. (It seems unclear, incidentally, why a medical examiner’s report was dated two months later.) At any rate, one official paper gave the probable cause of death as hypertensive cardio-vascular disease. An official report also said there was no sign of any kind of drug use.

Then, the pathology lab got into the act and reported the presence in Presley’s tissues of 14 different drugs. This was later adjusted on account of some of them being metabolites, which the body had spontaneously created from the actually only 10 drugs that were available to work with in the patient’s system. Those ingredients apparently included enough codeine to pacify 30 amateur users.

Journalist Kristina Robb-Dover commented in 2024,

A high number of the drugs found in Presley’s system were either barbiturates or benzodiazepines. These kinds of drugs are very addictive and should never be mixed… By the end of his life, he was also very overweight and allegedly suffered from numerous complications of drug addiction, including glaucoma, liver damage and high blood pressure.

This writer shows great compassion for a man whom many would dismiss as not needing such tender regard, because he seemingly had everything. But he felt lousy in a lot of different ways, not only due to actual disease processes, but because of the boatload of prescription drugs that had been dismantling various body systems for decades.

Dr. Howard Markel called Elvis’ condition “the perfect prescription for an early death.” He reports that some geneticists analyzed a hair sample, and considered such signs as the singer’s obesity, his eating and smoking habits, along with his enlarged heart and probable diabetes, and of course the multiple drug use, causing the scientists to theorize that Elvis was a victim of…

[…] hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a disease of the heart muscle in which there is thickening of the heart’s walls, weakening and enlargement of the muscle itself, and, ultimately heart failure or sudden cardiac death.

Written by Pat Hartman. First published October 3, 2025.

Sources:

“The 10 Drugs That Were in Elvis Presley’s System When He Overdosed — and Other Revelations,” FHERehab.com, April 20, 2024.

“Elvis’ addiction was the perfect prescription for an early death,” PBS.org, August 16, 2018.

Image Copyright: Various Photography/Pixabay.