Maintaining a life of fame must be difficult for both the famous and the fans. Fame can become a prison. Elvis couldn’t go anywhere without being mobbed by fans. He always had to have security around him. To have any kind of normal life outside of Graceland, Jerry Schilling mentions in his book “Me and a Guy Named Elvis” that Elvis would have to rent out movie theaters, roller rinks, and amusement parks in the middle of the night just to go out to have fun with his friends. This is probably one of the reasons he started taking uppers to stay up late and then downers to go to sleep during daylight. Elvis is also quoted as admitting that he always had problems with insomnia to begin with. Then when filming his movies, he would have to take uppers to get up early to be on set on schedule. He was also taking appetite suppressants to look good on the big screen and in concert. No wonder he became so messed up. Fame also called him away from Priscilla and Lisa Marie for many days at a time. This is why she divorced him. He was never around.
As he got older, it was harder to lose weight and keep up his slim, sexy physique. But fans can be demanding. They don’t want their idols to be human. They want them to stay young, healthy, and beautiful. Friend Mary Lacker told Thompson that Elvis started taking more drugs than he was prescribed around 1975. People around him would say that he was being prescribed too many drugs to begin with. His two step-brothers, who acted as body guards, would bring pills to Elvis every night to help him sleep. One of them would bring a pack of pills to take before bedtime. Then Elvis would receive another pack a few hours later when he woke up. Then a third pack of pills a few hours later to get him through the rest of the night. The last years of his life, he was taking over 25 pills a day.

Why did his “friends” and family continue to enable his addiction? Priscilla, after the divorce, tried to get Elvis to go to rehab, but he strongly refused, to put it politely. Vernon, his father, just said that Elvis needed the drugs. Elvis would say the same thing when people talked to him about it. Thompson and Cole found that the others knew about his addiction but were willing to watch him kill himself because they were afraid he would fire them if they stopped enabling. His “friends” said they loved him, but real love would put Elvis’ life above money. But they couldn’t make him get help. He had to hit bottom first. At least if he had worked in a different job, he could have been fired and replaced with someone new. The business would go on without him, and hopefully he would see he hit bottom and get help. But with fame, the star is the business, he is the industry. Many people were depending on Elvis for money. And no one else could perform for him. He had bills to pay. He might have been in debt because he was very generous, maybe to a fault. He would buy literally all of his friends and people who worked for him cars and pay off mortgages. His “Mafia” still should have refused to supply him with the drugs even if they would be fired. Elvis should have taken time off from touring and recording to deal with his addiction. But it would have been hard for all of them. In a way, they were all trapped.

Fans create another problem of fame. After all, fan is short for fanatic. Elvis had several death threats against him. John Lennon was murdered by a “fan”. Mark David Chapman asked John for an autograph before coming back later to shoot him. The tabloids are alive and well because fans want to know literally everything about the stars-what they do in their private lives, where they go, who their new love interest is, and what they look like without make-up. Princess Di met her death while trying to evade the Paparazzi. Some fans get so obsessed with celebrities that they stalk them. Stars are human beings, not gods. They need privacy, love, and acceptance despite their flaws, yes-they have them too, just like you and me. Humans are created to worship, but not each other. We are to only worship the Trinity of God the Father, his Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. They alone are worthy of worship. It is only healthy for mankind to worship God. He is the only one that can handle it. He never changes. He is love. He has no faults. He is the creator of everything. He becomes more and more beautiful as He reveals Himself to those who seek Him.