Michael Jackson's story is all too familiar in Hollywood

Whether it turns out that he died of heart disease, a cocktail of potent prescription drugs or just years of indulgence and excess, one verdict is inescapable: What really killed Michael Jackson was an overdose of showbiz values. Like so many child stars before him, from Judy Garland and Sammy Davis Jr. to Tatum O'Neal and River Phoenix and Lindsay Lohan, Jackson never found himself a home in the real world.

For Jackson, like so many child stars, show business was his safe haven, the place that shaped his hopes and his dreams, only to drag him into a hellish black hole of unquenchable ego gratification, anxiety, vanity, arrested development, strange obsessions and rampant insecurity.

It happens every day -- just look at how oh-so-many Hollywood types measure their self-worth by their weekend grosses -- but it's particularly rough when you find yourself on the cover of Rolling Stone when you're 10. From the time Michael was 6 he was the acknowledged star of his family's burgeoning music empire, displaying the kind of exhilarating stage persona that helped make the Jackson 5 Motown's last great crossover music act.

It came out only later that Michael bitterly resented being the family meal ticket. Bullied by his father -- he called him his Bad Daddy -- teased by his brothers, who made fun of his big nose, which Michael quickly set about whittling away to practically nothing -- he was, like so many child stars, robbed of any real childhood. He had no friends, only handlers. His only validation was the applause and the acclaim.

When your life is defined by showbiz success, you develop a huge hole in your soul, a hole that often gets filled with drugs, booze or other self-destructive behavior. It happens with depressing regularity, whether to O'Neal (who won an Oscar at 10, then descended into a prolonged battle with drugs), Drew Barrymore (booze at 11, coke at 14), Lohan (a Disney star at 12 before a steep descent into DUI arrests, coke and rehab), Macaulay Culkin (from "Home Alone" stardom to abuse of prescription pills) and Corey Feldman (the young star of "Goonies" who quickly became a poster boy for booze, drugs and excess). Not everyone survives, with Phoenix dying of a speedball overdose at 23 and Brad Renfro succumbing to a heroin OD at 25.