I would’ve been in my early teens the first time I ever saw Prince on MTV. It might’ve been “1999,” or maybe “Controversy” before that, I’m not sure. I just remember being weirded out by the freaky dude in mascara, but really liking the guitars.

And throughout the ’80s, all us rednecks would laugh at Prince for being so ridiculous, but we had to admit… the dude could play. Even if you didn’t like every single song he ever wrote, and you wished he would put some damn clothes on, you couldn’t deny his talent.

So I’m as bummed as anybody else that he’s gone. It seems bizarre that Prince could die. He didn’t even age!

We still don’t know what the cause of Prince’s death was, but now we’re learning more about that health scare he had last week. We were told he was suffering a bad case of the flu, but it was more than that. TMZ:

Prince had OD’d on Percocet days before his death, and he ingested so much, EMTs had to administer a “save shot” at the airport where his plane made an emergency landing to save his life…

We’re told Prince was taking painkillers for a hip problem. We’re told he had corrective surgery for his hips around 2010.

As we reported, Prince went to his local Walgreens 4 times in the week leading up to his death.

I don’t know what sort of pain he was in, but as someone who’s dealt with chronic pain for the past six years, I know that strong painkillers like Percocet are a blessing and a curse. When your own body becomes your enemy, when every single second is agony and you don’t know if you can make it through the next five minutes, any relief is a godsend. I’m glad I’m not on that stuff anymore, because it made my writing even less coherent than usual, but I don’t know how I ever would’ve recovered from my injury without it.

So I’m not jumping to any conclusions that Prince was a junkie or anything like that. Yes, opiates can become addictive, but not everybody who takes them is an addict. Sometimes they’re the only difference between being a functioning human being and being trapped in a living hell. Maybe he just wanted to keep working. He was always working.

Prince Rogers Nelson, R.I.P. Now if you’ll excuse me, guys, I need to purify myself in the waters of Lake Minnetonka. Or at least watch Apollonia do it again…