Posted on 10/01/2003 10:41:34 PM PDT by lainie
Talk-radio titan Rush Limbaugh is being investigated for allegedly buying thousands of addictive painkillers from a black-market drug ring.
The moralizing motormouth was turned in by his former housekeeper - who says she was Limbaugh's pill supplier for four years.
Wilma Cline, 42, says Limbaugh was hooked on the potent prescription drugs OxyContin, Lorcet and hydrocodone - and went through detox twice.
"There were times when I worried," Cline told the National Enquirer, which broke the story in an edition being published today. "All these pills are enough to kill an elephant - never mind a man."
Cline could not be reached for further comment yesterday, but her lawyer, Ed Shohat of Miami, said his client "stands behind the story."
The Daily News independently confirmed that Limbaugh is under investigation.
His lawyers, Jerry Fox and Dan Zachary, refused to comment on the accusations and said any "medical information" about him was private and not newsworthy.
They said Limbaugh - who has a top-rated syndicated radio show but resigned early today from a weekly ESPN football segment amid criticism of racial comments about Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb - was traveling and had no comment.
The Palm Beach County state attorney's office, which is running the probe, said it could not confirm or deny the allegations.
Scoring in parking lot
Cline told the Enquirer she went to prosecutors with information about Limbaugh and others after four years of drug deals that included clandestine handoffs in a Denny's parking lot.
She said she wore a wire during her last two deliveries to the conservative commentator and gave the tapes to authorities.
She also gave the Enquirer a ledger documenting how many pills she claimed to have bought for him - 4,350 in one 47-day period - and E-mails she claimed Limbaugh sent her.
In one missive, Limbaugh pushed Cline to get more "little blues" - code for OxyContin, the powerful narcotic nicknamed hillbilly heroin, she said.
"You know how this stuff works ... the more you get used to, the more it takes," the May 2002 E-mail reads. "But I will try and cut down to help out."
The account Cline gave the Enquirer is that she became Limbaugh's drug connection in 1998, nine months after taking a housekeeping job at his Palm Beach mansion.
It started after her husband, David, hurt himself in a fall, and Limbaugh asked how he was.
"He asked me casually, 'Is he getting any pain medication?' I said, 'Yes - he's had surgery, and the doctor gave him hydro-codone 750,'" Cline said. "To my astonishment, he said, 'Can you spare a couple of them?'"
Husband's pills
Cline said she gave Limbaugh 10 pills the next day and agreed to give him 30 of her husband's pills each month. When the doctor stopped renewing the prescription in early 1999, Limbaugh allegedly went ballistic.
"His tone was nasty and bullying. He said, 'I don't care how or what you do, but you'd better - better! - get me some more,'" Cline said.
The housekeeper said she found a new supplier and arranged to hide Limbaugh's stashes under his mattress so his wife, Marta, wouldn't find them.
After several months, Limbaugh told her he was going to New York for detox and didn't need any more pills, Cline said.
But a month later, he said his left ear was hurting and asked her for hydrocodone, followed by an order for OxyContin.
Limbaugh, 52, suffered from autoimmune ear disease, a condition that left him deaf and had to be corrected with cochlear implant surgery two years ago.
Cline said she continued to make deliveries to Limbaugh even after she quit as his housekeeper in July 2001 - but he became increasingly paranoid, even patting her down for recording devices, she said.
In June 2002, Limbaugh told her he was going to New York for detox a second time.
After he returned, "I went to talk to him, and he cried a little bit," she said. "He told me that if it ever got out, he would be ruined."
She claimed that a lawyer for Limbaugh gave her a payoff - $80,000 he owed her, plus another $120,000 - and asked her to destroy the computer that contained the E-mail records.
Soon after, Cline and her husband retained Shohat and contacted prosecutors.
Translation: They talked to the receptionist who wasn't sure where to direct the call & took a message. :o)
I can only assume you are on crack or you are an idiot(or a liar). Rush has been very vocal about his opposition to the afore mentioned.
Tomorrow will be a good day to read the tea leaves. If he cancels his speaking engagement, then something is up.
That would be very unwise. The story isnt even out yet. There will be a statement at the proper time. We dont even know if all the shoes have dropped on this. There could be a lot more in the coming days. All designed to inspire Conservatives to stay home and not vote.
This sure is hurting me.
I know something about what it's like to become dependent on prescription drugs. I had spinal fusion surgery a while back and for two years prior and one year after the surgery I was taking a lot of pain medication. I actually functioned better when I was taking it because without it I was in so much pain that I could not function.
I never got any medication on the black market. Mine was prescribed - vicodin, soma, oxycontin and another I can't remember right now but the doctors were prescribing it in bunches.
Getting off those things was not a very pleasant experience. I had to be hospitalized for five days. My heart and my prayers go out to Rush.
From Mary Ellen Carter by Stan Rogers
and you to whom adversity has dealt the final blow
with smiling bastards lying to you everywhere you go
turn to and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain
and like the mary ellen carter rise again
rise again, rise again
though your heart it be broken and life about to end
no matter what you'e lost be it a home, a love, a friend
like the mary ellen carter rise again
Unfortunately, I can also easily see other, worse scenarios
Sadly...alarmingly...so can I...sigh.
As an aside I'd like to mention that earlier this year I lost a very dear, close friend to drugs. Shelly was only 40 year old, a very pretty blonde gal. My friends and I knew she liked vodka a little too much, and had been on prescription medication for a serious brain injury - inflicted by a boyfriend in an abusive relationship.
But apparently the medication - oxycontin - became addictive and she went in a downward spiral. Some mornings I'd find her on my porch beacuse she had no place to sleep. She only had a couple of changes of clothes, but after one of her binges on what we thought was booze some one would take her in and get her looking good. She used to joke about how she was a tramp but "didn't she clean up well."
She DID!
She was very smart and she and I would often engage in "intellectual amusements" that most folks couldn't understand.
But in February I got a phone call that she was hospitalized and it didn't look good. It wasn't. She had fallen farther to the temptations from the wild side of life. Needed a place to stay but didn't want to bother me or some others who tried to watch out for her.
Instead she went home with some druggies and they all partied with her oxys, sex and Lord knows what else. What did her in - and left another gal a total vegetable - was taking heroin through the eyeballs. Apparently they put it in eyecups and tossed it back.
The thing is she was lucid most of the time...kept her demons hidden. None of us knew she had fallen so far. Because of that I can see how the Rush story might have some basis in fact, and he could have reasoned well and been lucid.
Let's hope it's just a smear, but prepare for the worst.
prisoner6
rise again, rise again
though your heart it be broken and life about to end
no matter what you've lost be it a home, a love, a friend
like the mary ellen carter rise again...
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