Posted on 10/09/2003 8:14:20 PM PDT by Cinnamon Girl
Mike Walker of the National Enquirer has been on the Al Rantel show for the past two hours discussing the story which his paper broke about Rush Limbaugh's dependence on prescription drugs, obtained illegally through his housekeeper. As Mike said, if this story was erroneous, Rush could sue them out of business. The National Enquirer did all kinds of checking before going with this story. He said they only paid for the story from the housekeeper after she had already gone to the police with her story and evidence.
But the most upsetting thing Mike Walker and Al discussed is the possibility that oxicontin (?) causes deafness and that Rush may have caused his own deafness by taking up to 30 or so pills a day. That is a horrible thought.
My wish is that Rush gets on the radio, comes clean about his addiction, and gets the help he needs. The longer he waits to do this, the worse it will be for him, in all sorts of ways. The police are apparently more interested in busting dealers than users in this sort of situation, but the housekeeper and her husband received immunity with their statements to the police. The claim is that Rush also was receiving UPS deliveries of pills from another source. Whatever the case, he should come clean.
Dude! You might have been the First Libertarian! ;)
I wish Rush good health.
They are owned by the same compnay! The one that had the first anthrax outbreak.
Nick, I offer respectfully, that a "functional alcoholic" is someone who goes to work every day, pays his bills, eats dinner with the family almost every night, and then downs enough alcohol to kill the average person. This IS full blown alcoholism. It's the kind that goes on for years and years and years. The alcoholic I know blew his first marriage, but has been married to his second wife a long time. She is an enabler. She says she doesn't like his drinking, but doesn't know what to do. What finally happened to him, is that, after several threats from heart doctors, after several heart attacks, after giving up chain smoking, and after eating a strict diet, AND STILL NOT GIVING UP THE BOOZE, the doctors finally put him on medications, probably a combo of anti-depressents and some other stuff so that they could give him his heart medicine which they could not otherwise do because the combination of alcohol and heart drugs would kill him. So to this day, he hasn't admitted his problem, and is only not drinking, apparently, because of the pills he's been given.
Yes. Ironically, it is his own paranoia (though rightful guilt it was) that got him in trouble. When he cried with the maid about how he would be finished if this got out, she realized that if he really did get in big trouble, WHO WOULD LOOK THE GUILTIEST? She would! That is why she and her husband went to a lawyer, who immediately told them they had to go to the authorities. She did the right thing, something that the Rush we know and trust on the air would agree with.
Sadly, the drugs were speaking louder to him than his own instinctive, G-d given morality. G-d speaks with the still, soft voice, and opiates speak with a bullhorn.
If this is the case, and I hope that it is, then why didn't Rush say it was false at the earliest possible moment. If he is innocent, then what does he have to fear by telling the world that they are lying and he didn't do it?
And I've noticed a lot of lib nuts screeching about what a hypocrite this would make Rush if it were true, because they claim he's always declaring how bad drugs are, but I don't recall him talking about drugs, so I'm not sure what they're talking about.
Dang man, you slap knocked those closet doors off the hinges. All kidding aside, while I never was much of a lefty, in my past, I too have used legal and illegal drugs to get a buzz. So, let me ask you this.
Don't you agree that someone with Rush's money and popularity can easily obtain prescription drugs, legally or illegally, without having to approach the maid? Heck, if he ran out of doctors willing to write him scripts, he has the means to set up a personal pill smuggling ring. Not that hard with a private plane, small airstrip, and friends in Mexico.
Rush always has had trouble with some words since his surgery, and always will have trouble with some words, until there's another big improvement in cochlear implant technology. The implants are amazing works of media technology, but they are nowhere near perfect. Many (most?) implant recipients say they end up hearing everything as if it were coming out of a cheap AM radio that's a bit out of tune, and the implants aren't that great at distinguishing background sounds from voices. Here's what Rush has to say about it, from a January 2003 interview:
About 18 months ago, an autoimmune attack left Limbaugh deaf for three months. Following a cochlear implant - an electronic device which stimulates nerves in the inner ear - his hearing is much improved, though still impaired. Now, during each show, a stenographer types out what every caller says so that he can read their words on a computer if his ears fail him.Rush continues to have than in-house closed-captioning system for his show to this day, and that's why Rush still "has trouble with some words": Sometimes the implant just doesn't allow him to hear a given caller's voice properly (everyone's voice has different intonations and other vocal qualities), so he has to wait for the captioner to finish typing the words onto his computer screen before he can respond."A one-on-one conversation like this is easy," he says. "But this air-conditioning unit - you can probably barely hear it - sounds like a jet engine to me. I don't hear enough of the high frequency spectrum to be able to detect a melody any more. I thought my career might be over and I wasn't ready to quit. I had been taking for granted that I could get up every day and do this, and now it was about to be taken away. It rejuvenated me, gave me a 16-year-old's type of energy and enthusiasm."
Um... Could we pick a warmer island? Just a suggestion...
He must have had some problem with alcohol in his past, though, so maybe he does have that kind of addictive personality. Remember when he drank Snapple, and talked about how he did not imbibe what he called "adult beverages"? And then in recent years has gone back to mentioning that he does share adult beverages with so-and-so?
He also has had bouts of depression, according to another poster on these threads who communicated with him. There's nothing like depression for wanting to self-medicate.
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