Rush has whipped other demons. He'll whip this one.
I'd say going deaf is pretty severe punishment, if it is related. Would have been the perfect opportunity for him to exit the public stage and remove the scrutiny that led to this current embarrassment. He stuck around for a reason: to help conservatives win--and it cost him. I'll give the guy a break.
I believe this kind of addiction after back surgery is common. My ex-sister-in-law did the same thing after back surgery. She did not go into any kind of program but quit on her own. She was a terrific RN and worked as one until a few months before she died. I do not know what that kind of pain is like but it must be unbearable.
Hey, while we are at it, Rush and my fellow Freepers, let's also pray for Tommy Chong, who is reporting to prison for lending his name to an internet bong business:
Source: Los Angeles Times
This is another pot story, starring Tommy Chong. So it should be funny. Only this time, it's not.
Not to U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, who announced dozens of indictments under "Operation Pipe Dreams" in February. Not to U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania Mary Beth Buchanan, who heads Ashcroft's advisory committee and turned up in court in Pittsburgh to personally accept Chong's guilty plea. Not to Asst. U.S. Dist. Atty. Mary Houghton, who prosecuted the case. And definitely not to Tommy Chong, who will be spending the next nine months in federal prison.
On Wednesday, Chong turned himself into the Taft Correctional Institution, near Bakersfield. He had pleaded guilty in May to selling bongs over the Internet through his family company, Nice Dreams Enterprises.
The severity of his sentence has left Chong, his family and friends dazed and convinced that the government prosecuted the wrong man — the archetypal pothead he played as half of Cheech and Chong on comedy records like 1973's "Los Cochinos" and in hit movies like 1978's "Up in Smoke," or the doped-out hippie he's played in comedy clubs for the last decade with his wife, Shelby, and his Family Stoned Band, or maybe Leo, the aging, waaaay-out photo lab owner he plays on Fox's "That '70s Show." All of those Chongs lived for one thing: to acquire and consume superior marijuana.
"It's unfortunate that the government can't distinguish between the character I have been playing for years and my real persona," Chong said in one of several interviews over the last week. "It's a very helpless feeling. It is a character. I'm mystified. That is why I have no defense."
His longtime partner, Cheech Marin, who is slated to write a new Cheech and Chong movie with him for New Line, finds the situation absurd.
"I feel like I'm stuck in one of my own movies," Marin said. "These are the same kinds of simpletons we were fighting when we made ["Up in Smoke"], in terms of a repressive administration. That Tommy Chong is going to prison for this is a total miscarriage of justice. The administration should hang its head in shame."
Chong's daughter Robbi, who will produce the new movie, said she thinks sending her father to prison is the government's way of trying to shut him up.
"He's a comedian," she said. "This feels much more political. The only way you would believe it is if it were in a movie — that my father is now Public Enemy No. 1 of the Justice Department."
More Mature Look
His heavy-lidded eyes still give him a mellowed-out vibe, and he still has a subversive sense of humor, but today's senior citizen Chong, 65, is a meditating, woodworking, charity-giving, inner-city-youth-teaching father of six who has been married to the same woman for more than 30 years. He practices Bikram yoga and hasn't gotten high since the bust. "I'm on a protest fast," he said.
He is barely recognizable as the doobie-obsessed goofball of his Cheech and Chong days. Gone is his trademark tangle of hippie hair, replaced by a trim gray beard and hair cut neatly to his shoulders. On Monday, at his last tango lesson in Los Angeles, Chong glided across the floor to the melancholy rhythms of that passionate Argentinian dance, looking more like a cultured intellectual than an icon of the counterculture.
Fiora — just Fiora — who has shown Chong's sculptures and installations at her Ghettogloss gallery in Silver Lake, considers him a talented woodworker and photographer who continues to exercise his First Amendment rights in all his creative endeavors, which is really cool. She dismisses those who say his artwork just looks like bongs.
"Tommy is a really organic guy. I think he is about organic visuals," she said. "People think his flower vases are something else, but they are flower vases. I don't run a smoke shop. I run an art gallery."
But it is easy to see why the public, and the government, are confused about where the character ends and the real Tommy Chong begins. He hasn't taken a toke since February, he says, but he would if he were in Amsterdam or Canada, where it is legal. A healthy strain of pot humor peppers every conversation. And he still likes to poke fun at the feds.
"On the eve of my jail term, if you had told me Arnold Schwarzenegger would be the next governor of California, I would have said, 'What are you smoking?' " he quipped.
He visited a healer last week and performed four shows at a comedy club in Lansing, Mich., over the weekend. He shopped for prison necessities on Monday and spent the rest of the day in a photo shoot for Vanity Fair. He took his final tango lesson that evening, and chatted with a reporter between dances — captured on video by his friend Josh Gilbert, who was filming the last free days of Tommy Chong for a documentary.
The court made Chong promise he would not profit financially from his case, said his attorney, Richard Hirsch. That means, probably, not weaving what he calls "the incident" into his comedy act. Still, last weekend in Lansing, Chong said, he couldn't help it.
"I had to," he said. "I talked about how I wasn't supposed to talk about it."
Whether or not he is still smoking weed, the sensibility of yesteryear lives on. Between favorite old songs like "Up in Smoke" — with a new verse about terrorists, the World Trade Center and how stoners really care — a videotape of clips from Chong's recent shows includes a tragicomic riff on the morning federal agents raided his home.
"I finally got busted," he said. "I've been trying for 30 years."
Laughter.
"They said, 'Get out of the way, it's a raid.' They had flashlights. I said, 'What are you looking for, the light switch?' "
Laughter.
"The DEA said, 'Do you have any marijuana in the house?' I said, 'Of course. I'm Tommy Chong.' "
Laughter.
"He said, 'We don't have pot in the search warrant.' I said, 'Let me get this — you're the DEA and you aren't looking for pot?' "
Laughter.
"Well, what are you looking for?"
"Glass pipes."
Snipped:
Complete Article:
http://www.freedomtoexhale.com/tommy.htm
Ignore the DU'ers; they're here on FR as well as their own sad web site. They're irrelevant. Turn your eyes upon the hills from where comes your help. :)
I agree, with the kind of pain that can accompany spinal issues, including failed surgery, unless there is a health-related issue with the meds usage, what is the problem?
If he is still in pain he ought to try acupuncture. I had been taking prescription Celebrex for my knee pain for years; this year I started acupuncture and it is far more effective for my pain than any medication I've tried.
Kitty Dukakis didn't make a living by belittling the personal crises of others.
Someone's got to expose a little sunlight on the malcontents. ;-)
At least Rush did publicly admit his problem. He did not lie about it - as other well-known "icons" have.
Does this change my view of Rush as a symbol for conservatives? To a very small extent, yes. But nowhere near enough to deter me from eagerly anticipating his return to the airwaves.
Of course, the LIE-berals will use Rush's apparent weakness in an effort to try to bring him down. Good luck, I say. I would expect nothing better from the Left and their socialist propaganda machine puppet media.
Hang in there, Rush. We're pulling for ya.
My daughter, who does take Oxycontin for her rheumatoid arthritis, said that when she does have a flare, she takes oxy. When the flare is over, she stops the oxy, no withdrawal. The rest of the time, she's on other pain meds. Her anger about oxycontin is that because of those who are addicted to oxycontin--and with the rash of pharmacy burglaries--it's very difficult, if not impossible, for her to get oxycontin from a regular pharmacy. She has to get her oxycontin from the hospital pharmacy, where her RA clinic is located.