Late getting to your comment. Thanks ! Here is what Drudge is linking to right now (at the very top of this site):http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_111703/content/rush_speaks.guest.html
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Rush Speaks! His First Public Comments |
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November 17, 2003 |
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BEGIN TRANSCRIPT 12:07 PM EST
As I was saying about five weeks ago... Greetings, my friends, and welcome back. This is the award-winning, thrill-packed, ever-exciting, increasingly popular, growing-by-leaps-and-bounds Rush Limbaugh program on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network. I cannot tell you how excited I am, how happy I am to be back. It is one of the biggest thrills of my life to be here and once again sharing and discussing and talking things over with you. Here's the telephone number if you'd like to be on the program today. It's 800-282-2882, and of course e-mail address hasn't changed. Rush@eibnet.com.
All right, ladies and gentlemen. I must tell you, I'm nervous. I have butterflies in my stomach. I've been anticipating this moment since last Thursday - actually, since last Wednesday afternoon. Last Wednesday afternoon I was discharged from the treatment center which, by the way, was not in Tucson. We succeeded in fooling everybody on that. It was in Arizona but it wasn't in Tucson, and it was an intense four weeks. I'm going to tell you the truth; I didn't - well, I did read a newspaper two or three days, but didn't watch much television, kept track of no news. That would have been counterproductive to what I had to do.
I spent five intense weeks, probably the most educational and informative five weeks on myself and about me that I ever have spent, and I would have had no idea how to do this myself. Now, I've thought back and forth how much of this to talk about, and I am just going to feel my way along on this. I planned nothing. I have nothing written down here. There are some things, though, I do want to tell you, and I think in the course of the coming days a number of the things that I have learned about myself and a number of the things that I want to share with you will just come out in the normal course of conversation and executing broadcast excellence flawlessly as I am known for and still habitually capable of doing.
But I came to realize a number of things while I was away, and at the top of the list is how much I love all of you, how much I appreciate all of you, and how much this and other aspects of my life mean to me. And I know that a number of you - you ought to see the mail I've gotten, the e-mail and the phone response. The volume is beyond my ability to describe. You wouldn't believe it, and if I told you how much it is, people would think "hype." But it's so voluminous; it's so amazingly supportive that it is - it's just gratifying. I have a tremendous amount of gratitude for all that you have done for me over the course of my life.
You know, I've always told you people at holiday time, Thanksgiving or Christmas, because many of you have shared with me how much this program has meant to you over the years and I've always said to you that no matter how much it means to you, you have no idea how much it means to me, your being there - and that is as true as ever, if not more so. What I endured was a wonderful process. It's something that, at some point, I think what I went through in these last five weeks is as important as the first grade, and maybe the second grade. It's something that I don't have any regrets, but, yeah, I wish it's something I could have done 30 years ago.
I thought I was going into a treatment center to be treated for an addiction to opiates, to painkillers, and I was - but it's so much more than that. It is about so much more than that. I tried to treat myself twice for my addiction. I detoxed myself twice and tried to do it by force of will, but this is something someone cannot do alone. It's something that requires several things to change in my life - and those things are good. These things are quite necessary, and I have to put this recovery that I am in first and foremost. It's something that is new a priority for me. I cannot turn it over to anybody else. Nobody can do it for me.
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