[greasepaint]

My opinion, and speculation.
I don't believe the chat about Lim. not being able to
find a doctor to control his pain __>in the beginning <--.
Perhaps his doctor wanted to discontine presribing opaiates
for Lim.. Perhapes the non-opiates were not effective for complete pain control. At that point, Lim. had a decision to make.
Option 1. Find a doctor who would treat him, long term, with something that worked, opiates. The problem with this option, is that these substances are schedule-two-
controlled-substances, sooner or later, the media would find
out that Lim. is a long term user of presription opiates.
Not wanting to be labeled 'hypocrite', 'narcotic-addict' etc, Lim found this option unacceptable.
Option 2. Self medicate, the advantage here is the lack of record keeping.
IMO, any medical supervision, even from Dr Feelgood, even if this lead to long-term opiate tolerance and addiction,
is better than turning to the street for drugs.
The fact that he was overweight, had back-neck problems,
and he needed to reach the 17th green in two shots, required
perfect pain control.

[onyx]

Rush got addicted to the prescribed medication, and no doctor could or would prescribe the amounts needed to maintain Rush's habit without jeopardizing his license to practice medicine. Furthermore, a pharmacy would not fill a script with a dosage in the amounts Rush used: 20 + pills a day.

I agree with you that Rush may have started out trying to self-medicate, but his habit (and dependency) quickly exellerated into a euphoric need for more and more pills.

CP --- help me out here, please. Have I overlooked anything?