Did Limbaugh do it because "You'll get a RUSH (surge of pleasurable sensation) out of this!," or for pain? Where is Limbaugh doing his detox? Who is the mysterious Dr. Weisman? Was the staightshooter "Clintonesque" in denial? Is he telling the truth now? Did the drugs come BEFORE the spinal problem, as he claimed, or cause it? Is he self-destructive, destroying the hearing his career depends on? Why did he say Jerry Garcia was just a dead doper when he was abusing drugs himself? New information provides partial answers.
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Oct. 15, 2003 Conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh has reportedly checked into a "special psychiatric hospital and behavioral health facility" (SEE PHOTO) after his October 10 announcement that he is a drug addict. The facility is Tuscon Sierra, at 39580 South Lago de Oro Parkway, in Tuscon, Arizona, 85739 (1-800-842-4487, 1-800-624-9001, fax 520-825-7000). He said he would be in a residential drug treatment program for 30 days. Sierra is a luxury spa facility that charges about $1000 per day. http://www.sierratucson.com/ email outreach@sierratucson.com The medical director of the place, Michael E. Scott, M.D., was not available for comment.
In the controversy over Limbaugh's belated confession last Friday to abuse of prescription painkillers, his doctors have joined the battle on the airwaves. Dr. Jennifer Derebery of the House Institute of Hearing, who was ABC's Good Morning America show Monday, has gone from reaffirming her diagnosis of AIED just before his confession to now admitting it is possible that there may be a connection between Limbaugh's sudden hearing loss and pill abuse. Dr. Joel Rush of ARI in New York, was on the CBS Early Show to describe his controversial overnight detoxification treatment at a secret location (revealed below) -- which allowed him to keep his little secret from his millions of Dittoheads -- that has twiced failed to cure Limbaugh's addiction. Missing in action is the mysterious Dr. Weisman, a rheumatologist who appeared at a news conference with the House doctors in 2001.
On the same day the National Enquirer published a followup article on Rush Limbaugh's drug addiction, he finally announced he is going in for detox, the third time. Whether the Enquirer's taped evidence -- or simply "enough time to figure out what to lie about," which he used to say was "Clintonesque" -- pushed him into treatment is hard to say. Previously he had reportedly gone to the Addiction Research Institute (ARI) in New York for overnight detox. This time he says he is going into rehabilitation for 30 days at the luxury spa/hospital Sierra Tucson - and this the guy that said of the ordinary user: "Send them up."
Always destructive, even self-destructive (he destroyed his own hearing), Limbaugh has attempted to destroy others for their vices; but he now blames "severe pain in my lower back and also in my neck now due to two herniated discs" and tells us, "I'll be back." It's just a good thing for him he isn't judging himself as he has judged others - or he would be going up the river for a long
LET'S GET ONE THING STRAIGHT: LIMBAUGH IS A DIFFERENT KIND OF ADDICT. HE HAS NO EMPATHY FOR OTHER ADDICTS nor for most anyone else. He once called Jerry Garcia "just a dead doper." Most addicts are capable of empathy, like most everyone else. Rush Limbaugh is not going to become a man of good will because of any medical or psychological treatment. That probably would require a spiritual change, and I will make no judgement about that.
Limbaugh, as we expected, copped a plea Friday, October 10, of starting drug use because of pain, then getting hooked through no fault of his own. We thought he would use ear pain, as he did with Wilma Cline. Instead he claimed spinal disease and pain, apparently anticipating arguments that his ear trouble did not cause pain; or maybe his ear doctors told him they couldn't cover up for him effectively. In any case, he apparently destroyed his own hearing by taking megadoses of painkillers, contrary to his doctors' earlier diagnosis. That is a secret that might still be exposed. Also, the spinal deterioration might explain the curious presence of a rheumatologist, Dr. Michael Weisman, at a news conference of Limbaugh's ear specialists in 2001. Another possible reason for Weisman's presence is that one of the long-term effects of opiate use is arthritis and other rheumatologic problems. The conference is described below.
The article presents, as Paul Harvey would say, "the rest of the story" that the Enquirer left out -- such details as the doctor's name and location where he allegedly went for drug detoxification in New York, the size of the OxyContin tablets he was abusing, the massive extent of his doses, and how drugs caused his hearing problems instead of the other way around. These are mini exposes the Enquirer omitted. At any rate, Rush is a Big Fat Crybaby who is going to claim victimization by drugs after years of "send them up" rhetoric about other drug abusers.
----------[LIMBAUGH ON JERRY GARCIA'S DEATH: When you strip it all away, Jerry Garcia destroyed his life on drugs. And yet he is being honored, like some godlike figure. Our priorities are out of whack, folks." PRESIDENT BUSH: Rush is a great American. I am confident he can overcome any obstacles he faces
right now." Like most conservatives, Bush considers Limbaugh godlike.]---------
ADDICTION RECOVERY INSTITUTE IN NEW YORK CITY
Previously Limbaugh underwent an ultrarapid detoxification at a clinic in New York because this allowed him anonymity, although he told his beloved Dittohead listerers Friday that he had "always been honest with you about my life." A 30-day program offers only a 50-50 chance of a cure, which a better chance than with rapid detox.
Limbaugh was allegedly treated for drug use at least twice at the Addiction Recovery Institute in New York City. His cleaning lady/drug pusher told the Enquirer that, "Several months after she began supplying him...she got a shock when he confided to her that he was leaving town to undergo a rapid detox technique" at the Addiction Recovery Institute (ARI) in New York City. The ARI operates two centers for detoxification. Its web site gives the location of the one in New Rochelle, NY, north of the city. The secret location on the exclusive upper-east side of Manhattan is at 128 East 91st Street. There, Dr. Joel A. Nathan (SEE PHOTO http://www.detox24.com/images/doctor_Joel-A.-Nathan,-MD.gif ), performs Ultra-Rapid Opiate Detoxification. Since the stay is overnight and the location a secret, this allows celebrities to conceal their treatment and problem.
Dr. Nathan was interviewed on drug addiction treatment on the CBS Early Show today, October 13, 2003, and described his overnight method that offers anonymity for celebrities.
If you were a drug abuser who could afford the price, you would check in and ARI would perform a full history, physical examination, and laboratory tests. Then they would anesthetize you and administer buprenorphine (an opiate, but milder than the opiate you abused) to accomplish the detoxification. Being asleep, you would not experience the worst effects of withdrawal. Two hours later, you would be awakened and then monitored overnight. You would be given medication to help with any lingering side effects and would be discharged onto 91st Street at about 7 a.m. the next morning. This treatment involves continuing use of drugs as an alternative to the drug of choice. Much longer treatment periods than even the 30 days Limbaugh apparently has opted for this time are required to make a patient truly drug-free. With any opiate addiction and any treatment, the recidivism rate is unfortunately high. The advantage of the overnight treatment is anonymity, which Limbaugh could no longer maintain anyway. To be truly clean from prescription narcotics, Limbaugh would have to go into at least a 1-year rehabilitation program, which his career and his employer, Clear Channel Communications, could ill afford. Clear Channel invested $285 million in a 9-year contract even as he was losing his hearing -- which is a story in itself, raising questions about whether Clear Channel executives failed in their fiduciary duty to stockholders and failed in their legal obligation to report the risk to potential stockholders and the SEC. This could be a small version of Enron-gate.
The story began when the multimillionaire radio host bummed a few pills off his $370-a-week housekeeper in March 1998. She continued supplying pills off a prescription for her husband until early 1999. Then the prescription ran out and Rush pressured her into being his pusher. Several months later Limbaugh went to Nathan for his first detox. This time frame means that you could have seen Rush on E. 91st some morning in the summer of 1999.
The Enquirer reported Cline as saying: "It lasted for a month. Then he told me his left ear was acting up and he was in pain." (In October 2003, after the story broke in the Enquirer and the New York Daily News, he claimed spinal pain, for the first time.) Instead of seeing Dr. Nathan for drug treatment or an otologist for his ear, he turned to Dr. Wilma, who began supplying him with OxyContin (oxycontin hydrochloride), which has a street name of "Hillbilly Heroin" or "blues." He has changed this story to claim that the pain that drove him to drugs is in his spine.
----------[RUSH LIMBAUGH ON SENDING DRUGGIES TO JAIL: "There's nothing good about drug use. We know it. It destroys individuals. It destroys families. Drug use destroys societies. Drug use, some might say, is destroying this country. And we have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs. And the laws are good because we know what happens to people in societies and neighborheads which become consumed by them. And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up."
WILMA CLINE accused him, and Limbaugh promptly hired dream-team attorney Roy Black, who won a rape acquittal for William Kennedy Smith. Limbaugh practically tried and convicted the Kennedy family cousin on his show, which makes hiring Smith's lawyer seem particularly hypocritical.]---------
HEARING LOSS SUPPOSEDLY CAUSED BY AN EAR DISEASE - PROTECTING LIMBAUGH'S HYPOCRACY?
Limbaugh's initial statement said his hearing loss began on May 29, 2001. On October 11, at the House Ear Clinic, there was a press conference with Dr. Antonio De la Cruz and Dr. Jennifer Derebery, of House, and - oddly - rheumatologist Dr. Michael Weisman of Cedars-Sinai Hospital. Dr. Derebery said: "We are treating Rush Limbaugh for hearing loss resulting from autoimmune inner ear disease (AIED). We base our diagnosis on Mr. Limbaugh’s medical history and hearing tests. Mr. Limbaugh does not display most of the symptoms associated with AIED, but he has suffered rapidly progressive hearing loss since May 2001, which we are currently treating with medication at the House Ear Clinic."
In other words, he didn't display most of the symptoms of AIED, which also is a rare condition, but that was the diagnosis anyway. House physicians said it was partly based on his medical history, and it is a safe bet he didn't them about Dr. Wilma. House began treating him with prednisone (a steroid), methotrexate, and entanercept (antiinflamatory).
In response to questions then, his physicians explained that overuse of medications was not a factor in Mr. Limbaugh’s case, and while noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) is common among professionals in radio broadcasting, Mr. Limbaugh did not demonstrate the symptoms of NIHL. The AIED diagnosis was the least likely -- a 1-in-100 chance - but that is the one House went with, even though Limbaugh didn't exhibit most of the symptoms.
The symptoms of OxyContin abuse include somnolence, dilated pupils, and slowed respiration - and rapid hearing loss. Mecical examinations can reveal these symptoms. Of course the drug can be detected in the urine and blood. It stretches credulity that these doctors did not test Limbaugh for drugs before treating him with more drugs. (OxyContin has been listed in the Physician's Desk Reference as an ototoxic trug since 2000 or before.)
Not detecting the drugs is especially surprising considering that the House Institute was among the first to connect the painkiller Vicodin with hearing loss http://www.pslgroup.com/dg/f98fa.htm . Vicodin is a Schedule III drug consisting of 9 percent hydrocodone bitartrate (a narcotic) and the rest acetaminophen (active ingredient in Tylenol). "Lorcet" is another trade name for the same thing and is a drug Limbaugh allegedly abused. The Los Angeles Times reported on September 10, 2001, in an article on Vicodin abuse, "Doctors at the House Institute reported the hearing loss incidents to the Food and Drug Administration in 1999, and then again last month." The latter report, in August 2001, was just before they treated Limbaugh.
Dr. Richard Wiet, a professor of otology at Northwestern University, said he began noticing cases of hearing loss tied to Vicodin use after learning of the findings of House Institute researchers. "Then I started watching for it and found two patients. There's definitely something to this." Why didn't the House doctors also watch for this problem detected by their own president, and why did Limbaugh instead resort to his "house doctor" (Wilma Cline)? If Limbaugh took the drugs House prescribed for his hearing, wouldn't they have had dangerous interactions with the painkillers?
Limbaugh's preferred drug was the even more powerful Schedule II painkiller OxyContin (ocycodone hydrochloride), which is mostly what Cline supplied him with since at least after his first detox in summer 1999, according to Cline. Oxycodone is an opiod analgesic that is about twice as strong as morphine. He apparently was taking the 40- and 80-milligram versions, since in his emails to Cline on May 28 and May 29, he said he had been using the "little blues" and seldom had only the 80s. "Blues" are OxyContin tablets, and 40s and 80s are the 40- and 80-mg sizes. The Vicodin that House had reported on contained about half a milligram of hydrocone. The OxyContins contain 80 to 160 times as much narcotic. Limbaugh was reportedly buying them at the rate of 93 per day at one time. One wonders how he could have survived and what the interactions with the AIED treatment drugs would have been.
----------RUSH ON EQUAL OPPORTUNITY IN SENDING DRUGGIES TO PRISON: "What this says to me is that too many whites are getting away with drug sales. Too many whites are getting away with traficking in this stuff. The answer to this disparity is not to start letting people out of jail because we're not putting others in jail who are breaking the law. The answer is to go out and find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them, and send them up the river, too."
ONE WONDERS if he would wish the same opportunity for himself. Will he be arrested, do the "perp walk," and serve some of the long sentence that is possible. WIll his lawyer who reportedly settled his drug bill with Cline lose his license or be prosecuted? Will his employer, Clear Channel Communications, be taken to task for corporate misconduct? Will his doctors be disciplined for a failed diagnosis and AIED therapy?]--------------
THE AIED TIMEFRAME CLAIM OF LIMBAUGH'S DOCTORS
Limbaugh's doctors at first claimed that the timeframe of his hearing loss pointed to AIED rather than drugs. This could have been a red herring. Limbaugh says the loss took place over 4 months. According to Newsweek: "In light of last week's news reports [originating with the National Enquirer and Wilma Cline], the Institute reaffirmed Limbaugh's AIED diagnosis and noted that he lost hearing over several months, while hearing loss from Vicodin usually occurs over a period of days." Actually, the first patient that House diagnosed with Vicodin-caused hearing loss had lost his hearing over a period of one month. http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-091001vicodin.story It turns out that both AIED and drug-induced hearing loss occur over a similar period -- weeks to months. Also, AIED is rare, probably accounting for less than 1% of all cases of hearing impairment or dizziness. A diagnosis of AIED is confirmed by seeing if the patient responds to the drug therapy. http://www.tchain.com/otoneurology/disorders/autoimmune/aied.html
Limbaugh's case didn't respond, probably because it wasn't a case of AIED; and two months after the news conference, in December 2001, Limbaugh received a cochlear implant (an electronic transducer that converts sound to electrical impulses that are applied to the auditory nerve by tiny electrodes) pioneered at the House Institute.
Before this surgery, House would have done blood and urine tests and asked Limbaugh what medications he was on. It is questionable whether he told them. Surgery without this information would be risky.
During the period of his hearing loss (June, July, August, and September 2001) and the period of his steriod therapy, October and November 2001, Limbaugh continued to take massive doses of OxyContin. The chance for improvement under these conditions was nil.
----------[RUSH ON TED KENNEDY: "Ted Kennedy, whose liver is said to be shaped like a Chivas Rigas bottle..." AND WHAT IS RUSH'S SHAPED LIKE, THE TOMB-SHAPED BLUE OXYCONTIN?]----------
THE PAIN CLAIM
Limbaugh's confession claiming pain from spinal problems begs the question, Did the problems causing the spinal pain, especially the newly developed neck pain, result from drug abuse? The rheumatologist, Dr. Michael Weisman, was present at the news conference along with the ear doctors. Opiate (OxyContin) abuse can cause arthritis and rheumatologic problems. There is no record of any comments from Dr. Weisman about Limbaugh. He could have shed light on Limbaugh's use of painkillers for spinal pain and also on the rheumtolocic problems caused by them. Could it be that Limbaugh is so self-destructive and cavalier about his career that he allowed is drug use to destroy his hearing and damage his spine and that he lied even to his doctors?
LIMBAUGH WAS TAKING 47 TIMES THE DOSE FOR CANCER AND SEVERE ARTHRITIS PAIN
Over one 47-day period, Limbaugh was buying OxyContin tablets from Cline at the rate of 93 a day. If these were 80-mg tablets, he was ingesting 7440 mg a day! Even if he was taking 40-mg tablets, that's 3720 mg a day. The maximum therapeutic dose is two 80-mg tablets a day, or 160 mg. Limbaugh was taking up to 47 times the maximum dose, if Cline sold him that much and if he didn't give it away. At other times, he was using "only" 30 tablets a day.
THE SECOND DETOX AT DR. NATHAN'S
Even after he allegedly had destroyed his hearing with drugs and been fitted with a cochlear implant, Cline says she continued to supply OxyContin to Limbaugh. This was not a rational man who was a main spokesman for the U.S. administration! His email of May 29, 2002, told Cline that he needed the drugs for just a little over 2 weeks more. Then he apparently went back to Dr. Nathan's for his second detox. Around the beginning of this year, the Clines reported Limbaugh to the Palm Beach County, Florida, Assistant State Attorney.
---------[RUSH ON LEGALIZING DRUGS, IN 1993: :I'm appalled at people who simply want to look at all this abhorrent behavior and say, 'People are going to drugs anyway - lets legalize it.' It's a dumb idea. It's a rotten idea, and those who are for it are purely, 100 percent selfish."
RUSH IN THE WILMA CLINE ERA (1998): "What's missing in the drug fight is legalization. If we want to go after the drugs with the same fervor and intensity with which we go after cigarettes, let's legalize drugs. License the Cali cartel. Make them taxpayers and then sue them. Sue them left and right and then get control of the price and generate tax revenue from it. Raise the price sky high and fund all sorts of other wonderful social programs." "HYPOCRACY" DEFINED: Rush Limbaugh.
"RUSH" DEFINED: A SURGE OF PLEASURABLE SENSATION.]---------
TIMELINE OF A POSSIBLE COVERUP OF LIMBAUGH'S IRRESPONSIBILITY
October 11, 2001: Newsweek reported: "his physicians explained that overuse of medications is not a factor in Mr. Limbaugh's case."
October 3, 2003: Newsweek reported: "In light of last week's news reports, the Institute reaffirmed Limbaugh's AIED diagnosis and noted that he lost hearing over a period of several months, while hearing loss from Vicodin usually occurs over a period of days."
October 13, 2003, ABCNEWS reporting an interview with Dr. Jennifer Derebery of House Institute said: "...it is possible that there is a connection between Limbaugh's sudden hearing loss and pill abuse, but there is no way to know for sure."
COMMENT TO RUSH
If you would like to contact Limbaugh at his private email addresses, you might do so on AOL/Compuserve at: 70277.2502@compuserve.com or rhl@eibnet.com or rprivate@eibnet.com. Fax through email: (212) 563-9166.
The public email address is rush@eibnet.com.
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