Pleasure, pain and Rush Limbaugh
Published October 11, 2003
Let me start with an admission. I have never purchased a drug stronger than Tylenol with codeine in my life, and that was with a prescription. My illicit drug use is limited to the usual college and law school toking. (Marijuana is very popular at many law schools.) So, I approach the topic of drug addiction without personal experience.
However, like other writers, and cats, I just have to know about things. So, I've been probing the topic for years. One of my most anthologized short stories is about a drug addict. That leads people to think I know the turf. To the extent I do, it is because of having focused on it as a reporter and continued that research subsequently. One of the aspects I have been wondering about for a long time is the relationship between drug use and hedonism. Is the pleasure derived from hardcore drug highs so extreme that those of us who haven't had the experience are clueless about ecstasy? Are the relatively short lives of addicts an understandable exchange for the pleasure derived from drug use? What about pain? How much of it are people willing to endure in return for the high?
A new angle to the saga of a conservative talk show host's admission to addiction (shall we call it 'Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Junkie'?) has led me to inquire into the issue of drug use and hedonism again.
Limbaugh's confession came a week after a former housekeeper went public with accusations that she supplied Limbaugh with thousands of black-market pain pills over a four-year period.
. . .They also triggered renewed speculation about a possible connection between his drug abuse and his sudden, almost total, loss of hearing three years ago.
Lorcet, one of the drugs that his housekeeper claimed to have supplied Limbaugh, has been linked to abrupt deafness.
. . .Limbaugh's broadcast confession caps a dismal two weeks for the broadcaster, who lost his job as an ESPN commentator after he claimed Philadelphia Eagles Donovan McNabb has been overrated by sports journalists because he's black.
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- Pleasure, pain and Rush Limbaugh
- Published: October 11, 2003
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- Section: Culture
- Filed Under: Culture: Media
- Writer: Mac Diva
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The Dutch have a system by which opiate addicts -- chiefly heroin -- are given, potentially perpetually, maintenance doses of their drug. They are able to manage family and social lives; and in most cases work in some capacity.
Addiction isn't usually about cost/benefit analyses: it's about missing the last turnoff before the interstate. Once you're there the pain of quitting often outweighs the reality of declining health.
Cost/benefit analyses are the sort of calculations recreational users make. If I go out Thursday night, I'll have a great time; but I'll have to work all day with a monster hangover.
That being said, addiction medicine today is a joke. Most contemporary inpatient programs are loosely based on the Hazelden model, which required a minimum 30 day stay. Now insurance puts you out after 5 day medical detox; 3 if they can get you fully ambulatory in that time. And substance abuse patients are housed and treated on the same wards on the same schedules as psychiatric patients. Thirty years ago most rehab patients were doomed before they checked in; now it's almost all of them.
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Thanks MD - excellent, clearheaded, and somewhat troubling look at the situation. I think most addicts/users are too self-deceptive to even consider the rather stark nature of the cost/benefit analysis going on inside their heads.