A recent pit thread got me thinking about Rush and his attitude towards drugs and addicts. A long time ago, I used to listen to Rush and he had a very low opinion of drug addicts, and I remember him stating that they should all be locked up.
Now that Rush has been exposed as a doctor-hopping drug addict himself, has his position on addicts changed? Does he at least have the decency to shut the fuck up about the topic now? I would not be at all surprised to hear that he is back to advocating their incarceration.
I know this is more of a GQ but given the subject I put it in the pit.
I think it’s silly and more than a little disingenuous to equate people who have become addicted to painkillers (usually as the result of surgery or some physical malady) with people who are stung out on meth, heroin, cocaine, etc. This practice usually occurs primarily, in my observation, with people who are politically opposed to the ‘drug addict’ in question.
And given that one rarely hears of people addicted to pain meds becoming prostitutes or drug dealers or breaking into houses or offering to sell their children in order to obtain the medications they’ve become addicted to, I think it’s both reasonable and understandable for them to be critical of…and lobby for the incarceration of…people whose drug use leads to that type of lifestyle.
Personally, I’d like to see some sort of solution that doesn’t include incarceration, but for now it’s the only thing that exists to try to keep this type of drug use in check. I wonder sometimes if people who lobby for the legalization of drugs have ever spent much time around those who are heavily addicted to them. I’ve known my fair share of meth and cocaine addicts, and prison would be quite a step up for most of them.
And believe it or not, most of the people I’ve known who successfully kicked their addictions and turned their lives around were only able to do so as a result of having been incarcerated, and therefore freed of their addictions. Jail is a form of intervention and many of these people would tell you that going to jail was the best thing that ever happened to them.
There are two types of painkiller addicts- those who were doing just as a doctor prescribed and get unintentionally hooked as a result, and those who take a painkiller, prescribed or not, like the feeling, and then start to take them more or less the way a non prescription addict would. Which camp he falls into determines how fat a hypocrite he is.
Why the fuck does it matter how somebody became an addict? Either you are abiding by the prescription or you are breaking the law. Starving Artist will defend all things conservative but the fact is Rush is a pill popping hypocritical addict. All addicts deserve compassion but hypocrites don’t.
Really? You base your opinion of an addict on whether or not they’re “moral enough” for you? What an interesting position. So, someone with, say, an oxycontin addiction who serves his wife with divorce papers while she’s recovering from surgery and still groggy from anesthesia or someone who uses the proceeds from his church fund to buy painkillers and a hotel room for himself and his boyfriend on the sly are far more acceptable a brand of addict for you than someone who rifles through his mom’s purse to go buy meth and hang out in Wal Mart at 3am? Fascinating.
No. No, it isn’t. It’s hypocritical and stupid. But since what I think you are looking at is actually the income and profitability of certain members of each of those groups, I can certainly see why you think so.
Well, that clinches it, then! Starving Artist has known addicts! And they were all scummy and couldn’t kick the habit without being jailed! IT must be true of all addicts!
This much is true, at least. Had he gone further and had his stomach stapled or a lap band performed, he’d probably have helped his back a lot more. Not to mention shortening his dependency time on ineffective pain killers
Yes, but that doesn’t clarify if he got inadvertently hooked while taking them for his back, or if he started gobbling them for pleasure and then got hooked. Not everyone who takes them gets hooked. And for we all know he could have no back issues, and made that up to get oxycontin.
Why are you so concerned about why someone gets hooked? What fuckin difference does it make? An addict is an addict and they should all be treated with compassion. You do realize that some people can try oxycontin on a whim and never do it again and some people can do coke recreationally without problems and others can do it once and destroy their lives. It is not a matter of morals or will power.
I confess I simply cannot understand the attitude that taking Oxycontin without a prescription is a mere pecadillo, yet taking Heroin shows you to be a monster.
An opiate addict who gobbles Oxycontin and an opiate addict who shoots heroin are taking the same substance and getting the same physiological affect. It’s the same goddam thing.
No, my opinion of an addict (as opposed to whether or not they are an addict) is based upon the harm they do to themselves (and their husbands, wives, children, etc.) and the risk they pose to the rest of society. I haven’t heard of too many Oxycontin users becoming dealers so as to afford their own habit. I haven’t heard of them breaking into houses for loot to pawn or drugging their children with Nyquil so they can go off and perform blow jobs at truck stops for meth money.
Ah, the old classism argument.
It has nothing to do with morals, and it has nothing to do with who has more money. Again, it has to do with who does the greater harm to themselves and who poses the greater threat to society at large.
You seem to have missed my point. I am not disputing that prostitution and drug abuse do have more than a passing acquaintance, although thus far all you’ve produced are memes rather than actual hard data. My point is that an addict is an addict is an addict. The potential for harm, both to themselves and to society at large has nothing whatever to do with the flavor of their addiction, alcohol and gambling included.
Sadly, classism does play a part, as does racism. There are trend lines that speak to affordability and availability. Does someone living in low-rent housing with a couple minimum wage jobs with state medicaid have availability to a private physician in a good part of town willing to write a weekly script for oxycontin? And then the means to pay for that oxycontin? I would say probably no.
Well then I’m going to have to ask you for a couple cites. Is there any study which shows that someone suffering from an addiction to Vicodin is less likely to cause themselves extreme liver damage and end up in the emergency room than someone with an addiction to meth? Or a study which shows that the oxycontin addict embezzling from his company to pay for his habit and the behavior he exhibits while stoned is less destructive than the coke whore who takes drugs and money for sex?
Back atcha, sweetcakes. Behavior exhibited by addicts while in the throes of addiction does not know bias.
There is indeed a big difference between Mr. Limbaugh and a thieving gutter junkie. The difference is wealth. Limbaugh is solid-gold, money-bin diving rich. He didn’t have to turn tricks in an alley or break into somebody’s house to steal purses and laptops. He simply had his maid go out to buy his pills on the street. Rush had already exhausted his legal supplies, and even the extra pills he could get by doctor-hopping. He needed more. lots more. He was a full-out junkie.
Maybe Starving Artist hasn’t heard of Oxy-boppers becoming prostitutes or thieves, but there’s a reason the police call Oxycontin “hillbilly heroin.”
When Limbaugh was preaching heavy prison time for drug users, he was flying high all day and all night. Is it “reasonable” for a rich junkie to call for the jailing of poor junkies? I say no. Rush came out of his shortened rehab just as arrogant as ever, saying he didn’t have to explain himself to anybody.
Starving Artist, I don’t know you, so don’t take this as a gotcha, but surely based on what you’ve written above and in this thread you must support the decriminalization of soft, non-addictive drugs, right?
Sure it is wrong and silly. But that is what he did. I heard him say before that all people using drugs should be jailed . He was using while he said that. HYPOCRITE.
