Doing the Rush on Limbaugh

I was reading in the Miami Herald and later on TalkLeft.com (superb site by a very smart lady) that Roy Black, Limbaugh's attorney, claims that the amount of drugs he obtained from doctors in less than a 6 month period (2000) was not unusually high.

That's an interesting theory and if my back weren't hurting so badly, I'd stoop so low as to Limbaugize it. So let me just bend a tiny bit.

First, 2,000 Oxycontin in less than 6 months is more than 11 time-release, meant to last all day pills. As someone who's experiencing often excruciating chronic pain with each breath since a weird lung infection left me in ICU for 3 weeks last summer, even I can't begin to imagine this level of medication. There's a personal note below explaining my situation.

Yes, all pain is different for all people. But even Rush had to know something was direly wrong.

Second, was he not also obtaining thousands of pills at the same time from his housekeeper? So we're not talking maybe 11 pills a day; we're talking 20 or 30 perhaps. I don't believe that he kept stashes of pills for any longer than necessary. An addict would always want to know there's more tomorrow, but 10,000 pills+ get harder to hide than a couple of prescription bottles. With his money, why didn't he buy the bleeping pharmaceutical company?

Mind you, we've prosecuted (sometimes egregiously) people for possession of very small amounts of drugs, prescription and otherwise. I know the happy horse hockey about prosecutors wanting to go after the source rather than the "victims" of drug addiction, but that seems to work more for people like Rush and Noelle Bush and Wynona Ryder (who had her drug-related charges dismissed) than it seems to for black, Latino, or poor whites.

So right now, while I believe very strongly the laws should be changed to consider addiction a disease rather than an automatic mandatory minimum felony, I'm leaning to wanting dear Rush to be treated as he wanted everyone else (who wasn't one of his supporters and himself) to be treated. Then, perhaps, Rush will join us in working to change the laws.

[Personal info: When pain meds were first prescribed for me, they were a tough choice. I've never taken anything like that since I was very ill as a teenager, and with a family history of other types of addiction, I told my doctor about my concerns. I'm still unable to work unless I take something each day, but my doctor has worked with me to try to control the pain yet take steps to insure I don't walk away from this an addict. My doctor's been great: recognizing my degree of pain but without acting like my personal dispensary. Even though the pain is still 70-80% of what it once was, I choose to take far less meds than I could. I don't like taking them, but without them, I spend the workday just staring at my monitor, hoping for a miracle or death, whichever comes first.]