Why I don’t think it’s funny to use Limbaugh’s drug abuse as a punchline.
Short background: Rush Limbaugh (link goes to Wikipedia article) is a US conservative radio talk show host who has risen to prominence in the US by inciting “controversy” after “controversy” with hateful rhetoric. He also went through an ordeal some time back for addiction to prescription painkillers, an incident that the US left likes to use against him. Recently he was rushed to the hospital again, which has spurred a new round of derision from US liberals.
Rush Limbaugh isn’t exactly a sympathetic character. His politics are vile and he makes a career out of escalating white male resentment into white male supremacy. And that causes real harm to real people who don’t meet the requirements to be part of Limbaugh’s He-Man Woman-Haterz Club.
How did he end up abusing prescription painkillers? I don’t know. Was he taking them for legitimate pain due to injury, surgery or a medical condition, and the usage got out of hand? Was he consciously using it as a recreational drug? I have to say I am still somewhat bitter about people who use the stuff I need to be able to get on with my daily life as a quick and easy “high,” ultimately making it harder to access needed medication. (But that is argument from emotion, mostly; I would posit that the real problem is a medical field and larger culture which does not take seriously the needs and concerns of chronic pain patients and is eager to punish people who step outside accepted boundaries.)
But even if he was just out for a high, I still feel unease when I see people use that angle to criticize him.
Because, here’s the thing… the same narrative that you are using to condemn this despicable figure is the narrative that is used to condemn me.
You are feeding, growing, reinforcing the same narrative that codes me as an abuser, that makes me out to be a good-for-nothing low-life, that makes it difficult for me to access the medication I need to be able to live my normal daily life.
When you laugh, joke, or rant about Limbaugh’s abuse of narcotics, you are lifting a page from the book of people who would call me a malingerer and interpret my behavior (frustration at barriers to access, agitation and self-advocacy to try to gain access) as signs of addiction. People who would, in the same breath, chastise me for “making it harder for the real sufferers.” (See why my bitterness about recreational use isn’t actually serving the right purpose, in the end?)
Maybe you don’t really think this way. But maybe the people laughing at your joke do.
And maybe, you just made them feel a little bit safer in their scaremongering about “addiction” and deliberate attempts to make life harder for us.
Scoffing at Limbaugh’s hypocrisy is one thing — but when your scoffing takes the form of a very common, quite harmful cultural prejudice — even when you don’t mean it to — it has real effects on real people’s lives. Sort of like that casual incitement that we hate Limbaugh for.
Urocyon
| Thursday, January 7, 2010 | 8:14 pmExactly. It amuses me about as much as all the screeching about “hillbilly heroin”, to the point that my mom had trouble getting pain relief for terminal cancer.
Another one in the chronic pain boat here. “[D]eliberate attempts to make life harder for us”, yep.
AbominableSnowPickle
| Friday, March 5, 2010 | 11:33 pmoh yes, hear hear! I’m also a passenger of the chronic pain boat, and I’ve got a pretty vast knowledge/experiences with narcotics and other controlled substances in the course of my treatment and management of my pain. While I know that my pain doctor must keep very strict policies and a pretty fierce pain contract that prohibits me from getting pain medication from any other doctor. Of course there are exceptions, for emergencies or surgeries. But I can’t help but wonder what goes on in the minds of medical persons who don’t know me or my situation very well. For example, in the middle of January I got a kidney stone. It was about 6mm in size and very much stuck between my kidney and bladder, blocking the…er, flow. It was my fourth kidney stone in about 7 months, but the first of them to cause the complications that followed.
I wound up spending a night in the hospital due to the pain. I’ve talked to women who have passed kidney stones who also gave birth naturally (i.e. without drugs). Every single one of them, admittedly a very small group, would have much preferred to give birth without drugs than ever do a kidney stone again. Hopefully that’s a good enough explanation of the intensity of the pain that kidney stones cause, though it’s worse for men (so i hear, maybe because their urinary tract is quite a bit longer than a woman’s).
Due to the chronic pain, my nerves and nervous system are pretty much always sensitized, so I feel tend to feel less pain much more intensely than people who don’t. Ridding myself of the stone (not so fondly known as ‘Attila’) took two small surgeries. When I woke up after the second surgery (done later that week as an out-patient), I hurt so much. Agony, pure agony. However, the urologist on my case refused to give me enough pain medication to make things better. Complete eradication of the acute, post-op pain wasn’t feasible, and so I never expected that. But I was flat out refused even enough to just take the edge off, even though I was clearly in distress. When I finally was able to go home, there was no prescription for pain relief to take with me. Hell, I wasn’t even given antibiotics (not that I’m all that into antibiotics, but surgery is surgery!). When I asked about it, the nurse told me in a rather nasty tone that my everyday pain regime should be more than enough and that I should be grateful for any pain medication because all I was was a drug-seeking malinger-er.
Many apologies for the long-winded comment, but I hope it helps to illustrate the attitude that sufferers of chronic pain are often treated with. Those who play the system for drugs really make it difficult for chronic pain patients to get the medication that is needed to live a full life. America is so weird about health care and drugs; even more so when it’s a combination of the two. Thanks for another awesome post!