Pavlov's Dog, Doctor Shoppers, and Right Wing Full Of Shit Gasbags.

The addict is a fact of life for those of us in the profession. When you work in a room full of drugs, you will undoubtedly have to deal with people who desperately want to get at those drugs. Someday I hope to turn this situation to my advantage though, as I posted earlier here. Until that day though, I am resigned to endless inquires from customers calling 7 days in a row to ask the exact day they can get their Vicodin refilled, excuses as to how the Soma got "lost", and "filled at other pharmacy" rejects from addicts on a budget who are trying to save a few bucks by using their insurance card for the 3 different narcotic prescriptions from 3 different doctors being filled at 3 different pharmacies. (sometimes I want to tell them that they were soooooo close to pulling it off, that if they just would've paid cash they would have gotten away with it) Back when I worked the late shift for a big box chain I remember a customer who would wait patiently in the designated patient area until midnight the day he was due for a refill. He knew when the magic hour had come because a tone would sound over the in-store radio system signaling the new day. Thing is, this customer had never been given the scoop as to what the tone was, he figured it out all on his own and got to the point that as soon as he heard it, he would get up and march zombie-like to the counter. I wondered sometimes what would happen if we played the tone for him sometime at 2 in the afternoon. Betcha he would have done the zombie march.

I'd be willing to bet though, that I'd be hard pressed to find a colleague out there who had a customer as maxed out as the one I read about the other day:

a prescription for 50 tablets of Lorcet was filled at the Zitomer Pharmacy on Madison Avenue in New York. The tablets were to be taken at a rate of two a day, and at that pace the prescription should have lasted 25 days. Three days later, a prescription was filled at the same pharmacy for another 50 tablets. A third prescription for 96 tablets of Norco was filled about the same time at the Lewis Pharmacy in Palm Beach, according to the court documents.

But wait, that's not all....

Prosecutors previously had said... received about 2,000 painkillers, prescribed by four doctors over six months, at a pharmacy near his Palm Beach mansion.

I don't know about my colleagues out there.....but you try shit like that at my store and you will be shown the door with my foot making contact with your ass.

Of course in this case It would have been the ass of a personal assistant.....or maybe a maid, as the master addict in this case is no other than right wing gasbag Rush Limbaugh, professional purveyor of pearls of wisdom such as:

"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 neighborhoods 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."
-- Rush Limbaugh. October 5, 1995 show transcript.

Wow, so we can all assume Rush did the honorable thing by taking his punishment like a man, right? Hmmmmm....let's let the Washington Post clue us in:

The charge will be dropped in 18 months, said his attorney, Roy Black, provided that Limbaugh continues treatment for drug addiction, as he has for 2 1/2 years. According to an agreement with the Palm Beach County state's attorney's office, Limbaugh also must pay $30,000 to defray the costs of the investigation, as well as $30 a month for his supervision.

$30 a month? Wow, I don't think I could say it any better than Rush himself:

"What this says to me is that too many whites are getting away with drug use, too many whites are getting away with drug sales, too many whites are getting away with trafficking 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."
-- Rush Limbaugh. October 5, 1995 show transcript.

The whole treatment thing doesn't look like it's off to a good start either, as the first step in overcoming an addiction is admitting you have a problem. This from the Post though:

"Mr. Limbaugh and I have maintained from the start that there was no doctor-shopping, and we continue to hold this position," Black said in a statement.

"Doctor Shopping" would be defined as getting multiple prescriptions from multiple doctors, kinda like this:

In court documents, investigators connected Limbaugh to 19 prescriptions for the drugs Lorcet, Norco and hydrocodone called in between April and August 2003. The prescriptions were issued by doctors in New York, Florida and California.

Do you need any more evidence he holds the public, and his listeners in particular, in contempt? I have more respect for the tone man customer, at least he wasn't pretending to be something he clearly wasn't.

You can read the whole Post Article here: