Politics: Limbaugh to Audience: Can You Hear Me Now?

Most likely, Rush Limbaugh's sudden deafness was caused by drug abuse.

It appears that the press fell asleep on this one. Admittedly, hindsight is twenty-twenty, but the folks in the news media seem to have let this story completely pass them by, even though the facts were there from the moment the radio host first announced his oncoming deafness.

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To find our story's beginning we must go back to 1999, when the House Ear Institute in Los Angeles reported to the FDA that they had found a connection between the misuse of Vicodin, a powerful, potentially addictive painkiller, and sudden permanent hearing loss, often resulting in total deafness. Vicodin, one of the most abused prescription drugs on the market, is a combination of hydrocodone and acetampinophen, neither of which is thought to cause deafness when taken alone. However, when taken together, sudden deafness appears to be a side effect.

In 2001, the House Ear Institute resubmitted their findings to the FDA. By that time, there were 48 confirmed cases of sudden hearing loss occurring after the abuse of Vicodin. Dr. Akira Ishiyama, an assistant professor of otolaryngology at UCLA Medical School, told the Los Angeles Times in September of that year that the hearing loss problem may be "much more prevalent than we think," noting that doctors may not make the connection between Vicodin abuse and sudden hearing loss in their patients because they "haven't been looking for it."

Usually, when an adult suddenly experiences rapid hearing loss, the culprit is either medications, like antibiotics or diuretics, or an autoimmune disorder. In most cases, when the suspected medications are dropped, hearing returns. People suffering from autoimmune-related hearing loss usually respond to treatment with steroids.

It was just two months after the FDA was notified for the second time of the connection between the abuse of Vicodin and hearing loss, that conservative radio pundit Rush Limbaugh announced to his audience that he had gone almost totally deaf over the period of several months. The cause, according to Limbaugh's doctors, was Autoimmune Inner Ear Disease (AIED), which wasn't responding to normal treatment.

That same month, Jennifer Derebery, one of Limbaugh's physicians at the House Ear Clinic (the same organization that initially reported the connection between Vicodin and sudden deafness) confirmed the diagnosis at a press conference. "We are treating Rush Limbaugh for hearing loss resulting from Autoimmune Inner Ear Disease," she said. "...Mr. Limbaugh does not display most of the symptoms associated with AIED, but he has suffered rapidly progressive hearing loss since May 2001, which we are currently treating with medication at the House Ear Clinic."

According to a press release issued by the House Ear Institute after the press conference: "Several reporters mentioned other causes of hearing loss, such as overuse of medications or over-exposure to high levels of sound through earphones used during radio broadcasts, and asked if any of these had caused Rush Limbaugh's hearing loss. His physicians explained that overuse of medications is not a factor in Mr. Limbaugh's case, and while noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) is common among professionals in radio broadcasting, Mr. Limbaugh does not demonstrate the symptoms of NIHL."

According to most reports, Limbaugh was totally deaf within a month or so of his public announcement. In a "Media Q&A With Rush's Doctors," dated December 20, 2001 and published on Limbaugh's web site, RushLimbaugh.com, the question was posed: "Why didn't the medication treatment work for Rush Limbaugh?" Answer: "We don't yet know why some patients with Autoimmune Inner Ear Disease don't respond to medication while others do very well." Soon after that, a small portion of Limbaugh's hearing was restored through the use of cochlear implants.

On October 2 of 2003, the New York Daily News and the National Enquirer reported that Limbaugh was under investigation for allegedly buying thousands of addictive painkillers from a black-market drug ring. The investigation began when the radio host was turned-in by his former housekeeper, Wilma Cline, who claimed that she had supplied Limbaugh with prescription drugs for four years.

"There were times when I worried," she told the National Enquirer, the paper that broke the story. "All these pills are enough to kill an elephant - never mind a man." She also supplied the Enquirer with a list documenting her deliveries to Limbaugh. According to this, Cline supplied him with 4,350 pills in one 47-day period.

She said that Limbaugh was hooked on OxyContin, Lorcet and hydrocodone, the later being one of the drugs associated with sudden hearing loss. Although acetampinophen and Vicodin were not mentioned by Ms. Cline, it doesn't take much of a stretch to imagine that they were included in the mix.

On October 10, 2003 Limbaugh came clean with his radio audience and admitted that he was addicted to prescription pain killers, which he began taking to alleviate back pain after spinal surgery. He announced that he would be leaving his radio show for thirty days to undergo drug rehabilitation.

The question is: when will he come clean again and admit that his drug abuse caused his deafness?

©Copyright 2003 by AlternativeApproaches.com