Is George Bush Becoming Dependent on Drugs for Dealing with Depression?
Commentary
~ August 11, 2004: George W. Bush is retreating further and
further into a dark, depressed and paranoid world, trusting no one
but his closest loyalists. To deal with this depression, he is increasingly
turning to a dependence on drugs, say White House insiders and the
president’s own physician, Col. Richard J. Tubb.
The newspaper Capital Hill Blue first reveals
that J. Tubb put the President on powerful anti-depressant drugs
after he stormed off stage rather than answer reporters' questions
about his relationship with indicted Enron executive Kenneth J.
Lay. However, according to the article, White House aids say the
strong, prescription medications seem to increase Bush’s sullen
behavior towards those around him.
White House aides were quoted as saying Bush’s
administration has been overtaken by a “siege mentality,”
where phone calls and emails are monitored and everyone is under
suspicion for “disloyalty to the crown.”
According to the article, Bush has retreated into
a tightly-controlled environment where only top political advisors
like Karl Rove and Karen Hughes and Attorney General John Ashcroft
are allowed in. White House chief of staff Andrew Card and Homeland
Security Secretary Tom Ridge are complaining that they are now on
the outside.
The article said furthermore that, although Vice President
Dick Cheney remains part of Bush’s inner circle, Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld does not. The article quotes Rumsfeld as saying
“no matter what happens in November, I’m outta here.”
These reports have been confirmed by prominent George
Washington University psychiatrist Dr. Justin Frank in his book
Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President. In the book,
Dr. Frank diagnosed the President as a "paranoid meglomaniac"
and "untreated alcoholic" whose "lifelong streak
of sadism, ranging from childhood pranks (using firecrackers to
explode frogs) to insulting journalists, gloating over state executions
and pumping his hand gleefully before the bombing of Baghdad"
showcase the president’s instabilities.
An editorial appearing on the website, bellaciao.org
said Dr. Frank's conclusions have been supported by other prominent
psychiatrists, including Dr. James Grotstein, Professor at UCLA
Medical Center, and Dr. Irvin Yalom, MD, Professor Emeritus at Stanford
University Medical School.
The doctors also worry about the wisdom of giving
powerful anti-depressant drugs to a person with a history of chemical
dependency. Bush is an admitted alcoholic, although he never sought
treatment in a formal program, and stories about his cocaine use
as a younger man haunted his campaigns for Texas governor and his
first campaign for President. "
President Bush is an untreated alcoholic with paranoid
and megalomaniac tendencies," Dr. Frank adds.
Commentary
~ August 11, 2004: George W. Bush is retreating further and
further into a dark, depressed and paranoid world, trusting no one
but his closest loyalists. To deal with this depression, he is increasingly
turning to a dependence on drugs, say White House insiders and the
president’s own physician, Col. Richard J. Tubb.