[Peace-discuss] War on drugs...

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Bush Leagues
	Bush Using Drugs to Control Depression, Erratic Behavior
	By TERESA HAMPTON
	Editor, Capitol Hill Blue
	Jul 28, 2004, 08:09

President George W. Bush is taking powerful anti-depressant drugs to
control his erratic behavior, depression and paranoia, Capitol Hill Blue
has learned.

The prescription drugs, administered by Col. Richard J. Tubb, the White
House physician, can impair the President's mental faculties and decrease
both his physical capabilities and his ability to respond to a crisis,
administration aides admit privately.

"It's a double-edged sword," says one aide. "We can't have him flying off
the handle at the slightest provocation but we also need a President who
is alert mentally."

Tubb prescribed the anti-depressants after a clearly-upset Bush stormed
off stage on July 8, refusing to answer reporters' questions about his
relationship with indicted Enron executive Kenneth J. Lay.

"Keep those motherfuckers away from me," he screamed at an aide backstage.
"If you can't, I'll find someone who can."

Bush's mental stability has become the topic of Washington whispers in
recent months. Capitol Hill Blue first reported on June 4 about increasing
concern among White House aides over the President's wide mood swings and
obscene outbursts.

Although GOP loyalists dismissed the reports an anti-Bush propaganda, the
reports were later confirmed by prominent George Washington University
psychiatrist Dr. Justin Frank in his book Bush on the Couch: Inside the
Mind of the President. 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 Bush's instabilities.

"I was really very unsettled by him and I started watching everything he
did and reading what he wrote and watching him on videotape. I felt he was
disturbed," Dr. Frank said. "He fits the profile of a former drinker whose
alcoholism has been arrested but not treated."

Dr. Frank's conclusions have been praised 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.

The White House did not return phone calls seeking comment on this
article.

Although the exact drugs Bush takes to control his depression and behavior
are not known, White House sources say they are "powerful medications"  
designed to bring his erratic actions under control. While Col. Tubb
regularly releases a synopsis of the President's annual physical, details
of the President's health and any drugs or treatment he may receive are
not public record and are guarded zealously by the secretive cadre of
aides that surround the President.

Veteran White House watchers say the ability to control information about
Bush's health, either physical or mental, is similar to Ronald Reagan's
second term when aides managed to conceal the President's increasing
memory lapses that signaled the onslaught of Alzheimer's Disease.

It also brings back memories of Richard Nixon's final days when the
soon-to-resign President wondered the halls and talked to portraits of
former Presidents. The stories didn't emerge until after Nixon left
office.

One long-time GOP political consultant who -- for obvious reasons -- asked
not to be identified said he is advising his Republican Congressional
candidates to keep their distance from Bush.

"We have to face the very real possibility that the President of the
United States is loony tunes," he says sadly. "That's not good for my
candidates, it's not good for the party and it's certainly not good for
the country."

© Copyright 2004 Capitol Hill Blue