AMBIVALENCE TOWARD RUSH’S CONFESSIONS . . . SO FAR

I cannot help but feel sad and sorry for Rush – no sarcasm, no cynicism, no schadenfreude. We all have our addictions, some more obvious and self-destructive than others. And, we all would do well to transcend them, knowing that we have the encouragement and good faith of decent people who only want to see a man who is hurting ascend to healing.

Admission of ones weakness and responsibility is the first critical step toward recovery. Hence, I have rarely met a guilty man in jail. Just ask him. He has invariably been set up by a crooked judge, a bribe, a competitor, a case of undeserved vengeance.

Rush appears to be on the path to doing better. But, he still has a harrowing challenge before him, as harrowing as actually being in treatment, one that is the essence of the self-scrutiny that leads to restoration. He must renounce any remaining vestiges of pleading “guilty with explanation,” a mincing step away from the nolo contendere copped by everyone from pedophile priests to the smugly ignominious Spiro Agnew. Anything less still bespeaks the victim mentality so excoriated by Rush and his dittoheads.

So far, Rush’s mea culpas, so eagerly accepted by his otherwise unforgiving apologists, have been tinged with equivocation: I am not a victim . . . but I had botched spinal surgery. I am not a victim . . . but at least I got there through licit means. I am not a victim . . . but I had to have something for my pain. I am not a victim . . . but I tried and failed at rehabilitation before.

I am not a victim . . . but please understand the circumstances.

Well, maybe we should, and maybe we shouldn’t. My empathy for Rush is complete. (How ironic that now he is caught in the conundrum of accepting or rejecting overtures from his supporters that begin with “I feel your pain.”!) A member of my own family is so wracked with chronic, but not terminal, pain that she, too, is hooked on increasing doses OxyContin, so far legitimately obtained. Neither she nor we know what we will do if/when her licit access runs out.

On the other hand, Rush, like most of us, came forward, confessed and submitted to treatment only when his back, literally and figurative, was up against the wall. It was still the honorable and therapeutic thing to do, and please God, not too late. But the mea culpa did not come earlier on, when his physician must have conveyed to him that his dependency had gotten out of hand, if only by refusing to prescribe more of the narcotic. A timely admission and the circumspection that should have accompanied it would have reflected the integrity and character that Rush so piously preaches.

Moreover, he resorted to illicit means to allay his pain. When he sought other modes of treatment that failed, he should have listened more carefully to the preachment that he routinely prescribes for other unfortunates who are on the down-and-out: Live with the pain. Who said life is always fair?

That is the essence: Everyone who turns to the illicit is responding to some kind of pain – yes, sometimes self-inflicted, but too often it is from fate of birth, abuse, endemic hopelessness, inescapable violence, insurmountable poverty, gang-driven join-or-die. These, too, are all backbreaking traumas, burdens to heavy to bear without something to ease the overwhelming pain. They are, to paraphrase Kipling, all reasons for failure, but not among them a single excuse. They can be transcended, but not without struggle, and certainly not without an environment full of empathy, support and encouragement. They can be transcended, but not through derision, cruel sarcasm, broadside judgmentalism and platitudes that border on hypocrisy. They can be transcended, but only when the transformation begins with “I make no excuses.”

Any one of us who has ever been in that situation, dependency on drugs or any other self-destructive habit, will tell you that that unequivocal confession of responsibility is absolutely preessential for restoration. It is true for inner-city crack addicts. But, it is equally true for Rush.

Rush deserves our empathy, support and encouragement, even/especially when they come from an unrepentant liberal like yours truly. He has already taken the crucial first half-step. The second awaits. He must yet make his commitment to “no excuses,” more for his own sake than for his audience’s. If he has already, then God bless him. And, if it ultimately brings him to another kind of sobriety, the sober humility that makes him less judgmental of the folks he so eagerly maligns, what a genuine moral exemplar he would become for his huge and doting constituency.