What is he ON?

[dogpatch]

* kept grinding his jaw during and after last night's debate and I just caught a little clip of him today, grinding away like Mr. Cokehead. He is tweaking big time, what is it? Did they dial up the meds or is he dipping into the nosebag again?

[The Traveler]

1. I'm betting on the nose ... (n/t)

[JI7]

2. the quivering mouth looks even more disgusting since he has no lips

look at the putrid bastard

[seabeyond]

3. i took wellbutrin sr to help stop smoking

after two days, i threw them in the trash. i was feeling like i was on meth. did that in my twenties for a couple years. couldnt do wellbutrin

what other legal drug does this. i agree with the mouth think and coke. easy to see

[kokomo]

4. As a 60's speed freak myself, I'd say meth or coke!

I used to grind my teeth, talk fast and loud when I was amping.

[nostalgicaboutmyfutr]

5. My wife and I saw that

too and wondered...could be part of the "missed physical/undisclosed illness" problem he has...

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

6. I was noticing that today when I watched a replay of the debate

At several intervals, Bush was doing something with his jaw, jutting it out or maybe grinding his teeth. It was strange, even for Bush.

[dogpatch]

8. Okay, so it's new right?

We were trying to figure out if he's done it before but I don't remember this new tic. Ecstasy makes you grind too, big time, but if was on that he would have been telling JFK what a beautiful soul he has. My vote's coke or some really nasty speed.

[TlalocW]

7. He's on E

That square patch under his jacket on his back? It's a small box that holds his pacifier that's supposed to keep Ecstasy-users from grinding their teeth/chewing the inside of their cheeks while hopped up on it.

TlalocW

[gauguin57]

9. Aw crap. I just spewed ice tea all over my computer screen!

Pacifier to keep him from grinding ... LOLOLOLOL!!!

[SammyWinstonJack]

10. He acted the same way while campaigning in 2000.

All tweaked out and then on election night he seemed mellowed out, at least until he found out that Florida had been called for Gore. I remember thinking at the time that he must've resorted to his old habit.

[Philostopher]

11. Thorazine and some other antipsychotics

bring on drug-induced Parkinsonism.

My great-aunt lived in a rest home that used to dose up all the poor old residents with antipsychotics that made them docile. She'd spend hours chewing on an old washrag with her poor, toothless mouth because she had to chew on something. Her memory was spotty -- she frequently called my mother and me by names other than ours, and she didn't even know who I was for a couple of years.

As an aside, one year she had pneumonia and was sent offsite to a hospital for treatment, where they didn't give her whatever I theorized they'd been giving her for years at the rest home. We went to visit her not long after she recovered, while she was still of the drugs, and she was a different person. She had some of her long-term memory back, she could play the piano again -- it was like she was reborn. She lasted another year or so with much better long-term memory and none of the rag-chewing reflex, so I guess they decided they were busted, since we saw her before they got her back on the drugs, and she was much more logical once they got her off them anyway -- she was easier to deal with.

I'm not sayin' that's Shrub's problem -- I'm just answering your question. Serious, heavy-duty antipsychotic drugs do bring on a condition that causes a masticating reflex.

[dogpatch]

12. That would make sense

It would stand to reason he'd be on antipyschotic drugs. I heard from a friend in DC who has a few connections that those Capitol Blue stories about *'s paranoia and uncontrollable rages were basically true.

I'm glad you're great-aunt was able to return to her old self in her last year, how horrible to think she was being drugged for no reason.

[Philostopher]

14. I didn't realize it until after she died.

The whole story made no sense, and my mother is the kind of person who's kind of cowed by medical professionals and tends to take their word for things. The fact that the old gal was incoherent and chewing on a washrag one time when we visited, and then a month later remembered my mother's name and was in the sun room playing the piano made a serious ding in my judgment. It wasn't until I read, later on, that people in rest homes were frequently dosed to the gills on Thorazine and other antipsychotics just to keep them quiet that it occurred to me they might have done something like that to her.

She and my grandmother both -- and my mother -- were/are rich in native intellect. There was no other reason, knowing about that, I could come up with for what happened with her. It makes me sad -- she might have had four or five years of occasional lapses separated by lucid periods, instead of four or five years of total crap that was only relieved in the last year she lived. My grandmother was cared for by the family, and largely got that -- it's a shame my mother's aunt had to go through it.

[clover]

15. bingo!

even the newer classes of antipsychotics--zyprexa and the like--induce these side effects:


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

[Philostopher]

16. I guess nothing is 'going too far' to save

their little Napoleon, maybe there's something to it. I hate to speculate -- I'll leave it to others who have more cachet in DC than I do. Apparently, some of them do believe this may be going on.

[clover]

17. reference

Tardive Dyskinesia - A syndrome of potentially irreversible, involuntary, dyskinetic movements may develop in patients treated with Zyprexa. The risk of developing tardive dyskinesia and the likelihood that it will become irreversible are believed to increase as the duration of treatment and the total cumulative dose of Zyprexa increases.

There are no known treatments for tardive dyskinesia. 

Orthostatic Hypotension (Lowered blood pressure when a person changes from a setting to an erect position) - Zyprexa may induce orthostatic hypotension associated with dizziness, tachycardia, and in some patients, syncope, especially during the initial dose-titration period. Zyprexa should be used with particular caution in patients with known cardiovascular disease, cerebrovascular disease, and conditions which would predispose patients to hypotension. 
(clover's NOTE: fainting spells, falling off couches with pretzels in one's mouth)
Seizures - Seizures during premarketing test showed 22 of 2500 people developed seizures. 

[jdots]

18. clover you know your drugs ! exellent........

A frightening thought is he is able to cop anything he wants,it may be a coctail of Columbian disco powder,Jim Beam and
Zyprexa. Don't let this bozo drive a car !!!!!!!!

[clover]

19. i guess i do

& i hold no judgment against those who are wise enough to seek treatment for illness, but the sorts of illnesses that zyprexa treats--(& i have no idea whether bush is taking psych meds or not)--do affect one's cognitive abilities,and the patient's behaviors are much different when compliant with the recommended course of medication than when he or she is non-compliant, or off meds, for whatever reason. behavior can swing dramatically over a two-week period, depending upon dosing, etc.

[grasswire]

20. seizures? seizures?

That could explain both the twice daily med AND the injuries to his face. My daughter had several unexplained seizures several years ago that resulted in facial injuries; her anti-seizure med is twice daily.

[gauguin57]

13. The more important Q: WHY WON'T HE TAKE HIS PHYSICAL?

Mister President ... what in the HELL are you hiding from the American public?

I demand to know if my president is high on goof gas!

[Bush was AWOL]

21. I said it the other night

as someone who's been around a lot of people that do speed and coke, I could tell that Bush was on something. I'm being dead serious, too. That little fucker was on something.