FBI Files Reveal Chronic Back Pain Led Justice William H. Rehnquist to Drug Addiction
FBI files released though the Freedom of Information Act reveal that late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist was addicted to the sleep-inducing drug PlacidylTM for more than a decade.
The FBI documents were prepared in 1986 during a routine background investigation when Rehnquist was nominated for Chief Justice, years after his problems with the drug ended. He had begun serving on the court on Jan. 7, 1972. The FBI found that Rhenquist had been prescribed the drug Placidyl for insomnia after back surgery in 1971. By 1981, a decade later, he was consuming three times the usual and recommended dose.
Placidyl is known generically as ethchlorvynol, and is no longer in wide use. It was usually prescribed for only a week at a time, and although not an opiate, it is addictive.
According to recent reports in The Washington Post, journalists at the time had noted that Rehnquist’s speech was sometimes slurred. According to the FBI and public reports, Rehnquist checked into George Washington University Hospital in December, 1981, to be treated for his addiction and for continuing back pain. The FBI learned from doctors at the hospital that when Rhenquist stopped taking the drug he suffered paranoid delusions.
One doctor said Rehnquist thought he heard voices outside his hospital room plotting against him and had “bizarre ideas and outrageous thoughts,” including imagining “a CIA plot against him” and “seeming to see the design patterns on the hospital curtains change configuration.” Rehnquist “had also gone to the lobby in his pajamas in order to try to escape.”
The withdrawal symptoms were so severe that the doctors began giving Rehnquist the drug again and slowly reduced the dosage until he was off the drug completely by February, 1982.
The doctor said Rehnquist’s delirium was consistent with suddenly stopping the drug. As to the amount which Rhenquist was consuming, the doctor said, “Any physician who prescribed it was practicing very bad medicine, bordering on malpractice.”
A psychiatrist told the FBI that Rehnquist’s chronic back pain led to his heavy use of such substances as Darvon and Tylenol 3.