"I Am Addicted To Prescription Pain Medication"

Granted, Limbaugh's act has won over, or fooled, a lot of people. With his heartland pieties and scorn for "feminazis" and "commie-symps" like "West Wing" president Martin Sheen ("Martin Sheenski" to Limbaugh), he is the darling of Red State, Fly-Over America. Former president George H.W. Bush, always eager to cover his right flank, personally carried Limbaugh's bags into the White House when Limbaugh stayed in the Lincoln Bedroom in 1992. After the Republicans won control of the House in 1994 for only the second time in 50 years, lawmakers called to personally thank Limbaugh and made him an honorary member of Congress.

But Limbaugh rarely shows up in Washington and counts few political heavyweights as his friends. One exception is Bill Bennett, whose book, "The Moral Compass," Limbaugh touted on radio. Bennett knew nothing of Limbaugh's pill popping. "He's a very private man," Bennett told NEWSWEEK. "He takes problems into himself." Journalists who have spent time with Limbaugh have been struck by the contrast between Rush the Radio Know-It-All and the private, ill-at-ease Limbaugh. "It was almost as if every step away from the studio, he grew smaller and less confident, shrinking with each step into the real-life Rush Limbaugh," Randall Bloomquist, an editor at Radio & Records newspaper, told the Los Angeles Times in 1995. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd spent a revealing dinner date with Limbaugh in 1993. "What I do in my off time has nothing to do with what I am," he told Dowd. "I don't go to movies. I've been to a couple of plays. I basically work. I don't watch television. I watch the news and the N.F.L.; that's it." Dowd recounted this mournful snippet of conversation:

" 'What's your idea of an ideal day?' 'I don't have an ideal day,' he replied, glumly. 'Well, what if a good friend came into town one Saturday, what would you do?' 'When I have someone coming into town for the weekend, I get stressed out on Tuesday thinking about it'." Limbaugh went on to say that he hates walking, hates window-shopping and likes New York mainly because you can order in.

Limbaugh's own mother remarked on his somewhat passive-aggressive reticence as a child. Little Rush was "very quiet," his mother, Millie, told the Southeast Missourian, a newspaper. At Halloween, "he really didn't care much for trick or treating. He would rather stay at home. I found he was upstairs and he'd have water balloons. Sometimes when the little children would leave, he would drop them down." Limbaugh's best friend in high school, Craig Valle, told Peter Boyer for a May 1992 Vanity Fair article, "You would find him in his dark bedroom playing with his tape recorder and radio."

A chubby kid who made the football team as a placekicker, Limbaugh regarded high school as "prison." Radio gave him an escape. He began as a DJ at 16, but was disappointed when he didn't win popularity. His parents were after him to become a lawyer, like his father, grandfather and various uncles and cousins, prosperous and respected men about town. "The Limbaughs in Cape Girardeau are royalty," says Jay B. Knudtson, the mayor of Limbaugh's hometown on the Mississippi River. In a December 1993 Playboy interview, Limbaugh spoke reverently of his grandfather, "a man who never cursed, never smoked, never drank, never lied, never cheated," and lived to be 104. His father was crankier; Rush learned to rant at the Eastern elite by watching his dad yell at Walter Cronkite on the evening news.

Limbaugh lasted only a year in college. He jokes that he flunked Public Speaking. Actually, he got a "D," his speaking teacher, Dr. Bill Stacy, told NEWSWEEK. Limbaugh's father maneuvered him into the communications class, hoping his son would like it enough to stay in college and eventually become a lawyer. Limbaugh was more interested in riffing off the top of his head. "You need to make an outline. You need some data to support your assertions," Stacy told young Limbaugh. "Frankly, he wouldn't do those things."