After a 5 week stint in a drug rehab clinic, cleaning up from an addiction to prescription painkiller drugs, Rush Limbaugh was back on air this week and right back into bashing those “linguini-spined liberals” to the delight of his ‘ditto-head’ audience.

But just when he thought the heat was off him a little, the American ABC television network presented an exposee on Limbaugh for supposed involvement in a money-laundering bank – a claim which he denies.

When Limbaugh returned from his 5 weeks detox, this is what he said about his ordeal to his audience:

All right, ladies and gentlemen. I must tell you, I’m nervous. I have butterflies in my stomach. I’ve been anticipating this moment since last … Wednesday afternoon. Last Wednesday afternoon I was discharged from the treatment center which, by the way, was not in Tucson. We succeeded in fooling everybody on that. It was in Arizona but it wasn’t in Tucson, and it was an intense four weeks. I’m going to tell you the truth; I didn’t – well, I did read a newspaper two or three days, but didn’t watch much television, kept track of no news. That would have been counterproductive to what I had to do.

I spent five intense weeks, probably the most educational and informative five weeks on myself and about me that I ever have spent, and I would have had no idea how to do this myself. Now, I’ve thought back and forth how much of this to talk about, and I am just going to feel my way along on this. I planned nothing. I have nothing written down here. There are some things, though, I do want to tell you, and I think in the course of the coming days a number of the things that I have learned about myself and a number of the things that I want to share with you will just come out in the normal course of conversation and executing broadcast excellence flawlessly as I am known for and still habitually capable of doing.

But I came to realize a number of things while I was away, and at the top of the list is how much I love all of you, how much I appreciate all of you, and how much this and other aspects of my life mean to me. And I know that a number of you – you ought to see the mail I’ve gotten, the e-mail and the phone response. The volume is beyond my ability to describe. You wouldn’t believe it, and if I told you how much it is, people would think “hype.” But it’s so voluminous; it’s so amazingly supportive that it is – it’s just gratifying. I have a tremendous amount of gratitude for all that you have done for me over the course of my life.

You know, I’ve always told you people at holiday time, Thanksgiving or Christmas, because many of you have shared with me how much this program has meant to you over the years and I’ve always said to you that no matter how much it means to you, you have no idea how much it means to me, your being there – and that is as true as ever, if not more so. What I endured was a wonderful process. It’s something that, at some point, I think what I went through in these last five weeks is as important as the first grade, and maybe the second grade. It’s something that I don’t have any regrets, but, yeah, I wish it’s something I could have done 30 years ago.

I thought I was going into a treatment center to be treated for an addiction to opiates, to painkillers, and I was – but it’s so much more than that. It is about so much more than that. I tried to treat myself twice for my addiction. I detoxed myself twice and tried to do it by force of will, which is not possible. This is something someone cannot do alone. It’s something that requires several things to change in my life – and those things are good. These things are quite necessary, and I have to put this recovery that I am in first and foremost. It’s something that is now a priority for me. I cannot turn it over to anybody else. Nobody can do it for me.

It’s something that I must do, but I can’t do it alone, either. It’s an amazing thing. Those of you who have gone through this and those of you who are in successful recovery know what you have gone through to succeed and what’s ahead of you, and you know what’s ahead of me, and it’s not something that I want to spend a whole lot of time talking about to those of you who don’t. Although, as I say, over the course of the coming weeks and days, I think it will just naturally be a part of me, these five weeks and the things that I learned about myself. You just will witness it. I don’t want to sit here and start telling you, you know, “This is going to happen and this is going to happen and this is going to happen.” I think you’ll just be able to decipher it and understand it as it is happening.

Now, one other thing. Ladies and gentlemen, I know that because of some comments that I got many people feel and think that when you go to a rehabilitation center for addictions or other things, that the people in there turn you into a linguini-spined liberal, and that’s not true. No effort was made whatsoever. There’s no ideological reference whatsoever in these things. It has nothing to do with that. So I am who I am. Nobody made any attempt to change me in terms of my core and this sort of thing, other than as it relates to the problem I have, the addiction. But that’s, again, something that I deal with myself, and there’s a part of it that will be shared, but again, I’m really struggling. I want you to know that I’ve got mixed emotions. I’m so excited about what I’ve learned, I want to tell you all about it. And there’s another part of me that says, “No, that’s not what you want.” … I have to do what’s best for me if I’m to succeed at this… I have thought that I had to be this way or that way in order to be liked or appreciated or understood – and in the process, I denied myself who I was and I denied the other people I was talking to and relating with who I really am, and that isn’t good…