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FBI records: Rehnquist struggled with drug, withdrawal

The late chief justice used a powerful sleep aid for a decade, then was hospitalized in the 1980s as he was weaned off it, reports show.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published January 5, 2007

WASHINGTON - A physician at the U.S. Capitol prescribed a powerful sleep aid for William Rehnquist for nearly a decade while he was an associate justice of the Supreme Court, according to newly released FBI records.

The records present a picture of a justice with chronic back pain who for months took three times the recommended dosage of the drug Placidyl and then went into withdrawal in 1981 when he stopped taking it.

Rehnquist checked himself into George Washington University Hospital, where he reportedly tried to escape in his pajamas and imagined that the CIA was plotting against him, the records indicate.

Although Rehnquist's drug dependency was known around the time he was hospitalized in 1981, the release of the FBI records provides new details.

The justice was weaned off Placidyl in early 1982 in a detoxification process that took a month, according to the records. The hospital doctor who treated Rehnquist said the Capitol Hill physician who prescribed Placidyl for Rehnquist was practicing bad medicine, bordering on malpractice. Both doctors' names were deleted from the documents.

The FBI documents were prepared in 1986 when Rehnquist - who began on the court Jan. 7, 1972 - was nominated for chief justice, years after his problems with the drug had ended.

An attending physician at the U.S. Capitol detailed Rehnquist's problems with Placidyl for the FBI, saying that prior to his seeing the justice in 1972, Rehnquist was prescribed the drug by another doctor for relief from insomnia. The physician said he prescribed Placidyl for the 10 years he treated Rehnquist.

Rehnquist died Sept. 3, 2005, after suffering from thyroid cancer.

[Last modified January 5, 2007, 00:23:07]