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Tucker Carlson cancels appearance on Fox after bizarre monologue about experience with opioids is leaked

Fox News host can be heard describing huge amounts of opioids he allegedly took after a surgery

Alisha Rahaman Sarkar
Friday 05 November 2021 15:38 GMT
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A day after Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s monologue on opioid painkillers was leaked, conservative political commentator Jesse Watters replaced him on his talk show.

Watters appeared as a guest host on Tucker Carlson Tonight on Thursday night, where he discussed how an alleged Russian claim “changed the course of United States politics.”

Carlson reportedly underwent an emergency back surgery on Wednesday morning and then went to the studio to host his show at night, Fox News said.

However, in a recording obtained by Motherboard, Carlson can be heard saying he took a huge amount of opioid painkillers after the surgery and describing it as “one of the most intense experiences” of his life.

“I didn’t sleep literally one-second last night, and I was on so many f***ing drugs,” Carlson allegedly told his production crew.

He then went into the details of the alleged drugs provided to him for his post-surgery pain.

“They gave me Fentanyl this morning, that did not cure it — they gave me intravenous Fentanyl. And they gave me all kinds of other s***. I was like, ‘Fine, go for it'’ And then it only ended when they gave me propofol, and I went out. Then I woke up and I was like, I felt totally fine. I haven’t taken a single Advil,” he said in the purported recording.

In the UK, Fentanyl has been branded as a Class A drug under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, while in the US, the synthetic substance is a Schedule II narcotic under the United States Controlled Substances Act of 1970.

The rise in Fentanyl consumption has deepened the opioid crisis in the US.

Carlson had recently, in October, blamed president Joe Biden for the Fentanyl crisis, but now he claims that the experience has given him an insight into what opioids do to addicts.

“It wasn’t even that I survived it, it wasn’t even about me, it was about what it does to people. It explains so much of what we see around us. Just the lack of dignity. And that weird drive you have to be like, ‘That’s not in the right order, it should be this way.’ You know? It inculcates this not caring,” he said.

He also alleged that he received large doses of Dilaudid — a potentially dangerous opioid painkiller.

“They hit me up, they told me this morning, with such a huge dose of Dilaudid, which is more powerful than morphine, when I got there, that I had trouble breathing. Scared the s*** out of me. Didn’t have any effect at all. And then all night, I lay there, the nurse finally upped my dosage of Dilaudid to the point where every eight minutes I hit it and it was like getting shot. Just like bam, feel it hit me, and it didn’t touch the pain,” Carlson said.

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