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Fox News host Tucker Carlson detailed what happened to him after his emergency back surgery in leaked audio of a meeting he had with his staff. He made the comments on Wednesday during a private meeting with his staff, hours after the surgery that was to correct an issue that had him in tremendous pain.
The conservative pundit apparently suffered an undisclosed injury on Monday that prompted him to seek treatment and get the emergency surgery on Wednesday morning, calling it ‘one of the most traumatic things that have ever happened to me in my whole life, ever,’ in the leaked remarks to his staff. Carlson, an avowed teetotaler, said that even high doses of prescription opioids Dilaudid and fentanyl failed to ease the pain, but said that his experience with the powerful drugs gave him a new appreciation for their ability to ‘extinguish the spirit within you’.
It’s unclear what triggered the need for the surgery, but Carlson is believed to have suffered from serious back pain for several weeks before things took a turn for the worse early this week. After his Election Day show on Tuesday, his executive producer rushed him to a hospital in Florida, where he underwent the surgery the next day before returning to the airwaves later Wednesday night, according to Page Six.
“That was one of the most intense experiences of my life,” he said in the audio that was obtained by Vice.
“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,” the host said.
“Scared the s**t 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,” he said.
“I didn’t sleep literally one second last night, and I was on so many f**king drugs,” the host said. “It was just like, more drugs, more drugs. I didn’t know that there was untreatable pain.”
“They gave me fentanyl this morning, that did not cure it—they gave me intravenous fentanyl,” he said.
“And they gave me all kinds of other s**t. 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.”
The host said he has no intention of ever taking opioids again, saying that they took the spirit from him.
“I had this spirit of fear within me, which I don’t have,” he said. “I’m not bragging, I don’t have it. And I think you can feel it. I don’t have it, I think that’s why I’m successful, cause I’m just not afraid. I felt afraid just of like life or something. It’s interesting.”
“It was super deep. And I just haven’t had those feelings since I was in a plane crash 20 years ago this month. I’ve never had those feelings. I’m always like ‘Yeah I’m gonna die, I don’t care.’ And I mean it. But last night I was like, ‘Oh s**t.’ Fear—just like anxiety. People who have anxiety, that’s what I felt. And it was from those drugs,” he said to his staff.
“They extinguish the spirit within you. And they make you feel like you’re running away. You’re hiding. It’s so fucking deep. I’m lying in bed filthy with dog toys on my pillow, and it doesn’t bother me. And I’m not that way. Like I am a f***ing—in real life, I wash the sheets every day. I’m that guy. I shower every day,” the host said.
“I just thought that was the most interesting f***ing thing that had ever happened to me. It wasn’t even that I survived it, it wasn’t even about me, it was about what it does to people. It was just like so f***ing interesting,” he said.
“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.
