Tucker Carlson claims he now relates to opioid addicts after drug regimen following surgery

In a recording obtained by Motherboard, Fox News host Tucker Carlson can be heard describing a huge amount of opioid painkillers that he allegedly took after a recent surgery.

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

In spite of the surgery and the medications, the host went ahead with his Wednesday night show as planned.

“Tucker Carlson had emergency back surgery yesterday and did the show anyway,” a spokesperson for Fox News told Motherboard. “He thanks all those who tuned in and watched closely.”

In the recording, Mr Carlson reportedly went into more detail, describing a pain from the surgery’s aftermath that seemingly no amount of drugs could relieve.

“They gave me fentanyl this morning, that did not cure it – they gave me intravenous fentanyl,” he allegedly said in the recording. “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.”

A member of the host’s crew was incredulous that he still came to work.

“This is just like a miracle,” a production worker was recorded telling him. “I, like, truly cannot believe you’re standing right now.”

Mr Carlson also said he received large doses of Dilaudid, a potentially dangerous opioid painkiller that carries a high risk of addiction.

“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,” Mr Carlson said. “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.”

Mr Carlson also claimed the experience gave 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,” the host 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.”

Mr Carlson said he told a co-worker this, and the person gave a “deep response”.

“He goes, ‘That’s why all the houses in Maine are unclean and have toys on the front lawn,’” the host recalled. “‘Because the people are on fentanyl, they’re on opioids, and they’ve lost their dignity, their self-respect.’ That thing that makes you super uptight when you look at your house and you’re like, ‘Ah the shutters need painting. F***.’ Maybe you paint them or maybe you don’t, but it bothers you, because you have dignity. That’s gone. So you’re like, ‘Oh, there’s a half-chewed rawhide toy on my pillow? Okay! Lie there with it.’ I don’t live like that. Have you ever been to my house? We’re not crazy but we’re orderly people, ‘cause we have self-respect.”