Dr. Forest Tennant, one of the nation’s leading drug abuse and pain treatment authorities and a medical witness called by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to testify nearly 30 years ago at the medical trial following the death of billionaire industrialist Howard Hughes, has reevaluated his own medical data collection three decades later. He has determined that, despite previously accepted theories, much of Hughes’ eccentric behavior and reclusive lifestyle was a direct result of intractable pain from his now-famous devastating airplane crash in 1946–in which he fractured his jaw and neck and received third-degree burns–and his own self-prescribed attempts to alleviate that pain as a “relief-seeker” through what became a pseudoaddiction to opioids.
Tennant’s findings are the subject of a lengthy article “Howard Hughes and Pseudoaddiction–A retrospective case report of this remarkable individual’s 30-year survival by self-medicating his intractable pain,” published in the just-released July/August issue of “Practical Pain Management,” a tutorial medical journal for physicians only–the largest publication of its type in the country.
Tennant’s forensic reevaluation of evidence – with the advantage of modern-day science and technology–determined that Hughes was a “relief-seeker” pseudoaddicted to codeine, a relatively mild pain medication with little lasting power by today’s standards; and he survived under his self-prescribed pain medication program for 30 years–the first to do so in medical history. Typical drug addicts have a much shorter life span, with a typical heroin addict living for only five to 10 years.
Tennant, former Mayor of West Covina, California, founded Community Health Projects in 1974 focusing on drug addiction. He began working in pain management in 1975 with patients referred by the City of Hope National Medical Center. His medical group grew to 38 dependency and pain clinics throughout California until he sold the practice in 1999. He continues his research and sees pain patients one week each month at the West Covina clinic.
NOTE: Tennant is available for interviews or in-studio appearances on this major development regarding Hughes’ life. Complete medical journal article available on request for excerpts only (rights remain with magazine where permission may be requested).