A scheming, drug-crazed Robert Downey Jr. used every dirty trick in the book to get his hands on cocaine and powerful pills — WHILE IN REHAB.
That’s the explosive charge of insiders close to the actor who claim the unstoppable party animal got narcotics from other patients — and also had them smuggled in.
The star even bamboozled a parole officer who recently told a judge that the Oscar-nominated performer is “75 percent better,” says a source close to the actor.
“Robert spent most of his April-May stay in rehab at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center conniving to get drugs,” the source told The ENQUIRER.
“He used any means to get his daily supply of narcotics — promising jobs and favors to other patients, charming and seducing impressionable female ward-mates and having friends smuggle in the contraband via gift boxes and food-delivery packages.
“Robert is a first-class con man! He used people to get him everything from Valium (a sedative) to Xanax (antipanic medication) to Ativan (a sedative) to cocaine.
“He was especially shameless concerning a young female ward-mate and her mother.
“He constantly put the make on the impressionable 21-year-old girl and sucked up to her mother like no tomorrow to attempt to get a supply of Valium.
“He even instructed the mother on how to hide the drug in her pants. But she had no intention of getting it for him.”
The persistent performer kissed, sweet-talked and flattered the woman’s starstruck daughter, but when all the attention got him nowhere, he suddenly turned vicious — and squeezed the young patient’s neck, charges the source.
“As he squeezed harder, he hissed, ‘Your mother owes me Valium. And I better get it or I’ll make your life a living hell!’
FAST FACT!
Robert studied ballet in London when he was young.
“The girl ended up in tears and was relocated to new quarters.
“At patient medication time, Robert made sure he stood behind the person who was allotted the strongest drugs. Then he’d make his move. He’d lie, joke, promise and even cry to get extra pills. He was a master manipulator.
“Robert also had a friend at a local Hollywood restaurant who smuggled him drugs in pizza boxes and salad containers.”
When The ENQUIRER informed Downey’s attorney Michael Adelson we were preparing a story about the star doing drugs in rehab, the lawyer replied, “I have no knowledge of that and have no comment.”
An insider who knows the star said our information about him taking drugs in the Cedars-Sinai rehab unit “is 100 percent accurate.
“It was easier for him to get drugs inside of there than it was on the streets.
“When his parole officer recently told the judge in court that Robert was 75 percent improved, I laughed. He’s worse than ever.”
In late May Downey left Cedars-Sinai for another facility in Malibu. “His parole people and his counselors were smart enough to realize what was going on there,” said the insider.
“He’s in a much stricter environment now.”
— MARC CETNER and MICHAEL GLYNN
