You're not far off but the sad thing is that Hughes died 30 years later. He died due to malnutrition and for years his various control centers had run operations separate enough from him that he had no clue what was going on sometimes, but he still was running much of his empire in that penthouse up to the early 70s.

Hughes was a direct part of Watergate.

Howard Hughes had severe allodynia in an age in which there was no real medical treatment for it

Still, to this day, there is no amazing treatment for it. Especially because there are more than a few not well understood causes of it. Some medications work well for some, but not at all for others.

Hughes was, by all accounts, essentially a prisoner of his unrelenting misfiring nervous system. I think he lived out his final years with it in a fairly reasonable way.

Speaking as somebody with a moderate case of allodynia caused by a functional musculoskeletal condition, if my case was a bit worse, with no hope for treatment in sight, and I was loaded like he was - I too would likely spend my time in isolation and on a lot of drugs, really anything that would relieve the sensory pain, no matter how cognitively impaired it may make me.

For some of us:

allodynia: “Allodynia is a type of neuropathic pain (nerve pain). People with allodynia are extremely sensitive to touch. Things that don't usually cause pain can be very painful. These may include cold temperatures, brushing hair or wearing a cotton t-shirt. Allodynia can result from several conditions.”

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/symptoms/21570-allodyn...

Sounds like shingles, I see that can be one of the causes.

There are also a number of credible reports that Hughes had severely screwed up his lower back, spine and tendons, ligaments and musculature in earlier airplane crashes. Never properly treated, and medicated over the years with increasing amounts of self-administered drugs of his choice.

There was at least one crash that he simply shouldn't have walked away from.

https://www.latimes.com/visuals/photography/la-me-fw-archive...

From the biographies I've read, it sounded like OCD was at the center - not dismissing persistent pain originating in multiple airplane crashes...