The Kennedy Meth

“How a physician codenamed ‘Dr. Feelgood’ hooked John F. Kennedy — and half of Hollywood — on methamphetamines,” is breaking bad at the New York Post today:

In 1962, at the Carlyle Hotel in New York, a man “peeled off his clothing and began prancing around his hotel suite.” His bodyguards were cautiously amused, until the man “left the suite and began roaming through the corridor of the Carlyle.”

The man in question was delusional, paranoid and suffering a “psychotic break” from the effects of an overdose of methamphetamine.

He was also the president of the United States.

The reason for John F. Kennedy’s bizarre behavior was that, according to an explosive new book, the president was — unbeknownst to him, at first — a meth addict.

The man who supposedly made him so was Max Jacobson, a doctor who had invented a secret vitamin formula that gave people renewed energy and cured their pain, and was given the code name “Dr. Feelgood” by Kennedy’s Secret Service detail.

This formula was actually methamphetamine, and over the course of a decades-long practice, Jacobson became doctor to the stars, making unknowing drug addicts out of a long list of the famous and distinguished, including JFK and his wife, Jackie, Marilyn Monroe, Mickey Mantle, Eddie Fisher, Truman Capote and many more.

In “Dr. Feelgood” (Skyhorse Publishing), authors Richard A. Lertzman and William J. Birnes allege that Jacobson had an incredible effect on world events, influencing Kennedy’s election, the Cuban Missile Crisis, even Roger Maris’ 1961 home-run record.

And note this:

The night of the first Kennedy-Nixon debate, Kennedy met with Jacobson just a few hours before he took the stage. The senator was “complaining in a voice barely above a whisper of extreme fatigue and lethargy,” the authors write. Jacobson plunged a needle “directly into Kennedy’s throat and pumped methamphetamine into his voice box.”

The result was clear within minutes, and an artificially energized Kennedy changed American history that night by upstaging Nixon.

After Kennedy won the presidency, Jacobson became an essential part of his team. Whenever he received a call from “Mrs. Dunn” — the code name Kennedy’s assistant used to indicate that he was needed by the president — Jacobson dropped everything to meet Kennedy and administer a shot.

Speed-read the whole thing.