The notorious “Dr. Feelgood” — a purveyor of amphetamines to the stars — was given a nod in this week’s Mad Men in which a similar doctor administered shots to the SCDP staff, including Don Draper. It turns out, Dr. Max Jacobson was also a favorite of President Kennedy:
It’s now well-known that John F. Kennedy’s vigorous public image was a facade. In fact, it concealed infirmities that often left him unable to climb a flight of stairs or put on his own socks. His pharmacopoeia was terrifying, as historian Robert Dallek writes: “Steroids for his Addison’s disease, pain-killers for his back, antispasmodics for his colitis, antibiotics for urinary-tract infections, antihistamines for allergies and, on at least one occasion, an antipsychotic … for a severe mood change that Jackie Kennedy believed had been brought on by the antihistamines.”
Mutual friends introduced JFK to Jacobson during the 1960 campaign. The first shot elevated his mood. From then on, it was clear sailing. Miracle Max shot up the president before the Kennedy-Nixon debates, the major state addresses, and even the 1961 Vienna summit meeting with Nikita Khrushchev. Secret Service files and the White House gate log confirm that Jacobson saw JFK no fewer than 34 times through May 1962.
Did Kennedy experience any of the impatience, irritability, and grandiosity, an exaggerated sense of personal power, that amphetamines so often produce? Clearly not: Kennedy’s court historians maintain that his illnesses and drug use didn’t affect his presidency. In any case, in June 1962, when Attorney General Robert Kennedy advised his brother to stop using Jacobson’s concoctions, the president replied, “I don’t care if it’s horse piss. It works.”
Personally, I drink caffeine from the moment I wake up until the work day is over at around 7 p.m. So 13 hours of continuous caffeine. And I probably only feel a small fraction of the euphoric, rapid-fire-ideas effect it had on the Mad Men characters.
(via Josh Dobbin)