For years, Dr. Max Jacobson injected amphetamine, or “speed,” into the veins of dozens of the country’s most celebrated artists, writers, politicians and jet‐setters. His patients swore by the potions he concocted in his office, insisting that he helped them achieve success. Most claimed his shots gave them boundless energy and more productive and pleasurable lives.
But a few of the doctor’s patients quit, complaining of bad reactions and addiction to the amphetamine. Used over a long period of time, in large doses, the drug produces symptoms resembling those of paranoid schizophrenia. Withdrawal produces a profound mental depression that can last for weeks or months. Some of Dr. Jacobson’s patients later said his treatments wrecked their lives and destroyed their careers. In one instance, a patient died of what the Medical Examiner called acute “amphetamine poisoning.”
Dr. Jacobson was a New York doctor who specialized in prescribing and administering amphetamines not to treat disease but to boost the mood of healthy patients. Dr. Jacobson’s patients were wealthy and famous adults who depended on a licensed physician for their legal drug use. The most famous of the doctor’s patients were President and Mrs. Kennedy. Dr. Jacobson frequently visited the White House and often traveled with the Kennedys. In 1961, for example, he went with the President to Vienna for the summit meeting with Khrushchev and gave the President injections there.
In addition to the Kennedys, other patients of the doctor included Truman Capote, Cecil B. DeMille, Eddie Fisher, Alan Jay Lerner, Representative Claude Pepper of Florida, Otto Preminger, Emilio Pucci, Anthony Quinn, Tennessee Williams, Prince Stanislas Radziwill, President Kennedy’s brother‐in‐law, and Mark Shaw, a top photographer and Kennedy intimate.
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