1. Cocaine, Amphetamines, sedatives, hormones by quack doctor.
2. Benzedrine?

Others

JFK and methamphetamine?

Ronald Reagan

The assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan occurred on March 30, 1981, in Washington, D.C. John Hinckley Jr., motivated by an obsession with actress Jodie Foster and seeking to impress her, shot Reagan as he was leaving the Hilton Hotel after a speaking engagement. Hinckley also wounded press secretary James Brady, Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy, and police officer Thomas Delahanty.

This event had significant implications. For Reagan, it bolstered his image as resilient and strong, as he quickly recovered and returned to duty. The incident also highlighted the importance of presidential security and led to changes in the Secret Service’s protocols.

James Brady, who was seriously injured, became a prominent gun control advocate. The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, named after him, was enacted in 1993. This act mandated federal background checks on firearm purchasers in the United States and imposed a five-day waiting period on purchases, until the NICS system was implemented in 1998.

The attempt on Reagan’s life is a stark reminder of the fragility of public figures and the potential impact of mental illness when combined with access to weapons. It also showcases the unpredictable ways in which a single event can influence public policy and national discourse.

Reagan was more gravely injured in a 1981 assassination attempt than was publicly acknowledged. 

 he was not the only world leader dependent on drugs. During the 1956 Suez crisis, according to Post, British Prime Minister Anthony Eden desperately sought his doctor, saying, “I must have my benzedrine!” In the 1960s, President John F. Kennedy relied on a “doctor to the stars” for injections that a new biography identifies as methamphetamine.

When Illness Strikes the Leader

The Dilemma of the Captive King

by Robert S. Robins and Jerrold Post

Yale

When the leader is ill—or addicted to cocaine, meth, steroids, or hormones

Yale Medicine Magazine, 2010 – Spring

Adolf Hitler was “a good patient,” according to his doctors. He was meticulously adherent to the regimen for his chronic sinusitis: cocaine in aerosol form. That was one of the anecdotes Jerrold M. Post, M.D. ’60, shared with a reunion audience on June 4 during his talk, “When Illness Strikes the Leader: The Psychopolitics of Illness in High Office.” When the “high and mighty” get “mighty high,” he said, it can affect leadership. Post spent 21 years with the Central Intelligence Agency producing medical and psychological profiles of world leaders. He now teaches psychiatry and political psychology at the Elliott School of International Affairs of The George Washington University.

Hitler’s drug use was of epic proportions, Post said. In addition to cocaine, the German dictator also took amphetamines, sedatives, and hormones, prescribed by a doctor Post described as a “quack.” And he was not the only world leader dependent on drugs. During the 1956 Suez crisis, according to Post, British Prime Minister Anthony Eden desperately sought his doctor, saying, “I must have my benzedrine!” In the 1960s, President John F. Kennedy relied on a “doctor to the stars” for injections that a new biography identifies as methamphetamine.

Alzheimer disease afflicted several aging leaders according to Post, including three positioned to hinder Hitler’s rise in the 1930s: German President Paul von Hindenburg, British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, and Polish Field Marshal Józef Piłsudski. Post maintains, however, that President Ronald Reagan’s behavior in office was not affected by Alzheimer disease. Instead Post accepts the picture painted by journalist Bob Woodward, who says that Reagan was more gravely injured in a 1981 assassination attempt than was publicly acknowledged. After being wounded in the chest by a bullet fired by John Hinckley Jr., Reagan lost three-quarters of his circulating blood volume and probably suffered brain damage.

The illness of a leader is often concealed, said Post, citing examples that included President Grover Cleveland’s mouth cancer. After a secret operation on the presidential yacht in July 1893 to remove a cancerous upper jaw and palate, Cleveland explained his pain and swelling to a suspicious press as the results of dental extraction of two bad teeth.

While most physicians will never be asked to treat a world leader, Post said that the same issues of secrecy and privilege apply to such VIP patients as leading executives and celebrities. “Because of the need for the VIP to protect his image, VIPs can get poor medical care, compromising his health. Indeed being a VIP can be fatal,” he said.