The Drug Dealer To The Stars: How Dr Feelgood Changed History
One of the most nefarious figures of the twentieth century was a man named Dr. Max. Jacobson. Dr Jacobson had escaped from the Nazi’s in 1936 to America where he set up his practice on Lexington Ave as a general practitioner. This brilliant Berlin trained physician would end up changing history.
He treated 3 Presidents, Winston Churchill, J. Edgar Hoover along with many of the literary greats such as Capote, Gore Vidal, Tennessee Williams, Rod Serling and many others. He injected great stars including Marilyn, Elizabeth, Elvis, Dietrich, Quinn and countless more. He treated singers and performers that included Andy Williams , Johnny Mathis,Eddie Fisher, Van Cliburn and many more. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
I spent over eight years researching my worldwide best seller, Dr. Feelgood, that was co/authored with NY Times best selling author and History Channel producer and host William J. Birnes (UFO Hunters, The Day After Roswell, The Green River Killers).
We own the only complete manuscript of 400 pages written by Dr. Jacobson where he discussed his patients. We have his complete office records and patient lists. I interviewed over 200 patients who includes some of the names above and below.
A nine part documentary based on our book was on The Reelz Channel last year. A major motion picture that stars one of Hollywood’s top male leading men is now in pre-production.
Dr. Feelgood is currently available in hardcover, paperback, Audiobook and Audible Audio from Skyhorse Books.
The following was a front page story, by the talented British columnist Peter Sheridan in The London Daily Express.
London Daily Express
The drug dealer to the stars
WHEN President Kennedy ripped off his clothes and ran stark naked around his suite at New York’s Carlyle Hotel his Secret Service agents were understandably worried.
By PETER SHERIDAN
John F Kennedy was plagued by insomnia
But when the leader of the free world bolted from his room and raced in his birthday suit down the hotel corridor, they really began to panic.
The president had just received a “vitamin energy cocktail” from the man known to the Secret Service by his White House code name: Dr Feelgood. In Hollywood, the stars called him Miracle Max.
He was Dr Max Jacobson, physician to global leaders and celebrities.
In reality he was America’s most influential drug pusher, peddling methamphetamine (also known as “speed”, it was not then illegal in the US) to the rich and powerful who craved a rocket-powered pick me up.
Kennedy’s crazed naked romp, a closely held secret for more than five decades, is among the shocking revelations in a dramatic new book about the physician who turned America’s elite into drug addicts: Dr Feelgood, by Richard Lertzman and William Birnes.
His clients ranged from Britain’s former prime minister Sir Winston Churchill and American president Harry S Truman to such celebrities as Elvis Presley, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Judy Garland and Frank Sinatra. He treated Ingrid Bergman, Marlene Dietrich, Anthony Quinn, Bette Davis, Rolling Stones rocker Brian Jones, Andy Warhol and Yul Brynner.
“Instant euphoria,” raved famed novelist Truman Capote of Dr Feelgood’s addictive shots. “You feel like Superman. You’re flying. Ideas come at the speed of light. You go 72 hours straight without so much as a coffee break…If it’s sex you’re after, you go all night.”
President Kennedy, who was plagued by insomnia, as well as back pain from injuries sustained during the Second World War and a host of medical woes, delighted in the energy boost and instant relief from his agony, and the drug also sent his libido soaring.
With JFK’s imprimatur, New York’s high society and Hollywood’s elite opened up their wallets and veins to Dr Jacobson’s syringes.
Marilyn Monroe was a loyal devotee and when stricken with stage fright before singing “Happy Birthday” to JFK at New York’s Madison Square Garden in 1962, begged Jacobson for a shot. “He injected her in the neck and Monroe took the stage feeling like a million dollars,” says Lertzman. “But he gave her a rather large dose and that’s why she slurred the song.”
Jacqueline Kennedy began taking Jacobson’s drug cocktail while suffering depression after a miscarriage, the book reveals. “It gave her such confidence that she kept going back,” says Lertzman.
Winston Churchill was introduced to the doctor by legendary movie director Cecil B DeMille in London in 1956. “Churchill liked the cocktail so much that he had Jacobson give the formula to his own doctor for future use,” says Birnes.
But the drug’s pleasures came at a terrible price.
“When the drug wears off, it’s like falling off a cliff,” Lertzman explains.
“You plunge into a depression that only more methamphetamine can cure. It’s highly addictive and can cause paranoia, psychotic episodes, symptoms of schizophrenia and death.”
Yet Jacobson never told his clients that he was injecting them with this substance and in effect turning them all into junkies.
“He told me they were liquid vitamins,” said songwriter Hugh Martin, who composed Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas. “I never knew I was on heavy drugs for 10 years. It nearly killed me.”
Elvis Presley was “hooked” on the orders of his manager Colonel Tom Parker, according to Birnes. But he explains: “Elvis hated feeling out of control, the deep depressions and the growing addiction. He finally quit. One of the few times he went against Colonel Parker’s orders.”
Dr Feelgood did his best to cover up when patients died of methamphetamine poisoning or suffered from terrifying psychotic episodes.
Famed fashion photographer Bob Richardson went crazy after three years of Jacobson’s shots and spent two years recovering in a mental hospital. He later said: “I was a victim of bad medicine.”
Film director Otto Preminger said that Jacobson’s needles gave him “one of the most fearful experiences of my life”.
Actor Anthony Quinn called Jacobson “underhanded…an evil man”.
“Elizabeth Taylor was nearly killed by Jacobson, when she overdosed on methamphetamine while filming Cleopatra,” says Lertzman.
“Singer Harry Belafonte almost lost his sight after one dose. And Andy Warhol’s muse Edie Sedgwick died of methamphetamine poisoning by Jacobson, her family believes.”
Jacobson killed his own wife Nina with an accidental overdose of the drug, according to the authors.
Dr Feelgood’s toxic elixir may even have changed the course of history, as the mood-altering drug warped President Kennedy’s personality at the perilous height of the Cold War, so the authors claim.
JFK’s addiction almost exploded into a national crisis with his naked romp at the Carlyle Hotel in 1962, when he suffered “a serious psychotic reaction to the drugs and became manic”, the book reveals. “It was an absolute psychotic break.”
The Secret Service called in top New York psychiatrist Dr Lawrence Hatterer, who reveals that he found JFK “in a manic condition furiously waving his arms and running around without any clothes on”.
Shaken Secret Service agents sat on the president to restrain him while Dr Hatterer injected JFK with an anti-psychotic drug, finally calming him.
Dr Max Jacobson clients included Sir Winston Churchil
Kennedy had fallen into Jacobson’s clutches in 1960, introduced by an old friend, and Dr Feelgood soon became a frequent Oval Office guest.
Jacobson injected Kennedy before his pivotal televised debates with Richard Nixon and flew with JFK to Vienna to inject him before the 1961 summit meeting with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.
“Jacobson gave Kennedy 30 milligrams of methamphetamine but Khrushchev was late and Kennedy demanded another shot,” says Lertzman.
By the time Khrushchev arrived, Kennedy had had three injections and slipped into “an almost stupor-like depression. He was slurring his words, and Khrushchev could see he was a weak, drug-addicted man. Kennedy emerged from that meeting calling it the worst day of his life”.
Birnes says: “Jacobson changed the course of history. It gave Khrushchev the belief that he could roll over Kennedy, build the Berlin Wall and put missiles in Cuba. Without Dr Jacobson, those crises may never have happened.”
Worried by JFK’s behaviour, his brother, the US attorney general Robert Kennedy, seized a vial of Dr Feelgood’s “cocktail” and had it analysed by the FBI.
“Bobby told the president that he was taking methamphetamine,” says Birnes. “And Kennedy said, ‘I don’t care if it’s horse ****, it works.’”
By the late Sixties Jacobson was dispensing 100 strong doses daily to celebrity patients morning, noon and night. In 1970 methamphetamine was classified as a narcotic in the US, yet he kept pushing his illegal cocktail. In 1974 he was stripped of his medical licence but continued selling the drug until his death in 1979, claims the book.
Most shockingly, Birnes believes that Kennedy may have been targeted for assassination because political enemies worried that his drug addiction made him dangerously unstable. “If he hadn’t been addicted to methamphetamine I don’t think he’d have been assassinated,” he says. “There were powerful forces that believed he was a disaster as president and needed to be removed.
“In the eyes of the CIA, Jacobson’s injections had put the office of the presidency, the nation, and perhaps the entire civilised world, at risk.”
Dr Feelgood, by Richard Lertzman and William Birnes, is published by Skyhorse Publishing on July 18, price £18.99.
JOHN F KENNEDY’S DAILY COCKTAIL
DR MAX JACOBSON hooked John F Kennedy on methamphetamine but the president was already a medical mess, risking his health with a complex cocktail of other drugs and booze.
JFK took corticosteroids for Addison’s disease (adrenal insufficiency), painkillers for wartime spinal injuries, anti-spasmodics for his colitis, antibiotics for urinary tract infections and antihistamines for allergies. Medical files disclosed decades after his death show that he was also taking sleeping pills, anti-anxiety agents and salt tablets. He also suffered from high cholesterol.
At times he took as many as eight medications a day, according to historian Robert Dallek. And he loved to booze, with a penchant for daiquiri.
Kennedy had good reason to take many of the drugs. His spine began degenerating as a result of steroids taken for intestinal problems and early osteoporosis led to three fractured vertebrae. In private he hobbled on crutches or rocked in a rocking chair to get relief from back pain.
He suffered severe bouts of diarrhoea and his doctors suspected that he had ulcerative colitis. The drugs prescribed to ease this made him lose so much weight and strength that he was prescribed testosterone to rebuild his muscles.
