JFK ‘tried to live beyond’ his serious health issues with sex and drugs, author says
JFK ‘tried to live beyond’ his serious health issues with sex and drugs, author says
Marina WattsMon, September 28, 2026 at 8:10 PM UTC
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John F. Kennedy in 1961Credit: GettyKey Points -
John F. Kennedy used sex and drugs to “live beyond” his many serious health issues, author Laurence Leamer said.
“Sex was JFK’s way of defying his endless ailments, and he became a sex addict,” Leamer recently told Entertainment Weekly’s sister publication, PEOPLE.
Ladies Man: The Careless Heart of John F. Kennedy is available for preorder wherever books are sold.
John F. Kennedy allegedly used sex to cope with the medical issues that plagued him throughout his life.
The charismatic president and his dalliances are the subject of Laurence Leamer’s upcoming book, Ladies Man: The Careless Heart of John F. Kennedy. While the book explores the many alleged affairs JFK had, it also details the medical issues he suffered from — which he kept secret.
“He was in physical pain over half of his life,” Leamer told Entertainment Weekly’s sister publication, PEOPLE.
Per PBS, JFK almost died from a bout of scarlet fever and experienced digestive problems as a child. There were also spine and back issues he developed from playing football in college. JFK also suffered from “urinary tract infections, prostatitis, and a duodenal ulcer.”
The back issues that plagued JFK were so intense that the U.S. Army and the Navy rejected him from volunteering to serve in WWII. (He wound up joining the Naval Reserve, with a little help from the connections of his father, Joe Kennedy.)
John F. Kennedy in 1960Credit: Getty
When JFK was 30, he was diagnosed with Addison’s disease, which occurs when the “adrenal glands make too little of the hormone cortisol,” per the Mayo Clinic, and was considered perhaps his most serious medical issue.
In fact, the former president was “so ill at a few points” while he underwent several back surgeries in the 1950s that his Catholic priest administered his last rites. Kennedy’s chronic pain led to him taking a rotation of opiate pain killers throughout his presidency.
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Meanwhile, Kennedy had a reputation as a playboy, charming and seducing women long before his presidency and throughout it, from alleged affairs with White House interns to Marilyn Monroe.
“Sex was JFK’s way of defying his endless ailments, and he became a sex addict,” Leamer continued. “Dr. Max Jacobson [known as ‘Dr. Feelgood’] gave him injections that the doctor said contained up to 20 milligrams of amphetamine [a stimulant], four times the medicinal dose.”
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“The president’s endocrinologist, Dr. Eugene Cohen, was so upset that he wrote Jack a letter saying, ‘This therapy … is not appropriate for responsible individuals who at any moment, may have to decide the fate of the universe.’”
Leamer said that JFK “threw the letter in the waste basket.”
‘Ladies Man: The Careless Heart of John F. Kennedy’ by Laurence LeamerCredit: Penguin Random House
“He was a brilliant politician but a troubled man and the sex and the drugs were one way he tried to live beyond his endless and serious health problems,” concluded Leamer.
Ladies Man: The Careless Heart of John F. Kennedycomes out on Oct. 20. Itis available for preorder wherever books are sold.
on Entertainment Weekly
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
