We’ve had nearly four years of exposure to Donald Trump to make some reasonable assumptions about his behavior.
For example, many know he is a teetotaler.
Yet, despite this, rumors about Trump’s alleged controlled substance use began to swirl even before the 2016 election.
As his first term approaches its end and his behaviors have been on full display, several healthcare professionals and individuals socially familiar with Donald Trump are coming forward again with credible claims of drug use.
In November, Trump made a surprise visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for a supposed “partial physical.”
Walter Reed staff was not notified, causing some to speculate whether the appointment was a pretext for resignation–or even a pardon should he resign.
Making the impromptu visit more suspicious is the fact that prior presidents have not traditionally traveled secretly to Walter Reed for routine tests that can be performed at the White House which employs sufficient medical staff.
During his address to the nation following Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani’s assassination, several noted Trump’s sniffling and difficulty articulating his speech. Some noted his apparently dilated pupils.
Could it have been the Adderall Trump supposedly snorts?
Suspicions are not unfounded.
Last year, comedians Noel Casler and Tom Arnold accused Trump of abusing Adderall on the set of The Apprentice.
Casler reported as much–and more–during an interview with Montreal’s CJAD iHeart Radio station host Dave Kaufman:
“He was an open drug addict. Everyone knew it. None of this stuff was a secret, you know. He was doing coke on shows twenty years ago when we’d do the VH1 Fashion Awards, and I used to do the beauty pageants with him in the nineties. He was an open drug user, open sexual assaulter, and this stuff was just kind of accepted.
“That’s when most of the drug use occurred on The Apprentice, when he had to read cue cards. He’d get really nervous, so he’d go in the bathroom, crush up Adderall. He’d come back to set. There’d be white junk flying out of his nose, white powder under his nose. He’s doing the same think as a candidate and as a president. You know, it gives him a feeling of being in control. But he’s clearly an addict…yeah, he was obvious high that night [of the Soleimani assassination announcement]. That was the same person we saw on The Apprentice. I remember watching that and, like, ‘Yup, he’s high.’ And it probably wasn’t just Adderall. He did coke. He did meth. He had drug dealers come into the after-parties selling it to him. Adderall is his maintenance high. It’s what he does during the day. When he gets down to Mar-a-Lago and these other places, he gets into it a little harder. He also uses Benzodiazepines, Valium and stuff, to come down when he hits it hard. So when you see him slurring and stuff, that’s from the Benzos.”
Dr. Justin Frank is a former George Washington University Medical Center clinical psychiatry professor and a physician with over 40 years of psychoanalysis experience. He is also author of Bush on the Couch, Obama on the Couch, and Trump on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President.
This week on the Thom Hartmann Program, when asked about Dave Kaufman’s interview with Casler, Dr. Frank explained:
“His [Trump’s] behavior is very similar to people who are very heavily into cocaine or Adderall…He does sniff an awful lot when he gives his talks. Even now you can hear them, him sniffing between sentences or even in the middle of a sentence. And that’s something that you see with people who have had their nasal passages slightly worn down by cocaine or Adderall that is snorted…Clearly he is speeding in certain ways. His tweets in the middle of the night, his getting up very early. All are consistent with kind of abuse of a psychic stimulant…The biggest problem with the stimulants in a president or anybody with a responsible job is that the first thing that gets compromised is judgment, so people can actually assess the sanity of what they’re saying, but they don’t have the judgment in terms of thinking about the consequences of what they’re saying and what’s going to happen. The second problem that’s specifically related to stimulants is impulsive behavior. People are much more comfortable being impulsive, shooting from the hip, saying things impulsively. And then the third thing is rage reactions. People who use a lot of amphetamines have acute rage reaction.”
Frank explained in an interview with Chauncey DeVega for Salon that Trump’s impeachment letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is characteristic of “how a drug addict’s mind works.”
He said:
“We see this in addicts who are in recovery. When there is stress and pressure on drug addicts, they revert to their earlier state of anxiety and accusations. They act like they’re cornered. As Donald Trump becomes more and more cornered, he behaves exactly the way addicts behave, which is to accuse other people. Drug addicts make themselves into victims.
“Trump is doing something else that drug addicts do: They try to make other people anxious. In this case, Trump is trying to make the public, Nancy Pelosi, members of Congress and other people nervous and full of anxiety, as a way of denying it in himself. Trump is forcing anxiety out on to other people, so he does not have to feel it. Unfortunately, many people are succumbing to this by feeling the president’s outward projected anxiety.”
Multiple leading mental health professionals have described Trump’s rambling in that letter as “psychotic.”
So, is our president a drug addict?
Image credit: christialbertadderall.wikidot.com
