Rumor: Doctor Prescribes Donald Trump "Cheap Speed"
Ashley Feinberg
Illustration: Jim Cooke
Back in December, Donald Trump’s personal doctor declared to the world that Trump would be “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” While that particular claim is unfalsifiable (although almost certainly incorrect), according to a source with knowledge of Trump’s current prescriptions, that letter isn’t telling the whole story. Most notably: Donald Trump is allegedly still taking speed-like diet pills.
Rumors of Trump’s predilection for stimulants first started really popping up in 1992, when Spy magazine wrote, “Have you ever wondered why Donald Trump has acted so erratically at times, full of manic energy, paranoid, garrulous? Well, he was a patient of Dr. [Joseph] Greenberg’s from 1982 to 1985.” At the time, Dr. Greenberg was notorious for allegedly doling out prescription stimulants to anyone who could pay.
In 1993, Harry Hurt’s unauthorized biography on Trump, Lost Tycoon, corroborated the rumors and went one step further:
The diet drugs, which [Trump] took in pill form, not only curbed his appetite but gave him a feeling of euphoria and unlimited energy. The medical literature warned that some potentially dangerous side effects could result from long-term usage; they included anxiety, insomnia, and delusions of grandeur. According to several Trump Organization insiders, Donald exhibited all these ominous symptoms of diet drug usage, and then some.
The supposed drug Trump took back then was Tenuate Dospan, a drug with speed-like effects that’s not unlike dexedrine.
These rumors say Trump stopped seeing Dr. Greenberg decades ago. But according to our source, the Donald Trump of today is on a diet drug called phentermine—and has been since at least April of 2014.
Phentermine first gained notoriety in the U.S. under the name Fen-Phen, a “miracle” combination of phentermine and fenfluramine, another established anti-obesity drug. The only problem with it was that patients taking the drug began reporting damage to their hearts and lungs. Apparently, the combination destroyed patients’ bodies’ abilities to regulate the amount of serotonin.
Phentermine on its own, however, is still prescribed. And while the U.S. National Library of Medicine notes that most people take phentermine for a month or so at a time, since the drug is addictive, Trump has supposedly been taking it continuously for over two years .
C. Richard Allen, the director of the Georgia Drugs and Narcotics Agency, called phentermine “cheap speed” to The New York Times. Side effects of phentermine include:
Trouble with thinking, speaking, or walking
Decreased ability to exercise
False or unusual sense of well-being
Insomnia
Nervousness
Increase in sexual ability, desire, drive, or performance
Confusion
Readers can determine for themselves if these symptoms remind them of anyone.
Trump did claim to have a diminished appetite in an interview with People back in November, but the only thing he admitted to being high on was Donald Trump:
One of the reasons is I have big crowds and they’re very exciting stops. And when you speak and you really are going at it, you tend to … I never thought about it, but speaking is almost a form of exercise. It’s very exhilarating. Last night I was in Knoxville, Tennessee, speaking to 12,000 great people. You get so worked up, you don’t feel like eating after that.
Sure, Donald Trump could be expelling calories from his mouth every time he starts screaming about illegals at his rallies. Or he could, once again, be popping amphetamine-adjacent diet pills.
The Trump campaign did not return a request for comment.
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