EXCLUSIVE: JFK Jr's Secret Drug Spiral — New Book Exposes Politics Heir's Most Brutal Private Struggle
JFK Jr's secret drug spiral has been revealed, as a new book exposes the politics heir's brutal private struggle.
March 25 2026, Published 6:30 a.m. ET
JFK Jr. was a thrill seeker who spiraled into using drugs "every single day," claimed friends, writers and others close to the handsome magazine publisher, journalist and lawyer, RadarOnline.com can reveal.
In the 2024 biography JFK Jr.: An Intimate Oral Biography by Liz McNeil and RoseMarie Terenzio, his high school friend Sasha Chermayeff claimed JFK Jr. smoked pot "every single day, I'm not exaggerating, from 15 onward."
JFK Jr.’s Wild Drug Past Revealed
Sasha Chermayeff said JFK Jr. and classmates were 'smoking weed and experimenting with drugs, rock 'n' roll, and sex' during school years.
JFK Jr's close friend since their teenage years at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., Chermayeff said JFK Jr. was likely drawn to marijuana because it "frees you from self-obsession – and that was medicine for him, because he came from a place where your f**king family, they're brilliant."
He added that while they were in school, students would gather in JFK Jr.'s room, where Chermayeff alleged they would be "smoking weed and experimenting with drugs, and rock 'n' roll, and sex, and all of the stuff we loved so much in the '70s."
Chermayeff also revealed although his friend did not become an alcoholic, he did allegedly experiment with other recreational drugs, including "coke in the '80s and '90s, '80s more. I guess it was '90s, too, sometimes."
He recalled skiing with JFK Jr. while both were allegedly high on mushrooms... and snorting cocaine with him at New York's notorious Studio 54, where "there was a lot of coke. I used to brag that I've never done bad coke, because I've never done coke except with John Kennedy."
Secret Drug Use ‘Nobody’ Discusses
William Cohan recalled JFK Jr. 'certainly liked to smoke pot' and was 'not shy' about substance use.
According to Chermayeff, JFK Jr.'s drug use is something "nobody" wants to discuss, yet others have stepped forward with their own startling stories about his private excesses.
Another Phillips Academy classmate, writer William Cohan, remembers that John "certainly liked to smoke pot, and he smoked a lot of pot ... I'm sure there were other kinds of substances that he liked, too. He wasn't shy about any of that."
John also engaged in risky behavior with a devil-may-care attitude that his mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, believed was genetic.
In his 2001 book The Kennedy Curse, biographer Ed Klein writes that Jackie revealed people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder were more likely to carry the gene DRD4-7R, which triggers a craving for thrill-seeking behavior.
JFK Jr.’s Risky Life Ended Tragically
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Ed Klein wrote Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis feared JFK Jr.'s risk-taking stemmed from genetic thrill-seeking behavior.
JFK Jr. was known for speeding, sometimes even driving onto sidewalks to avoid traffic jams.
He skied while high, swam far out to sea and pushed limits in other ways.
Shortly before taking wife, Carolyn Bassette Kennedy and her sister, Lauren Bessette, on the ill-fated flight of July 16, 1999, he broke his ankle in a paragliding accident.
Klein also said Jackie worried John's father, ex-President, John F. Kennedy's assassination when JFK Jr. was just two, might lead to struggles later in life.
Klein wrote: "She spoke in an indirect way of her concerns that John might turn out to have sexual-identity problems, or even be homosexual."
Chermayeff noted while John "was not an angel in any way at all – he just winged it, assuming that it would work out."
Sadly, it didn't.
