Robert F. Kennedy’s “digital lover” says he maintained a secret drug habit despite his claims to have been “sober” for decades.
A forthcoming book alleges that Kennedy admitted as recently as last year to taking psychedelics like DMT, which is short for dimethyltryptamine, which produces a high that is often described as simulating a near-death experience.
Olivia Nuzzi made the revelation in her new tell-all memoir—details of which were shared with The New York Times in a feature that was published Friday.
Nuzzi, 32, wrote that the married Kennedy, 71, confided in her that he smokes DMT. She told him that she “liked uppers” and takes Adderall.
There is a stark difference between Adderall, which is prescribed to millions of Americans, and DMT, which the Drug Enforcement Agency says “has no approved medical use in the United States.”
Kennedy has been open about his struggles with drug addiction, which began after his father was assassinated. He used heroin as a teenager and into his late twenties, but says he kicked the habit in 1983—a year before his brother died of a drug overdose, and a decade before Nuzzi was born.
The Alcohol and Drug Foundation writes that DMT is “structurally similar” to magic mushrooms and is known to produce “short-acting and intense visual hallucinations.”
DMT does not lead to withdrawal symptoms that other drugs, like heroin, can cause.
Dimethyltryptamine is the psychoactive ingredient in the drug ayahuasca. Naturally occurring, it has been used ritually and medicinally in South American tribes for centuries. The DEA said it became a popular “drug of abuse” in the U.S. in the 1960s.
The Department of Health and Human Services, which Kennedy runs, did not return a request for comment. Kennedy denies having any interaction with Nuzzi beyond a magazine interview.
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Kennedy has not addressed any of the claims in Nuzzi’s memoir, which also alleges that they shared “I love yous” in a months-long, digital-only relationship.
Nuzzi claims that she and Kennedy hit it off after she interviewed him for a New York magazine profile in November 2023. Despite Kennedy describing the ensuing article as a “hit piece,” Nuzzi says that she developed a romantic relationship with the then-presidential candidate.
“I love him, I thought,” Nuzzi writes in her memoir. “Oh no. I love him so much.”
Kennedy and Nuzzi, herself engaged at the time, had cut things off by September 2024 when word of their supposed affair became public—just after Kennedy dropped his presidential bid and endorsed Donald Trump.
Nuzzi, who formerly worked at the Daily Beast and was a star Washington correspondent at New York, was fired over the affair. Kennedy pushed forward as a newly minted MAGA man on the campaign trail and was later confirmed as a Cabinet member. Nuzzi has since been hired as an editor at Vanity Fair.
The alleged affair became somewhat of an afterthought in the chaos of the election and Trump’s frenzied first months in office. However, the story may well be blown open again on Dec. 2, when American Canto is officially released.
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