In her recent memoir,  journalist Olivia Nuzzi made a startling claim: during an extended online romance with a politician, identified elsewhere as RFK Jr., the current Secretary of Health and Human Services, her lover had admitted to smoking DMT — an hallucinogen and Schedule One  controlled substance.

RFK Jr. promptly denied it, insisting he doesn’t know the author, outside of a single past interview.

The allegation attracted plenty of attention, partly due to RFK Jr.’s name and prominence in the Trump administration, and also because of his personal history of heroin addiction.

Of course, we have no way to know who’s telling the truth. Still, the stakes for the Secretary of Health are considerable. There’s the question of a public official breaking the law, as well as the potential loss of faith in the integrity of government officials in general.

“What’s left of that, at least,” quipped one observer.

Media accounts have been lurid. Here’s one example:

Sober’ RFK Jr. Spilled Wild Drugs Secrets, Alleged Ex-Lover Claims

It brought back memories for me of various others who, while claiming to be drug and alcohol free, turned out to be anything but. For instance:

  • An outpatient who waited until the very last session of treatment to announce that he had been secretly drinking and smoking pot all along. His explanation: he knew others would disapprove, and he didn’t want to upset anyone.
  • The civil engineer who completed a costly (and painful) course of aversion therapy with apparent success, then six months later decided to “experiment” by re-introducing small amounts of vodka into his daily orange juice. This was all done in secret, of course, but despite efforts to control his consumption, he found himself gradually increasing the vodka content until he realized he was consuming far more vodka than ever before.
  • The longtime 12 step sponsor who went to great lengths to conceal her increasing reliance on pain pills from others in her home group, on the grounds that “they just wouldn’t understand”.
  • Last but not least, the psychotherapist who concealed her own drinking and pot use after leaving rehab, in order to present herself to her patients as an expert in addiction treatment.

In each case, the ultimate outcome was poor. In fact, that’s how I met them — following a painful relapse.

I have to think there are other folks out there, pretending to sobriety yet still secretly using, hoping to avoid the sort of trouble that haunted them in the past.

Is RFK Junior among them?  We may never know for sure. But if he is using again, he’s far from alone.