Winston Churchill
Search results
Eden's drug regimen is now commonly agreed to have been a part of the reason for his bad judgment while prime minister. [3] The Thorpe biography, however, denied Eden's abuse of Benzedrine, stating that the allegations were "untrue, as is made clear by Eden's medical records at Birmingham University , not yet [at the time] available for research".
It was a misfortune not just for the Foreign Secretary, Sir Anthony Eden, but for international diplomacy, that on 12 April 1953, what should have been a routine cholecystectomy in the London Clinic, went badly wrong.
During the 1956 Suez crisis, according to Post, British Prime Minister Anthony Eden desperately sought his doctor, saying, “I must have my benzedrine!” In the 1960s, President John F. Kennedy relied on a “doctor to the stars” for injections that a new biography identifies as methamphetamine.
During the Suez Crisis of 1956, an overwrought Eden “lived on Benzedrine”. The drug undoubtedly impaired his judgement. Its effects may have contributed to Eden’s near-collapse, both physically and emotionally, and his resignation as premier the following year.
Rumours have circulated for decades that Eden, who was Prime Minister from 1955 to 1957 and was suffering from a debilitating illness at the height of the crisis in 1956, was taking addictive,...
The media had dutifully reported that Eden had gone to Jamaica to recover from an illness, but no journalist went public with the real state of affairs – that the Prime Minister’s health was deplorable and that his nerves were shot. He may even have been suffering from mental illness.
Another problem arises from drugs taken by Heads of State or Government, particularly in relation to Prime Minister Anthony Eden and President John F. Kennedy. Most of the descriptions of Anthony Eden's illness at the time of Suez in 1956 focus on his well‐known problems with inflammation of the bile duct or cholangitis.
