Famous Successful People Who Took/Take Drugs

In My Humble Opinion
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Feynman was a brilliant scientist long before he sampled marijuana and LSD while in his mid 50’s, but he did claim to have learned from the mind-expanding experiences. Feynman was a friend of John Lilly, a researcher who pioneered the use of the tanks, studied psychedelics and consciousness, and is best known for his work with dolphins. Feynman’s use of these illegal substances was mostly in the context of experimenting with his own consciousness while in a sensory deprivation tank.

While experimenting with his mind and memories in Lilly’s tanks, Feynman also met Baba Ram Das, formerly Professor Richard Alpert of Harvard, friend of Timothy Leary and author of Be Here Now. Das instructed Feynman in how to achieve out of body experiences, which Feynman accomplished while in the tank.

Feynman found that pot helped him to achieve the hallucinatory state he was seeking. “Ordinarily it would take me about fifteen minutes to get a hallucination going,” wrote Feynman, “but on a few occasions, when I smoked some marijuana beforehand, it came very quickly.”

Feynman also tried LSD under these circumstances, but in his biography Genius by James Gleick, Feynman is described as being “embarrassed” by his LSD experiences. Feynman also received some criticism from his colleagues for his admission. In an essay called To Smoke Or Not To Smoke, Dr Lester Grinspoon wrote that “Feynman, by courageously acknowledging his ongoing use of marijuana, won the respect and appreciation of many and the enmity of others.”

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If you wish to pick nits isn’t his brother Willy only second in the line of succession after daddy Charles? (Isn’t it also true that if William was killed in a mysterious tank drive-by isn’t Harry next in line?) :wink:

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Half of Hollywood…

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Kirsten Dundst was best friend’s with Sagan’s daughter and has said that he was a pot head. Sagan visited Tim Leary in prison, so I think it’s safe to say that the good doctor knew his way around the recreational pharmacutical aisle.

Dennis Hopper has said that despite his screw up with drugs, he knows plenty of people who can handle them in Hollywood.

Hunter S. Thompson has to be counted in the successful class, I think.

JFK is rumored to have done LSD.

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Between Paradox Press’ The Big Book of Weirdos and other sources, I get:
**Cary Grant
Aldous Huxley
Bela Lugosi
**

Several Popes and other famous people (whose names I camn’t recall) drank Vin Mariani, a wime laced with cocaine in the late 19th century. Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, and Van Gogh (among others) drank absinthe, which may or may not qualify, by your definition. Thomas de Quincy took opium (natch. He wrote Confessions of an Opium Eater). Aleister Crowley was supposed to be a big drug user. Folks have claimed that L. Ron Hubbard was, too.

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**Hermann Goering ** managed to ascend to a prominent political position despite a morphine addiction linked to his gunshot injury in the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch.

What?

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Bill Gates. I’ve read a LOT of bio’s of the man and a number mentioned his pot use when he was just starting out. And I’m pretty sure one mentioned LSD.

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Here are some other people I found I tried to stay away from creative types

NEWT GINGRICH Gingrich admitted that he smoked marijuana when he was in college. He stated in 1995 article from The Economist, “That was a sign we were alive and in graduate school in that era.” One year later he attacked Clinton press secretary Mike McCurry for making the same admission, and charged without substantiation that one quarter of the White House staff used drugs. “See, when I smoked pot it was illegal, but not immoral. Now, it is illegal AND immoral. The law didn’t change, only the morality,” Gingrich said. “That’s why you get to go to jail and I don’t. Any questions?” Yeah, how can you be such a hypocrite?

GARY HALL Olympic Medalist Swimmer Hall nearly missed the Games after refusing to pay a fine for marijuana use. He appealed against a three-month suspension imposed in 1998 by world swimming’s governing body FINA after he tested positive for marijuana. FINA considered it was a second offence but Hall maintained it should have been considered a first infraction since the first time he tested positive – at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics – marijuana was not on the list of prohibited substances. Hall refused to pay the fine, saying: ``If that means I won’t compete in Sydney, then so be it. It’s a matter of principle.‘’ However, the US swimming federation decided to pay the fine on condition that Hall agree to conduct several swimming clinics for American youngsters without pay, which the swimmer accepted. I guess winning a medal is more important than being a role model sometimes. (Hello parents this “Pothead” is going to teach your kids to swim!)

JOHN HAY Former Secretary of State Was a “head” before pot was illegal.

JACK LONDON Author/Adventurer Wrote about the effect of a hash filled night.

MARGARET MEAD Anthropologist and author On Oct. 27,1969 she testified to congress in favor of legalization and she told Newsweek in 1970 that she had tried it once herself.

M. SCOTT PECK Psychologist/Author By his own account, Peck had “a weakness for cheap gin, marijuana and women.”

ROSS REBAGLIATI Olympic Gold Medalist Snowboarder 1998 Won the first-ever Olympic gold medal in Snowboarding in 1998, but was almost stripped of his medal after testing positive for marijuana. The Olympic committee allowed Rebagliati to keep his medal
ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER Actor and Politician “I did smoke a joint and I did inhale, he said, taking a jab at President Clinton’s famous statement. That’s what it was in the '70s, that’s what I did. I have never touched it since

DONNA SHALALA
Former Secretary Health and Human Services Former US Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala admitted to smoking pot in college in an interview with Diane Sawyer Pot smoking didn’t seem to have hurt Shalala’s ambition. After she served as president of Hunter College in New York City and in 1988, she was named chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the first woman ever to head a Big Ten school

QUEEN VICTORIA
Reigned Great Britain from 1837-1901 Another legal “head”

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William F. Buckley admitted to using marijuana – beyond the three-mile limit. I gather he wanted to know what it was like. But he still supported anti-drug legislation. It’s OK if you have the ability to cruise out to sea to smoke, evidently.

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Now I have this image of Feynman and Ram Das sharing a tank.

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He’s third in line to the throne, he’s a tank commander in the British army, he completed his education at Eton with two A-levels. Prince Harry was also appointed as one of nine new Commodores-in-Chief of the Royal Navy, He bangs Chelsy Davy a white African heiress when he’s not cruising for “strange”. We know you’ve surpassed him in everyway but he’s just a kid give him a chance. :rolleyes:

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Sigmund Freud was a major user and proponent of cocaine before it was illegalized.

Rodney Dangerfield was a major pot-head even in his 80s with a young Mormon wife.

Chris Rock recalled meeting his idol, Redd Foxx, long after Sanford & Son when he was playing Vegas, and being very disappointed that Redd offered him cocaine from his crystal hand-grenade container. (Rock is anti-drug.)

Gore Vidal claims to have tried every illegal drug other than intravenous ones as research for his books, but has never been a habitual user of anything other than alcohol. (He also loathes cigarette smoke, though his partner of 50 years smoked like a steel mill.)

One of the strangest/most sordid celebrity drug users you wouldn’t expect: Max Wright, the skinny nebbishy older guy who played the father on Alf, was a crack smoker (caught on camera no less).

Robert Graves, poet and novelist most famous for I, Claudius, was a major proponent even in old age of hallucinogens (especially mushrooms). He said in his Playboy interview that he believed each young man should be left alone with hallucinogens for a few days when he turned 16 or so as part of a rite of passage; I don’t know if he tried this with his sons or not.

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Hitler, a notorious anti-smoker, anti-drinker, and vegetarian, nevertheless was a constant pill-popper and used liquid cocaine based medicines prescribed by his doctor, Theodor Morell.

Fictional character, but Sherlock Holmes was one of the most famous coke users in literature. I would guess, but don’t know, that his creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, used it as well.

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It’s funny how many anti-drug crusaders have “real” dopers in their family.

Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, who has supported the death penalty for drug traffickers, made a tearful plea to U.S. Judge Reginald C. Lindsay for leniency for his son. Prosecutors supported the sentence, which is half the mandatory five-year term for such an offense. Todd Cunningham was arrested on January 17, 1997, by DEA agents for flying more than 400 pounds of marijuana into Lawrence Municipal Airport in North Andover, Massachusetts. Duke did manage his own illustrious jail term at a later dat, on November 28, 2005, Cunningham pleaded guilty to tax evasion, conspiracy to commit bribery, mail fraud, and wire fraud in federal court in San Diego, jet fighter hero and all. I wonder if he got into his kids stash or if he just said No!

On July 24, authorities at Atlanta’s Hartsfield International Airport arrested Claude Shelby, the youngest son of US Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL), for possession of 13.8 grams of hashish. Claude Shelby, 32, is married and has one child.

Darlene Watts sister of U.S. Rep. J.C. Watts (R-OK), was charged with possession and distribution of marijuana, methamphetamine, and drug paraphernalia, and maintaining a property where drugs were kept. She pleaded guilty to six drug-related counts in March 1998

Son of U.S. Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN) in Jan 1994 Dan Burton, Jr., was arrested in Louisiana for transporting nearly eight pounds of marijuana in the trunk of his car. Six months later, Burton was arrested again, this time at his Indianapolis apartment, where police found thirty marijuana plants and a shotgun with ammunition. Federal prosecutors declined to prosecute the case; Indiana prosecutors recommended dismissal of the charges against Burton; and a Louisiana judge sentenced him to community service.

OTHER CASES: Other cases that have ended relatively favorably for family members of politicians include: marijuana and cocaine possession and distribution charges against Richard Riley, Jr., son of Education Secretary Richard Riley; cocaine possession charges against Gayle Rosten, daughter of then-U.S. House Ways and Means Committee chairman Dan Rostenkowski (D-IL); cocaine distribution charges against John Murtha, son of U.S. Rep. John Murtha (D-PA); cocaine distribution charges against Susan Gallo, daughter of U.S. Rep. Dean Gallo (R-NJ); marijuana possession charges against Warren Bachus, son of U.S. Rep Spencer Bachus (R-AL); and possession of cocaine with intent to distribute charges against Josef Hinchey, son of Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) (James Bovard, “Prison Sentences of the Politically Connected,” PLAYBOY, April 1997, p. 46).

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I knew Willie Tanner was hiding more than aliens! That skinny dweeb wasn’t acting paranoid he was paranoid. I guess being upstaged by a muppet can make you into a bisexual crackhead. Who knew?

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He used LSD in “his misspent youth” but not after the age of 25 according to a 1994 Playboy interview. I wonder if the early days of Microsoft were like an episode of [“Code Monkeys”](” Code Monkeys - Wikipedia “) that Bill grew out of?

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Depends what definition of “successful” you apply. If you apply a definition based on achievement through personal effort rather than upon the consequences of an accident of birth, I think the highest achievement in your list is a couple of A-levels. Which is firstly hardly big news and by that criterion most people on these boards would qualify, and secondly given the quality of education his royal privilegedness had access to about as surprising as fish and chips.

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I base it on where you are not how you got there. Whether you’re born to greatness or strive to it you’re still great. Just because Harry won the vagina lottery don’t hold it against him lots of people do the same. As a matter of fact since we both have access to the Internet in a way we’ve won lesser prizes in the same lottery. There are billions of people who don’t even know of the concept of the Internet nor the infrastructure to support it, nor the leisure time to exploit it. We have an unfair advantage over them not unlike Harry has over us. Do you feel you deserve your advantage or do you just thank your lucky birth canal? As for his level of education he took a year off after Eton to do rich people stuff then he joined the army. Any man that graduates high school with high marks and enters the military reaching the level of lieutenant and is then given the position of tank commander is a success in my book. If you add to that the fact he seeks unrestricted deployment I’d say he has a bit of character too, even if he smoked some trees in his past. (and he’s my favorite Nazi).

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I don’t bother with debates about what words ought to mean. If that’s what it means to you, fine. However, I would have thought that people who have achieved great success through personal effort regardless of drug use would be of more relevance to what appears to be the underlying argument to your OP.

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Al Gore apparently smoked pot while in college, that came out during his first run for the White House. Of course, his son recently got busted for illicit drugs.