A new book claims that RFK Jr. has admitted to using the psychedelic drug DMT, says the brain worm isn’t actually a worm

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a complex man of many colors and contradictions – a man who both says he is very concerned about the environment, but who also likes to work for Donald Trump (a known fossil fuel lover). He’s a guy who likes to pass himself off as a kind everyday guy who also apparently likes to store road kill in his freezer and decapitate beached whales. He is also a man who has been married for quite some time, but who, according to a recent revealing book by a disgraced journalist, engaged in a secret meeting during which he bared his innermost self.

Yes, by now you’ve surely heard the drama surrounding Olivia Nuzzi, the ex New York magazine political reporter and Kennedy, who allegedly had a chaste affair while Nuzzi covered his political campaign last year. Nuzzi managed to turn what – for most other journalists – would have been a humiliating professional demise into a book deal. Her new volume, American songis partly about her relationship with Kennedy. While it’s not out yet (coming out next month), it was recently previewed by select publications. The book appears to reveal confessions Kennedy made to her in private, including admitting to using brain-warping drugs and also claiming that the dead worm in his brain wasn’t actually a worm.

The drug allegation comes from the New York Times, which recently profiled Nuzzi as well as her book. In the profile, Nuzzi claims that while they were in contact, Kennedy admitted to using DMT, a psychedelic drug that can cause intense auditory and visual hallucinations. The document notes:

She wrote that despite being « sober » for decades, Kennedy told her he still used psychedelics and even smoked dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, a powerful drug known to give people near-death experiences. She told him she « likes a top. I told him I took Adderall. »

The DMT claim is somewhat appropriate and perhaps not too surprising for Kennedy given his interest in side health treatments. At the same time, it also makes some political sense. Strange as it may seem, the call for the legalization of psychedelics has come from the political right in recent years. Conservatives want to get weird by legalizing mind-bending drugs, and RFK is seen as a natural candidate to advance that mission. This summer, it was reported that Kennedy was « intensifying government-run clinical trials » on psychedelics.

« These are people who badly need some kind of therapy; nothing else is going to help them, » Kennedy said at a House hearing in June. « This line of therapeutics has tremendous upside if it’s applied in a clinical setting. And we’re working very hard to make sure that happens within 12 months. »

At another point in american song, part of which was recently published by Vanity Fair (Nuzzi is now an editor there), Kennedy allegedly told her that she didn’t actually have a worm in her brain. The worm in question was first reported by the New York Times last year. Journalists discovered that in 2010, a parasite ate some of RFK’s gray matter and subsequently died. According to Nuzzi’s book, however, Kennedy told her that was not the case. The passage that caused laughter on the Internet reads:

I didn’t like to think about it, any more than I would later like to think about the worm in his brain that other people found so funny. I loved his brain. I hated the idea of ​​an intruder there. Others thought him mad; he wasn’t quite as crazy as they thought, but i loved the personal ways he was crazy. I loved that he was insatiable in every way, as if he would devour the whole world just to get to know it better if he could. He made me laugh, but I cringed when he made a joke about the worm. « Honey, don’t worry, » he said. « It’s not a worm. » A doctor he trusted reviewed his brain scan, obtained by The New York Times, he said, and concluded that the shadowy figure was probably not a parasite at all. He sighed. It was too late to intervene in what had already passed from the realm of memes to the realm of nasty legend, but at least I didn’t have to worry about the worm that wasn’t a worm in his brain.

So yeah, wow. Indeed, some poetic words about the worm. Nuzzi claims that she and Kennedy never physically consummated the relationship and that the love was solely over the phone and the Internet (it was called a « sexting affair »). Meanwhile, Kennedy has denied having a relationship with her. Kennedy’s wife, Cheryl Hines, has reportedly spoken out about Nuzzi’s claims that the two were in love and that Kennedy wanted her to have his child, telling sources that Nuzzi is a « fucking liar. »

In the past few days, Nuzzi has also been accused of having an affair with another interview subject, Mark Sanford, a South Carolina politician. This claim comes from her ex-fiancé/former Politico reporter Ryan Lisa, who wrote about it for his independent outlet Telos. Gizmodo has reached out to HHS for comment. We also contacted Condé Nast, the parent company of Vanity Fair.