By now, you’ve no doubt been exposed to memes about how bad the former president smells. There are considerable memes out there about how he has to wear a diaper. You might have associated the meme with his age (four years younger than Joe Biden), but the connection between Donald Trump, diapers, and poop goes back further than that.
I have no idea if any of this is true, but I do know that stories about Donald Trump’s incontinence go back further than any talk of him running for president. Donald Trump rose to power in New York in the seventies and eighties. During the seventies and eighties, in New York, there was no greater indicator and symptom of wealth and power than cocaine. Studio 54 was synonymous with cocaine use, and the entire cast of Saturday Night Live had a reputation for the use of cocaine.
One of the side effects of cocaine is that it can loosen the bowels. Stories of stock brokers who put on diapers when getting ready for a night on the town were common in the eighties. Donald Trump, it is said, did so much coke in the seventies and eighties that he now has constant digestive incontinence and has to wear a diaper every day to prevent soiling his golfing slacks. I don’t know if it’s true, but it’s possible.
I have no idea if this is true of Trump, but I know guys my own age who sometimes had this problem; two of them, one has since passed away. Cocaine also has a lasting effect on your heart function, which I suspect is what took him out. The meme, propagated, I suppose, by people who don’t like him, is that Donald Trump has to wear a diaper because he can’t control his bowel movements, even though he no longer uses cocaine. Sometimes, his incontinence undergarment gets so full of excrement that he smells bad. Again, I have no idea if this is true. It’s not part of Donald Trump's official history. It is, however, a known symptom associated with prolonged cocaine use.
Although he wasn’t part of the Not Ready For Prime Time Players, Robin Williams was a close associate of the original cast of Saturday Night Live. One of the hottest young talents in the 1970s, Williams had a reputation for consuming large amounts of cocaine, often with the cast of Saturday Night Live and sometimes with Carrie Fisher, who was a close associate and dated Dan Ackroyd. She discusses this in her book Postcards From the Edge.
Although he was never officially diagnosed, Robin Williams’s family and his close friends have all said that he very likely had pronounced ADHD. As someone who also suffers from ADHD, I can’t imagine ever using that much coke. Coke makes normal people feel like they have ADHD, and the one time I tried it, I felt like my head was going to explode.
It’s no secret that I like whiskey, I like vodka, and when the time is right, I like Don Julio Blanco tequila quite a lot. I’ve liked them for quite a long time. I’m also not averse to cannabis sativa. Now that it’s legal and several guys I know are legally in that business, I can admit it. What I don’t like is cocaine.
In the eighties, when I was in college, cocaine was pretty common. It’s said that the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity were the kings of cocaine at Millsaps, but if anyone were ever actually to measure out how much was being consumed, I’m sure my own Kappa Alpha Order matched them gram for gram or more.
There was a guy, let’s say his name was “Brother M.” Brother M liked cocaine quite a lot. He thought I should, too. To be precise, he thought it would be funny if I tried it. He was convinced of this, so he regularly asked if I wanted to try any. Noticing that nobody I knew had actually died from or gotten arrested for cocaine use and that it seemed to be pretty common among those of us who spent most of our time at CS’s, I decided to try it.
The first dose was in the downstairs bathroom of the KA house. Following that, I smoked about a pack of cigarettes on the front stoop of the KA Mansion and discussed where Trotsky went wrong with Jay Dickens and wrestled David Rhul to a tie. On other nights, we had enough empty beer kegs stored at the KA house that we could play live-action Donkey Kong by rolling them downhill and seeing who could jump over them without busting their ass.
The second dose came in the hedgerow between the KA house and CS’s. That’s when shit started to get weird. Sitting in CS’s, trying to eat a plate of red beans and rice, my ADHD and my cocaine began to do battle in my little reptile brain. My eyes couldn’t stay focused on any one spot for more than a few seconds while both feet and both hands beat a staccato drum solo to R-E-S-P-E-C-T on the jukebox.
My longtime associate, Susan Meriweather, who was the biological little sister of Brother Tommy Meriweather and the Chi Omega big sister of my own biological little sister, had been drinking a few beers. To be honest, they were probably Bartles and James Wine Coolers for her, but I’ll say they were beers to make her sound cooler. Susan found the spectacle of Boyd on coke just about the funniest thing she ever saw, and she followed me around the rest of the night, laughing at me, especially after I tried a third dose in the parking lot of CS’s. There were a lot of times when Susan followed me around laughing; that time, I probably deserved it. I miss her. Quite a lot.
A couple of days later, “Brother M” asked if I wanted to buy some more coke and repeat the party we had that night. I told him that I’d be more than happy to pay for whatever of his stash I used up, but as far as I was concerned, cocaine was the least goddamn recreational, recreational drug I’d ever come across. I hoped never to try it again, and I didn’t.
There’s a story Robin Williams told about how he quit cocaine. In his mind, the funniest guy alive was John Belushi. They were good friends. They bounced ideas off each other as professionals and partied a hell of a lot together. They were the young princes of comedy in America. Belushi always gave a wink and a nod about his cocaine use. There was even a sketch on Saturday Night Live where he was eating little powdered donuts in front of Studio 54, leaving traces of white powder under his nose. It was pretty funny.
One day, Williams was preparing for a day’s work on Mork and Mindy, and he got the news that Belushi had died, just a few blocks away, from an overdose from a speedball. A speedball is a combination of cocaine and heroin, which Belushi had been doing in a bungalow suite at Chateau Marmont for several days. With his best friend and the only person he considered funnier than himself dead from the use of cocaine and his first child on the way, Williams resolved to quit cocaine forever, which he did by 1983, a year after Belushi’s death.
In 2014, Williams was found dead in his home. His death was ruled as a suicide, associated with his Lewy body dementia. People with ADHD are five times more likely to suffer from Lewy body dementia than anyone else. If I live long enough, I’m most likely going to have dementia. Hopefully, I’ll have the kind and loving kind of dementia. Either way, I hope my heart gives out before my mind.
Donald Trump is a fair amount older than I am, but he’s still part of my generation. I’ve been hearing about his cocaine use since he first became notable, even before Celebrity Apprentice. I doubt if he ever heard of mine. I have no idea if cocaine made him incontinent. People will make up all sorts of stories about guys in his position. It is possible, though. I know a lot of guys his age and mine who suffer health consequences from the drugs they took when they were younger. When you’re twenty, you think you’ll live forever, and nothing can hurt you. It doesn’t work out that way.
If Donald Trump has health issues associated with drug use when he was younger, I can’t really judge him. I did it, too. A lot of guys I admire did it, as well. If I’m honest, I’ll admit I’d rather have John Belushi or Robin Williams running for president, but that’s not an option.