Elon Musk Microdoses Ketamine for Depression, Takes Full Doses at Parties, According to WSJ
(AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)
Twitter owner Elon Musk is a regular user of ketamine, an anesthetic originally most regularly used by veterinarians, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.
The WSJ article (headlined “Magic Mushrooms. LSD. Ketamine. The Drugs That Power Silicon Valley.”) covers psychedelic use by several top tech leaders, including Musk, Google co-founder Sergey Brin as someone who “sometimes enjoys magic mushrooms,” and CashApp founder Bob Lee being part of an “underground party scene” where the use of psychedelics was “common” — and ingested ketamine before he was murdered in San Francisco in April.
Psychedelic drug use has evolved into being part of the “corporate culture” of Silicon Valley, according to the WSJ, with top tech executives viewing ketamine, psilocybin (derived from mushrooms), and LSD “as gateways to business breakthroughs.”
Regarding Musk, the Tesla and Space X CEO “has told people he microdoses ketamine for depression, and he also takes full doses of ketamine at parties, according to the people who have witnessed his drug use and others who have direct knowledge of it.”
The use of these drugs isn’t always legal — although a wave of funding is flowing into research and lobbying efforts — and many users end up self-diagnosing or relying on dosing advice from other psychedelic advocates who are also not medical professionals, leading to a risk of “slid[ing] into abuse,” Austin, Texas-based addiction specialist Alex Penrod told the WSJ. Penrod also highlighted problems arising in those who might start using these drugs for therapeutic purposes and end up using recreationally, sometimes in an addictive way:
That is what happened to Tony Hsieh, the former Zappos chief executive who died in late 2020 following injuries in a house fire, the Journal has previously reported. Hsieh believed that ketamine could help him think through business challenges while working at Zappos, which is owned by Amazon.com. Soon, he was overusing, the friends said. Under pressure from Amazon to improve his erratic behavior, Hsieh resigned shortly before his death, the Journal reported.
Tech reporter and podcaster Kara Swisher tweeted the WSJ article and cited her own previous coverage of the “growing trend” from 2018, noting that these drugs were “seen as a way for techies to expand their minds in the style of Steve Jobs,” but the “use by some leaders is now so excessive that it’s curdled those brains.”
Swisher added, “for those who really abuse these important drugs (and they are possibly life changing for many in clinical settings), it’s made most of them meaner, stupider and more certain that they’re gods.” This was “the explanation for a lot of the nonsense of today” in the tech world, because “[t]hey’re not wiser for sure” plus the influence of “excessive [money] and inevitable sycophants.”
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