Elon Musk's Drug Use Much Greater Than Previously Known: New York Times

Yahoo

2 days ago

He forcibly and potentially illegally gained access to wildly sensitive government data that he hired a bunch of unvetted 20-somethings to oversee ― and hewas potentially blitzed out of his mind at the same time.
Just days after tech billionaire Elon Musk officially left his role as a top adviser to President Donald Trump, The New York Times reported that the tech mogul was consuming large quantities of drugsaround the same time he became a fixture on the campaign trail.
Citing private messages obtained by the Times and interviews with Musk's associates, the outlet reported that Musk took ketamine, ecstasy, psychedelic mushrooms, Ambien, Adderall, and other drugs, and traveled with a daily medication box that held about 20 pills.
The CEO of SpaceX and Tesla reportedly took so much Ketamine, a dissociative anesthetic known to induce schizophrenia-like symptoms, that it affected his bladder function.
The report is bolstered by a January 2024 Wall Street Journal investigation in which sources close to Musk said they'd witnessed or had direct knowledge of him using LSD, cocaine, ecstasy, mushrooms and ketamine.
Musk's attorney Alex Spiro told the Journal at the time that his client is 'regularly and randomly drug tested at SpaceX' and has 'never failed a test.'
It's unclear how, or whether, Musk's consumption habits changed once he became a federal bureaucrat with an office in the White House complex. He didn't address the claims directly at a Friday afternoon press conference in the Oval Office, instead attacking the credibility of The New York Times itself.
But he's continued drawing attention for unusual antics, including a chainsaw-wielding appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference and a Nazi-like hand gesture at Trump's inaugural rally.
In April, Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.) introduced a bill that would require Musk and his hires at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency to undergo regular drug testing, though the bill has gone nowhere in the Republican-majority house.
'Donald Trump has given billionaire Elon Musk the keys to our government, and with it, access to highly sensitive information — from Treasury and Social Security data to even our most guarded military plans,' Sherrill wrote in a press release. 'Those with access to sensitive information must be thoroughly vetted, clear-eyed, and exercise good judgment.'
Asked Friday if he was concerned about drug use by Musk, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller was dismissive ― but notably didn't rule it out.
'The drugs that we're concerned about are the drugs running across the southern border,' he told reporters.
The eccentric billionaire has openly discussed his ketamine use in the past. In a 2024 interview with Don Lemon, he said he took 'a small amount' every other week ― but got miffed when Lemon pushed him on it.
'If you've used too much ketamine, you can't really get work done, and I have a lot of work,' he told the journalist at the time.
An Atlantic article describing the drug's effects on the body found people build tolerance to it very quickly, requiring ever larger doses to achieve the same high and leading to long-term impaired cognition, including 'delusional thinking, superstitious beliefs, and a sense of specialness and importance.'
Those would seem to strike a chord with Sam Harris, a public intellectual and former friend of Musk, who publicly broke with the world's richest man in a post earlier this year.
'Any dispassionate observer of Elon's behavior on Twitter/X can see that there is something seriously wrong with his moral compass, if not his perception of reality,' he wrote.
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