Latest news with #ElonMusk
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25 minutes ago
- Health
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All the Drugs Musk Took Every Day Listed in Bombshell Leak
Elon Musk's alleged drug use on the campaign trail was said to be on 'a much larger and more serious scale' than previously thought, an insider has revealed. A New York Times report published on Friday claimed Musk carried a box of narcotics around with him everywhere he went on the campaign trail, which is said to have contained Adderall and a number of other drugs. The billionaire also allegedly told people he was a chronic ketamine user—which had led him to develop severe bladder problems—and a frequent user of ecstasy and magic mushrooms. Given Musk's outsized and influential role in the early days of the second Trump administration, the effect drugs may have played on influencing his erratic behaviour—which has seen him mumble through interviews, throw an alleged Nazi salute on stage and appear to be going through dissociative episodes during public functions—cannot be understated. Here is a list of the drugs Musk is alleged to have taken while he was associated with Donald Trump, and the effects they may have on the body and mind. Ketamine Musk was reportedly taking ketamine daily around the time he began to endorse Trump for president, which can lead to psychological dissociation. 'If you've used too much ketamine, you can't really get work done, and I have a lot of work,' Musk told CNN in 2024. He's right—the drug encourages you to feel distant from your surroundings, which can become tilted or warped. The drug also causes surges in dopamine and serotonin, which can lead to wild mood swings, according to the Priory Group. Chronic ketamine use can also have a devastating effect on the bladder, and cause the user to develop a condition known as ketamine-associated cystitis. This can cause the user to develop an intense and urgent need to urinate after ingesting only a tiny amount of liquid, accompanied by pelvic pain and a burning sensation. Musk is reported to have told people that he was suffering bladder-related side effects. Long-term and chronic effects can cause severe damage to the kidneys and liver, as well as an increased heart rate, seizures, high blood pressure, and respiratory issues. In extreme cases, ketamine abuse can prevent a person from functioning normally and lead to heart attacks, organ failure and even death. Managing a ketamine comedown and fighting off cravings can be extremely challenging, especially when grappling with memory loss, mood swings, a shortened attention span and chronic pain. Many heavy users often find themselves taking more to stave off the comedown and numb the pain. Adderall Adderall is a potent amphetamine used to treat ADHD, and can make users experience increased physical energy, hyperexcitability, and elevated moods. However, long-term or improper use of the drug can result in severe cognitive and physical deterioration, with side-effects including nerve damage, seizures, psychosis, strokes and abnormal heart activity. The American Addiction Center notes that Adderall is particularly dangerous when mixed with other drugs, which Musk was rumoured to have done on a number of occasions. Mixing the drug can lead to increased chances of serious brain injury, damage to the liver and heart attacks, as well as increasing risk of an overdose. In the workplace Adderall can be used to achieve greater mental clarity and increase productivity in the short-term, although excessive use can also lead to restlessness and an inability to sleep—perhaps explaining Musk's propensity to sleep in his office. Adderall can also exacerbate existing mental illnesses, which could be an issue considering Musk says he takes ketamine to deal with depression. Ecstasy Also known as MDMA, ecstasy can give users an intense burst of energy followed by a feeling of euphoria. Users under its influence can feel extremely energetic, confident and affectionate towards others, with particularly strong batches sometimes even causing hallucinations. Once the euphoria wears off though users can experience intense comedowns and severe depression, which can lead to problems with concentration and an inability to sleep. Ecstasy can also induce psychosis when mixed with amphetamines, which Musk is alleged to have done. MDMA hangovers can sometimes take a few days to kick in, leading to a phenomenon known as 'Tuesday Blues' where users can be caught off-guard by an exceptionally low mood days after they assumed the drug had left their body. Mushrooms Like ecstasy, mushrooms can produce feelings of intense euphoria and cause the subject to hallucinate. Although there are few physical side-effects, usage can cause the subject to mentally disassociate, struggle to discern fantasy from reality and suffer from panic attacks and symptoms of psychosis, Desert Hope Treatment reports. Like other hallucinogens, mushrooms can also cause 'flashbacks' at a later date, which can cause the subject to suffer intense panic, dissociation, and even hallucinations at random intervals.
Yahoo
25 minutes ago
- Business
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Elon Musk departs DOGE with a horrific legacy
Elon Musk's government service has supposedly come to an end, with the billionaire decamping to his company town of Starbase, Texas. Except there he was in the Oval Office on Friday, in a press availability alongside President Donald Trump. Sporting a black eye — given to him by his 5-year-old, he said — Musk grumbled about his time in the nation's capital. 'We became essentially the DOGE bogeyman,' Musk said. 'It just became a bit ridiculous.' That complaint echoed similar comments in his media tour preceding that appearance, as Musk whined about his DOGE stint not turning out quite as triumphantly as he had hoped. 'The federal bureaucracy situation is much worse than I realized,' he told The Washington Post. 'DOGE is just becoming the whipping boy for everything.' Not only that, 'People were burning Teslas. Why would you do that? That's really uncool.' In other words, his noble effort at reform was undone by the deep state, and all he got for it was a heap of criticism and slumping sales for his car company. Won't somebody pity the billionaire? Musk has teams of acolytes around him who will no doubt be eager to reassure him that if some people in Washington don't adore him, that just means they didn't deserve him in the first place. But in truth, Musk's feelings are irrelevant; what matters is the chaos he brought to the federal government that serves all of us, and the deaths he is at least partly responsible for around the world. The malignancy that is his Department of Government Efficiency project lives on, not only in the cadre of incompetents he has left behind in Washington, but in the spirit of gleeful destruction ever more firmly incorporated into Republican ideology. Musk's time in Washington was characterized by a toxic combination of ignorance, arrogance and malevolence. He didn't know how things worked, wasn't interested in learning and didn't care how many people he would hurt. All of it stemmed from his belief that not only is government incapable of doing anything right, almost everything it tries to do isn't worth doing anyway. So if he had an impression that an agency was bad — say, the U.S. Agency for International Development — what would be the point of learning its goals and methods? Just shut the whole thing down. The demise of USAID is one of the most horrific legacies of Musk's time in Washington. The abrupt cutoff of food aid to vulnerable people around the world 'has destabilized some of the most fragile locations in the world and thrown refugee camps further into unrest,' according to internal State Department documents obtained by ProPublica. The withdrawal of medical assistance — especially through PEPFAR, the spectacularly successful U.S. program that fights the spread of HIV in Africa — is already leading directly to people's deaths, almost certainly by the thousands. Some studies have concluded that hundreds of thousands of people either have died or will die because the U.S. government, at Musk's urging, has all but shut down its foreign humanitarian efforts. The experience of USAID was repeated in agency after agency, often at Musk's whims or to serve Musk's interest. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which used to protect Americans from financial scams, could cause problems for Musk's plans to add payment services to his social media platform X. But now CFPB staff have been sent home, and the agency has essentially ceased to function. We saw a pattern repeated over and over: Musk's DOGE staffers would descend on a government office, demand access to critical systems and start destroying programs they didn't bother to understand. Officials who stood up to them were fired. Contracts were canceled, offices were closed, and people who relied on services were abandoned. That damage can't easily be undone, and even if Musk and some his top lieutenants are gone, their underlings are still in the federal government. And while the shock of what DOGE was doing may have been appalling to most of us, to Republicans in both the executive branch and Congress, it was thrilling (though Republicans on Capitol Hill have been less thrilled about formalizing DOGE's cuts into law). They've now assimilated Musk's ethos as their own: break everything you can see, fire as many committed employees as possible, don't worry about consequences to people's lives, and if what you're doing is illegal, well, maybe the courts will sort that out later. And no, Musk was never going to cut $2 trillion from the budget; the fact that he thought he could just showed how clueless he was. But his contempt for the government and the public servants who work in it was obvious from the outset. He wanted indiscriminate destruction, and he got it. Now he claims to be peeved that the Republican megabill doesn't reduce the deficit, as though that was ever something the GOP cared about. If he's really concerned, perhaps he should use some of his billions to lobby for tax increases on the wealthy. For all his complaints, Musk is getting most of what he really wanted. His time in the government coincided with the Trump administration shutting down many investigations Musk faced over his labor and environmental practices. The administration is also moving to direct billions of dollars in funding meant for rural broadband to his satellite company, and Trump's new idea for a 'Golden Dome' missile defense system looks like a contracting gravy train with Musk's companies in the front car. So why isn't Musk happy? The answer isn't that he didn't succeed, because in most ways he did. What upsets him is this: He didn't just want to lay waste to the government and enrich himself. He wanted to do that and then have us thank him for it. Tell that to a mother watching her child die from malnourishment, or a skilled park ranger who got fired from their dream job, or someone in tornado alley who can't get updated weather forecasts, or AIDS patients who no longer have lifesaving medication. I'm sure they'll be very sympathetic. This article was originally published on
Yahoo
25 minutes ago
- Entertainment
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Watch: Trump Awkwardly Sidesteps Question About Musk's Drug Use
Elon Musk's official DOGE departure from the White House on Friday was overshadowed by news concerning his alleged drug use. An explosive report by The New York Times claimed that Musk, 53, was using ketamine daily on the Trump campaign trail. When asked about the allegations regarding his former sidekick by a reporter as he touched down in Washington this evening, Trump said he 'wasn't' aware of Musk's regular drug consumption. 'I think he's fantastic,' Trump said. 'I think Elon is a fantastic guy.' When asked if the report was 'troubling' to him, Trump reasserted that, 'I'm not troubled by anything to do with Elon. I think he's fantastic.' The claim that Musk is taking so much ketamine that he is experiencing bladder issues riled the SpaceX CEO during a White House press conference on Friday. 'Let's move on! OK, next question?' Musk snapped when asked by Fox News reporter Peter Doocy about The New York Times report. Ketamine is a drug used often in the medical industry for pain relief. But, over the last few years, it has been increasingly used by mental health practitioners to treat depression and other psychological illnesses. However, the drug, also used as an animal tranquilizer, is known to cause 'ketamine-induced cystitis' and can lead to serious bladder issues as well as kidney failure. It has been implicated in the death of Friends star Matthew Perry. It's not the only drug that Musk is reported to have used. Allegedly, the billionaire carried a box of various narcotics around with him while on the campaign trail. The drugs in question include Adderall, ecstasy, and magic mushrooms. New York Times reporter Megan Twohey told MSNBC on Friday that the White House had refused to answer questions over whether or not Musk had been drug tested during his tenure. Still, Trump concluded that Musk 'did a great job,' and that his legacy program, DOGE, will continue. 'By the time it's finished,' Trump said, 'We'll have numbers that'll knock your socks off.'
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25 minutes ago
- Business
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MSNBC Host Shuts Down Musk's Whining About His Many Critics
MSNBC's Ari Melber didn't shed any tears Friday over Elon Musk's complaints about all the negative feedback he received for his work with the Trump administration. The anchor of The Beat, noting that the tech billionaire said in a recent interview that he's 'stuck in a bind' regarding how much credit and blame he gets for the Trump administration's actions, replied bluntly: 'Welcome to public service.' Musk, in an interview with CBS Sunday Morning, said, 'It's not like I agree with everything the administration does. I'm a little stuck in a bind where I'm like, well, I don't want to, you know, speak out against the administration. But I don't want to because I also don't want to take responsibility for everything the administration is doing.' On MSNBC, Melber said Musk just didn't grasp the nature of his work. 'The difference between Musk and virtually everyone else who signs up to work for a president is most people treat it like the serious, full-time job that it is,' Melber noted. 'They take an oath to the Constitution. They understand as long as you're in that job, you do do the thing he said he didn't want to do. You have to go along with the values and plans of the person you work for—in this case, the president. Or, if you reach a breaking point, you quit.' Melber said Musk is 'trying to have it both ways.' 'He has clearly basked in some of the power and attention of being tied to the president and donating a lot of money to the president when they were running last year, while also wanting to make the break in ways that benefit or matter to him,' Melber said of the tech billionaire, who opposed Trump's budget proposal, his tariffs, and visa crackdowns for highly skilled workers. Musk's role in the administration as a 'special government employee' ended Friday, after he had to severely lower his expectations for the amount of government spending that DOGE could cut—a turn of events that caused him to feel disillusioned. Meanwhile, Musk's popularity took a major hit, as evidenced by lagging Tesla sales and vandalism. An April poll found only 35 percent of Americans approved of his management of DOGE.
Yahoo
26 minutes ago
- Automotive
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Tesla faces collapsing sales in Canada's Québec province, with new registrations tumbling 85%
Tesla sales in Québec plunged 85% in the first quarter, mirroring sharp declines seen in Europe. Canada has frozen $43 million in Tesla EV rebates due to Trump's tariffs and fraud concerns. Musk's DOGE work sparked backlash, boycotts, and dealership vandalism across the US and Europe. Tesla's sales woes have reached Canada. Data from the vehicle registration authority in the province of Québec shows a dramatic decline in Tesla registrations in the first quarter of 2025. Only 524 new Tesla vehicles were registered in Québec between January and March 2025, down over 85% from the 5,097 units logged in the final months of 2024. The company's top-selling Model Y saw the steepest drop in terms of pure numbers, falling from 3,274 units in the final quarter of 2024 to 360 in the first quarter of 2025. The Model 3, Tesla's cheapest car, plunged from 1,786 to just 96 units over the same period, a fall of 94%. While the drop is precipitous, it should be noted that auto sales are generally lower in the first quarter of the year than later in the year. Though confined to one region of Canada, the collapse mirrors similar issues in Europe, where Tesla sales fell by nearly 50% in April despite overall EV demand continuing to grow. In Québec, as in Europe, demand for electric vehicles remains strong, suggesting that Tesla's slump is less about market conditions and more about the brand itself. Several factors appear to be converging. Tesla has been excluded from Canada's federal EV rebate program, with $43 million in rebates frozen and each individual claim now under review. Transport Minister Chrystia Freeland ordered the freeze in March following a last-minute surge in Tesla rebate applications — from 300 a day to nearly 5,800 — which triggered a probe into possible abuse. Freeland also said that Tesla would remain ineligible for future incentives as long as President Donald Trump's 25% tariffs on Canadian goods are in place. In parallel, provinces, including British Columbia, Prince Edward Island, and Manitoba, have removed Tesla from their rebate programs. Tesla's registration drop in Québec also comes amid a broader global backlash, especially in Europe, against CEO Elon Musk, who has endorsed a number of European political parties, including Germany's far-right AfD party and Britain's populist Reform UK party. In North America, Musk's role leading the Department of Government Efficiency has led to protests, boycotts, and vandalism of Tesla dealerships across at least a dozen states. Musk said this week he was stepping away from DOGE after months of involvement as a "special government employee." Federal law stipulates that those with this title cannot serve for more than 130 days in a 365-day period. Tesla's shares, which had come under pressure during Musk's DOGE stint, began rebounding in April after he announced he would step back from government work and "spend 24/7 at work" on his companies. In a Q&A published by Ars Technica on Tuesday, he said he'd been too involved in politics since wading into the 2024 presidential race last year — a campaign he heavily financed to the tune of nearly $300 million. In a sit-down with Bloomberg at the Qatar Economic Forum last week, he said he's no longer going to be spending big on politics, like he did in the 2024 election. Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. Read the original article on Business Insider Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
