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Tesla CEO Elon Musk discussed using the drug ketamine to treat his depression in an interview with journalist Don Lemon.
new York
CNN
—
Elon Musk said he’s “almost always” sober during his late-night — or, in some cases, very early morning — posting sessions on his X social media platform.
The billionaire Tesla CEO’s comments were made in an interview with journalist Don Lemon, during which Musk discussed the use of the drug ketamine. Musk, who is known for his often erratic behavior, has come under scrutiny following recent reports of his alleged drug use and the potential impact on his companies.
“There are times when I have some … negative chemical state in my brain, like depression, I guess, or depression that’s not related to any negative news, and ketamine is helpful for getting out of that negative mindset,” Musk told Lemon. Musk added that he has a prescription for the drug from an “actual, real doctor” and uses “a small amount once every week or so.”
Although Musk said he doesn’t drink and doesn’t “know how to smoke a tranche,” he didn’t specify whether he was talking about ketamine or another substance when he said he was “almost always” sober while posting late at night.
Musk has previously posted on X about the use of prescription ketamine, a drug that is primarily used in hospitals as an anesthetic but is increasingly being studied as a potential treatment for depression, anxiety and other mental conditions. of Musk the comments offer a better insight into the drug use of one of the world’s richest and most powerful people.
Musk denied that he was overdoing the drug, saying, “If you use too much ketamine, you can’t really get work done. I have a lot of work, I usually work 16 hours … so I don’t really have a situation where I’m not mentally alert for an extended period of time.”
Musk said he believes his depression is genetic, adding that he doesn’t believe his ketamine use will affect his companies or their government contracts.
“From a Wall Street perspective, what matters is execution,” he said. “Are you building value for investors? Tesla is worth about as much as the rest of the auto industry combined … so from an investor’s perspective, if there’s something I’m taking, I should keep taking it.”
The wide-ranging 90-minute interview between Musk and Lemon — which kicked off the feud between the two men and led to the end of a planned deal for X to pay Lemon to publish his new streaming show on the platform — covered much more than Musk’s ketamine use, including Musk’s criticism of diversity, equity and inclusion programs and the search for Tesla’s Cybertruck.
Musk also discussed the state of X’s core advertising business, which has suffered since the billionaire acquired the company formerly known as Twitter due to the rise of hateful and controversial content on the platform. Earlier, Musk said advertisers who left X over concerns about anti-Semitic content could “fuck themselves” and accused them of killing the company.
In the interview with Lemon, Musk said that almost all of the company’s advertisers have returned and “it’s a very short list of advertisers that are not coming back to the platform, and our ad revenue is growing rapidly and our subscription revenue is growing rapidly, and I feel very optimistic set up for the future of the X platform.” Still, the billionaire seemed uninterested in tweaking X’s policies to appease advertisers who have left the site.
“You can choose where you want your ad, what you want your advertiser to appear next to, but you can’t insist on censorship of the entire platform,” he said. “If you’re pushing for platform-wide censorship, even when your ad isn’t showing, then obviously we’re not going to want them as an advertiser.”
