August 19, 2025 • 25 mins
In this week’s episode of Elon, Inc., we conclude a series of “jealousy interviews” where we talk to authors of Elon Musk stories we wish we had written. This time, Bloomberg News Musk reporter Dana Hull chats with Kirsten Grind of the New York Times about her May exposé on the alleged campaign trail drug habits of a certain entrepreneur-turned-aspiring political kingmaker.
The conversation covers not only Musk’s reported drug use (which he has denied) but the prevalence of drugs in Silicon Valley and across the tech industry as well. “All these tech guys think they can disrupt everything and they want to also disrupt their health,” Grind says. “So they kind of think they can medicate themselves a lot of the times.” Hull and Grind also talk about the broader themes of Musk’s salad days, back when he juggled not only a grueling schedule but private legal battles involving his many children.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Let me tell you we have a new star.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
A star is born Elan mars Jusan Kennemy. He is
the Thomas Edison plus plus plus of our age. Probably
his whole life is from a position of insecurity. I
feel for the guy. I would say ninety eight percent
really appreciate what he does. But those two percent.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
That are nasty, they are our pay in full folds.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
We were meant for great things in the United States
of America, and Elon reminds us of that.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
I'm very disappointed in Elan.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
I've helped Elon a lot.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Hey, David Papadoppolis here, host of Elan Inc. So today
we've got the last installment of our summer Jealousy series
and we're going out with a bang. Elon ink Stallwart.
Denni Hall interviewed Kirsten gra The New York Times about
the great piece that she co bylined back in the
spring on Musk's growing drug habit on the campaign trail
(01:08):
last year. Now there was, Kirsten reported lots of ketamine, ecstasy,
shrooms and a daily medication box stuffed with all sorts
of pills. Now we should note, Musk has maintained in
the past that beyond a medical prescription for ketamine, he
doesn't enjoy recreational drugs, and then after The Times ran
(01:28):
its story, he posted on social media that he does
not use drugs. Okay, let's dive in enjoy the interview.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Well, Kirsten, thank you so much for joining us. Again.
We have this thing here at Bloomberg called the Jealousy List, where,
you know, we periodically talk about all the great investigative
stories and features that we wish that we ourselves had landed.
And of course, whenever I see your byline, my heart
goes into my throat because I'm like, what does she
have this time? And then lo and behold in may
(01:59):
I wake up and I see your piece about Elon
Musk and kennemine use and psychedelic mushrooms and allegations that
he was using these drugs while he was on the
campaign trail for President Trump. And I guess my first
question is your brand as a journalist is kind of
about being the drug reporter of Silicon Valley. Could you
talk a bit about how that came to be. I
(02:21):
know you wrote a previous book about the former CEO
of Zappos. But how did drug use in Silicon Valley
become your specialty?
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Yeah, thank you so much for having me, Dana, and
I love that question for sure. I like to joke
that if you're doing drugs in Silicon Valley, I will
find you. It's funny I got on that coverage area.
You know, it actually really started by covering billionaires and
(02:49):
the wealthy, because those, unfortunately or fortunately, I guess, go
kind of hand in hand. Before I was at the
New York Times, I was at the Wall Street Journal,
and there I covered, as you mentioned, the entrepreneur Tony Shea,
who was the big Las Vegas developer and CEO of Zappos,
and he had a very big ketamine problem that went
(03:11):
untreated and unfortunately died very young. And then from there,
I don't know if you remember, when the tech executive
Bob Lee died on the streets of San Francisco. So
my colleagues at the Journal and I jumped in there,
and again, drugs ended up being a big part of
that story, and he was involved in this kind of
(03:32):
underground drug world. And so I have just kind of
accumulated I guess you could say a lot of sources
and people who know a lot about like the drug
scene and the party scene here in Silicon Valley and elsewhere.
And it's funny because I am like the most boring
person ever. You know, I have two kids, I live
(03:55):
in a house, Like I am not going out to
these parties. But yeah, I just have sort of landed
on that beat. I guess you could say.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
It's a great beat. I mean, it's the beat that
keeps on giving, right, It's definitely.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
The beat that keeps on giving for sure.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Yeah, and it's interesting too because you know, what I've
noticed is that, you know, I feel like in New
York and Washington, DC, a lot of commerce and a
lot of socializing is very much fueled by alcohol. Then
I moved to California and I was like, oh, like
people here don't really seem to drink that much, but whoo,
there is like a lot of drug use and like
(04:32):
very casual. And then now it's almost like, you know,
as the window has moved and like marijuana is more accepted,
you're seeing people funding psychedelic research and like psychedelic institutes,
and you know it's like every like just doing psychedelics
of all kinds is like widely accepted, you know, there's
burning Man culture, but it's really shifted in a way.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Yeah, And actually, I'm glad you brought that up, because
when I first kind of got into this years ago,
that was one of the most challenging things for me
to figure out was that there were actually two tracks,
especially with psychedelics like ketamine that acts like a psychedelic
or magic mushrooms or any of the others. Is that
(05:15):
there is a track where there is serious research going
on and companies studying these drugs to see how they
can help with depression or PTSD, and then there's the
track of here I am at a party taking like
seven tabs of LSD or something like that. Right, So
the problem is in that gray area in between. That's
(05:38):
the problem you see a lot in Silicon Valley and elsewhere,
is of course everyone out here, right, all these tech
guys think they can disrupt everything, and they want to
also disrupt their health, and so they kind of think
they can medicate themselves a lot of the times. That's
what I saw a lot with Tony Sheah. You know,
(06:00):
he was suffering from depression and other issues, and he thought, well,
I can just treat myself with ketamine, right, And that's
what you continue to see is a lot of people
thinking they can just do it themselves, and really for
that to work, you need to be with a doctor,
you need to be having an administered dose, you need
(06:21):
to have a prescription, and instead you're kind of getting
people who were not using prescriptions and think they can
solve it themselves.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Yeah, So your piece was super interesting because it talked
about how Musk was not just using ketamine but psychedelic
mushrooms and ecstasy while he was on the campaign trail
campaigning for President Trump. And then it said, you know,
it wasn't clear whether that use continued once he became
a special government employee with DOGE, but you know, we
(06:52):
watched him do all kinds of things that seemed bizarre,
from inauguration to being on the stage at SPA with
the chainsaw. And what I noticed when I was watching
that was that Musk was wearing sunglasses. And then I
went down this rabbit hole of like, is there like
a link between kettymine use and pupils being dilated and sunglasses?
(07:13):
And I was just curious if there is, Like, you know,
I didn't read like all the deep papers, But was
that a concern that that was a potential sign of
drug use?
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Then, well, people we had talked to had mentioned especially
that Seapack event. So again that's the one where he
kind of came on stage and Javier Malay gave him
a chainsaw and he was waving it around and talking
very fast and kind of giggling at odd times and
sometimes slurring his words. So we, of course, my colleague
(07:44):
Megan Tuey and I were looked into that episode as well,
because people like us were sort of saying, was that
an example of him being on drugs? I will say
I talked to people around that and they didn't notice
anything out of the ordinary. Behind the scenes. This is
the challenge of covering Elon Musk, as you know, which
(08:08):
is that his baseline, as he himself has said, is
fairly odd, and he's always been, you know, not a
great public speaker, so it's always a little bit hard
to tell like is this abnormal? And so in this reporting,
including at the drug reporting I did on him with
(08:28):
my colleagues at the Wall Street Journal, we really relied
on others around him to tell us does this seem unusual?
We don't want to be the ones making that determination, obviously,
and so in that Seapac moment, we definitely had people
telling us this seems unusual, he's acting unusual. So that's
(08:48):
as far as we got with that one.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Yeah, and again to your point, like the Overton window
for what is unusual form Usk is quite wide because
he has acted unusual in many instances.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Now exactly right, exactly.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
So, Kirsten, my recollection is that your story came out
on a Friday morning, and then that afternoon, Musk was
with Trump in the Oval Office kind of having his
farewell goodbye, and he had a black eye and Trump
gave him a key, and then he was asked quite
specifically about your piece. So were you watching that White
(09:30):
House press conference live?
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Oh? Yeah, we were definitely watching for sure. So that
was like at the end of May. The timing was
completely coincidental. That was all kind of these stories take
a very long time because we obviously are fact checking
to the eleventh degree, seeking comment all of this going
through our various editors, and so that was going on
(09:52):
at the same time that all of this was kind
of happening in Washington with Musk leaving Washington, and so
basically we learned there was a press conference that day,
and we of course wanted to watch, and I think
it was one of the first questions asked, and Elon
immediately just didn't even let the reporter I, if I recall,
(10:16):
correctly asked the question. He kind of just brushed him
off and then started saying something about this lawsuit involving
not Elon but the Pulitzer Board and Trump, and it
just he just kind of sides the deflective question. Yeah,
deflected exactly. And so then Trump later that day was
(10:39):
asked about it. I think as he was he was
going somewhere and said, oh, Elon's great, I don't really care.
Nothing he does would bother me. But then what was
interesting about the timing was then over the weekend, as
you know, the whole situation between those two just evolved,
and suddenly it seemed like the drug issue had been
(11:00):
an issue for Trump that whole time, he just hadn't
said anything about it.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Right, And then it got to the point this was
like a day that I was actually off of work,
But that was when they had like the big meltdown
back and forth, like Trump on truth, Social Musk on X,
and like Trump does not drink and has always had
like an issue I think with substance abuse, or at
least that's my understanding. But did Trump actually say something
about it.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
I don't believe Trump specifically address the drug issue anywhere,
but all of a sudden, all these reports were coming
out from like the Post and even our reporters here
at the Times were saying that one of the issues
that led him to kind of part ways with Elon
was this drug issue. Now, I think we still have
(11:47):
no idea what Trump actually knew or saw or or
was just kind of told. I don't know. I will
say that one thing that makes this reporting, not just
on Elon but drug reporting in general very challenging is
no one is just like at their desk, you know,
snorting cocaine right Like it's this This is all happening
(12:12):
in private, So it's it's very secret. It's not something
that some White House aid is probably gonna have seen
out there.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Right. It's not like Musk is on Air Force one
and the concierge doctor like appears at his side like
buf Fey table of recreational drugs. It's happening privately, but
word gets around. Yeah, so after the big blow up.
A lot of the great details in your piece were
about I mean, I loved the detail about the pillbox
(12:43):
and someone traveling with his kind of dedicated pillbox and aid.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Of some kind.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
And then let's talk a little bit about how while
all this drug use is happening, it's overlapping with this
just like incredible drama in his personal life with his
partners and the mothers of his children. I mean, as
you and I have talked about before, like his obsession
with fertility and his growing brood. People always ask me
eternally how many kids does he have? And I always
(13:09):
say he has fathered fourteen children that we know of. However,
it sounds it sounds like there's like the Japanese pop
star and like who knows how many others there are?
But you know, actually, Saint Clair, I mean, this is
all happening simultaneously. She's obviously a big magat influencer. So
I'm curious, have you and Megan were like tracking the
(13:29):
drug stuff as you learned about the other kids stuff,
or were you sort of working on both simultaneously, like,
because it ended up being a really great overlap capturing
sort of his personal chaos.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
Yeah, exactly, no, thank you. We were definitely hearing kind
of both things, right, And at some point it occurred
to us that these are kind of related and that
it's just the chaos, right, and both of us, me
and you, we've written about this fertility issue, and you know,
I've written about like this compound he was trying to
(14:03):
do in Texas and all of this, for all these
kids and the wives and the partners and all of this,
and it's like, at some point, especially when Ashley Saint
Clair revealed herself earlier this year online, that to me
was when I was like, this feels like it's getting
a little out of control for him. It's not just yeah,
(14:27):
I want to pro create and increase the fertility rates
and I have a couple different partners. This is sort
of like, oh, there's actually other secret women out there
that we don't know about. And it seemed related to
the intensity of his drug use that we were also
(14:47):
kind of hearing about, and so that's why we ended
up combining both those things, because his personal life just yeah,
like you said, seemed so chaotic at a time that
he was really rising to political power that.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Now he's sort of sensibly left Washington. He is making
a lot of pronouncements about how he's back focused on
his companies seven you know, twenty four seven, sleeping at
the factories, like all in on Tesla and Robotics and
Starship is going to fly again. What is your sense
now about the drug use rumors now that he's out
of Washington, has it quieted down a bit? I mean,
(15:24):
you're piece published in late May, right, so it's a
couple months later. Is there any updates?
Speaker 3 (15:30):
Well, I wouldn't want to give anything away here, Yeah,
but I would say that on the company side, with
his drug use, it's been interesting. You know, one thing
we reported in that story that I thought personally was
like almost the most interesting fact was that he was
getting advanced warnings at SpaceX ahead of drug tests. And
(15:52):
so that's a very big deal because SpaceX is a
private company, it's a massive government contract. You can't even
like basically take ivprofen with security clearance without reporting it
to the government. Last year, are my colleagues here and
I reported on all these issues with Elon's security clearance
(16:15):
and how they were not reporting his academy news to
the government. And so now we have reported that he
also was getting heads up ahead of these drug tests.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Also, just note that you guys reached out to SpaceX
for comment, right, the company did not respond.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
Yeah, And so it doesn't to me seem like the
companies are taking it very seriously, at least from the
reporting I've done. I've never heard of an internal investigation.
I've never heard of any repercussions. That's not to say
there haven't been any. Maybe I just have not heard
about it. But it doesn't seem too much like anyone
(16:55):
is doing anything either at SpaceX or Tesla, where again,
board members have over the years known about it and
just you know, nothing's really changed.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
So yeah, I mean I remember way back in twenty
eighteen where he smoked pot with Joe Rogan openly on
his podcast and Rogan was like, are you sure like
you can do this, like you know, our investor is
going to freak out, and Musk was like, oh, well,
isn't it legal? And he sort of took this token.
I was watching it thinking, Okay, Tesla investors may or
(17:26):
may not care, but my gud, SpaceX is going to care,
and NASA is going to care, and the Pentagon is
going to care. And yeah, it was really surprising to
me that he would take that risk, given the security
clearance and given SpaceX's role as such a significant government contractor.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
And they did care as you saw, right care. Yeah,
they came right in, They made them clean up their act.
Like I've talked to a bunch of SpaceX employees about
that time since and you know, there was like drug
sniffing dogs in there. They really cracked down for at
least a couple of years, and then it's it's sort
(18:01):
of unclear like what happens since then? Right right? So, yeah, for.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Sure, the first half of twenty twenty five was crazy
for elong Musk. He was running five companies, balancing all
of these children and these multiple partners, very enmeshed with
the government, basically camped out in either Washington, DC or
mar A Lago with President Trump. Now he's kind of pivoted,
(18:27):
ostensibly left Washington, is back focusing on his companies. He
just celebrated his fifty fourth birthday. So here's a guy
who's like a gen xer, middle aged. He's got a
lot to do in the next several months with his companies.
How do you what do you sort of predict in
terms of I don't know his stress like and how
(18:47):
he's going to manage this as we head into the midterms.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
It kind of to me seems like he left a
little bit defeated in a way, like he is now
back to the day he was already doing. And you know,
he he's being paid essentially ready to come back to
his business umpire right, this new twenty nine billion dollar
(19:11):
pay package from Tesla, and he's back at SpaceX. He
opened this Tesla diner. The whole thing A little bit
feels like, Okay, I'm back to where I was before,
and he was already there. You know when you do
some great achievement and then you feel like you should
be moving forward and instead you go back to what
(19:34):
you once had. So I sort of see him like
trying to do all these things. You know, he's obviously
throwing a ton of resources into Xai, his artificial intelligence startup,
to beat Sam Altman at open Ai, and he's moving
forward on that. But I guess I feel like the
enthusiasm seems a little forced to me. And again, this
(19:54):
is just reading what he's posting on x and everything
going on, So it'll be interesting to see, like how
he continues on with politics. I definitely think there's still
an interest there. It's just where he sort of fits
in is the question. And now, you know, his approval
rating is not great among either party because he alienated
(20:17):
the liberals when he, you know, became Trump's special advisor,
and now he is not loved by a lot of
Republicans either. So it'll be interesting to see what he
does in the midterms for sure.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Yeah, I guess one final question about drug use in
Silicon Valley. Yeah, So there's one school of thought that
all of this is people basically self medicating their own
mental health issues. And Musk has certainly been very public
and alluded to his own mental health issues, his highs,
his lows, you know, his depression. He's talked about red
wine and ambient I mean, he has been very open
(20:51):
about that. There's like another school thought that's like people
are all about trying to optimize, like this whole kind
of trend in terms of health, about like optimizing everything
like your diet, your exercise, your sleep so that you
can have like massive brain function and get to squeeze
the most out of every minute. And for Musk, I mean,
he schedules his time in these like increments that must
(21:14):
be it's crazy given everything that he has to do,
and yet like unwinds by playing video games for hours
on end. When you think about his drug use, do
you feel like it's self medicating or is it like
he's trying to optimize his performance or is it a
combination of both.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
I think it's probably a combination of both. From what
we've heard from people. Some of the pushback we get
on the drug reporting is usually like, but he's doing
so great, so like, let him just keep doing what
he's doing, right. But I guess you know, I will
never kind of get out of my head this experience
(21:51):
I had when I was reporting on Tony Shay to
come back to that again, which I went to this
very high end rehab facility that deals a lot wet
billionaires and celebrities and others, and they said, listen, like,
there is no universe where someone is self medicating. That
it's okay, Like that's that's never okay. Now, I'm not,
(22:13):
of course talking about Elon specifically here, I'm just saying generally,
and so I just always have that in my head
when I talk to people who are self medicating or
who think like you're saying they can optimize, which is
kind of that whole like disrupting your health thing I mentioned, right,
So I don't know it's concerning. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Yeah, And to your point, which I think you made
in this story, like everyone's like, well, he's doing so great,
he's this once in a lifetime character. Just like he's
an adult. He can make us some decisions. Why are
you being so schoolmarmy about it. Stop clutching your pearls.
But to your point, like there are real health effects
which you saw with Tony Shea, I mean exactly.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
I mean that's the big warning. And also, you know,
I think a lot about like why do we care
about someone's drug use? Honestly, and I don't think that
for the average person, we do care. Right, But Elon Musk,
let's just put aside that he's like one of the
world's richest people. He's overseeing six companies, just SpaceX alone,
(23:17):
just SpaceX alone, right, the government contract issue, that alone
should be enough to like look into what drugs he
is or isn't using, because that those rules are very clear.
They're black and white. There's no like, yeah, you can
take a little ketamine on Friday. It's like no, right,
(23:37):
no drugs, And so he provides a really easy way
for why this is an important area to look into.
But ahead of everyone, you know, I've looked into related
to drugs, I'm always asking myself, like, why do we
care about this because I'm not here to like out
someone's occasional like mushroom use at a party, Like that's
(24:00):
not the point of this, right. And also, I mean
he was in the White House, right, so there alone
is like a reason to look into whatever is going
on with him and what he's doing. And so he's
an interesting figure. As you know.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
It's the beat that keeps on giving, you know. So,
and sourcing is so hard and is so high, and
it's one of the great challenges in investigative reporting. It's
and I always am I'm so proud of everyone who's
on the beat. Like every time I see a scoop
from a competitor, I'm just happy because I know how
hard thought it is to get that. So congratulations, Thank
(24:40):
you so much for joining.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
Us, Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
This episode was produced by Stacy Wong and edited by Namasirakas.
Blake Maples handles engineering with help from Joyce Tang and
Dave Purcell fan checks. Our supervising producer is Magnus Henrikson.
The elon In theme is written and performed by take
Yasuzawa and Alex Sugira. Sage Bauman is the head of
Bloomberg Podcasts. A big thanks to our supporters Joel Webber
(25:14):
and Brad Stone. I'm David Papadopoulos. If you have a minute,
rate and review our show, it'll help other listeners find us.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
See you next week.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Let me tell you we have a new star.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
A star is born Elan mars Jusan Kennemy. He is
the Thomas Edison plus plus plus of our age. Probably
his whole life is from a position of insecurity. I
feel for the guy. I would say ninety eight percent
really appreciate what he does. But those two percent.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
That are nasty, they are our pay in full folds.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
We were meant for great things in the United States
of America, and Elon reminds us of that.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
I'm very disappointed in Elan.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
I've helped Elon a lot.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Hey, David Papadoppolis here, host of Elan Inc. So today
we've got the last installment of our summer Jealousy series
and we're going out with a bang. Elon ink Stallwart.
Denni Hall interviewed Kirsten gra The New York Times about
the great piece that she co bylined back in the
spring on Musk's growing drug habit on the campaign trail
(01:08):
last year. Now there was, Kirsten reported lots of ketamine, ecstasy,
shrooms and a daily medication box stuffed with all sorts
of pills. Now we should note, Musk has maintained in
the past that beyond a medical prescription for ketamine, he
doesn't enjoy recreational drugs, and then after The Times ran
(01:28):
its story, he posted on social media that he does
not use drugs. Okay, let's dive in enjoy the interview.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Well, Kirsten, thank you so much for joining us. Again.
We have this thing here at Bloomberg called the Jealousy List, where,
you know, we periodically talk about all the great investigative
stories and features that we wish that we ourselves had landed.
And of course, whenever I see your byline, my heart
goes into my throat because I'm like, what does she
have this time? And then lo and behold in may
(01:59):
I wake up and I see your piece about Elon
Musk and kennemine use and psychedelic mushrooms and allegations that
he was using these drugs while he was on the
campaign trail for President Trump. And I guess my first
question is your brand as a journalist is kind of
about being the drug reporter of Silicon Valley. Could you
talk a bit about how that came to be. I
(02:21):
know you wrote a previous book about the former CEO
of Zappos. But how did drug use in Silicon Valley
become your specialty?
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Yeah, thank you so much for having me, Dana, and
I love that question for sure. I like to joke
that if you're doing drugs in Silicon Valley, I will
find you. It's funny I got on that coverage area.
You know, it actually really started by covering billionaires and
(02:49):
the wealthy, because those, unfortunately or fortunately, I guess, go
kind of hand in hand. Before I was at the
New York Times, I was at the Wall Street Journal,
and there I covered, as you mentioned, the entrepreneur Tony Shea,
who was the big Las Vegas developer and CEO of Zappos,
and he had a very big ketamine problem that went
(03:11):
untreated and unfortunately died very young. And then from there,
I don't know if you remember, when the tech executive
Bob Lee died on the streets of San Francisco. So
my colleagues at the Journal and I jumped in there,
and again, drugs ended up being a big part of
that story, and he was involved in this kind of
(03:32):
underground drug world. And so I have just kind of
accumulated I guess you could say a lot of sources
and people who know a lot about like the drug
scene and the party scene here in Silicon Valley and elsewhere.
And it's funny because I am like the most boring
person ever. You know, I have two kids, I live
(03:55):
in a house, Like I am not going out to
these parties. But yeah, I just have sort of landed
on that beat. I guess you could say.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
It's a great beat. I mean, it's the beat that
keeps on giving, right, It's definitely.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
The beat that keeps on giving for sure.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Yeah, and it's interesting too because you know, what I've
noticed is that, you know, I feel like in New
York and Washington, DC, a lot of commerce and a
lot of socializing is very much fueled by alcohol. Then
I moved to California and I was like, oh, like
people here don't really seem to drink that much, but whoo,
there is like a lot of drug use and like
(04:32):
very casual. And then now it's almost like, you know,
as the window has moved and like marijuana is more accepted,
you're seeing people funding psychedelic research and like psychedelic institutes,
and you know it's like every like just doing psychedelics
of all kinds is like widely accepted, you know, there's
burning Man culture, but it's really shifted in a way.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Yeah, And actually, I'm glad you brought that up, because
when I first kind of got into this years ago,
that was one of the most challenging things for me
to figure out was that there were actually two tracks,
especially with psychedelics like ketamine that acts like a psychedelic
or magic mushrooms or any of the others. Is that
(05:15):
there is a track where there is serious research going
on and companies studying these drugs to see how they
can help with depression or PTSD, and then there's the
track of here I am at a party taking like
seven tabs of LSD or something like that. Right, So
the problem is in that gray area in between. That's
(05:38):
the problem you see a lot in Silicon Valley and elsewhere,
is of course everyone out here, right, all these tech
guys think they can disrupt everything, and they want to
also disrupt their health, and so they kind of think
they can medicate themselves a lot of the times. That's
what I saw a lot with Tony Sheah. You know,
(06:00):
he was suffering from depression and other issues, and he thought, well,
I can just treat myself with ketamine, right, And that's
what you continue to see is a lot of people
thinking they can just do it themselves, and really for
that to work, you need to be with a doctor,
you need to be having an administered dose, you need
(06:21):
to have a prescription, and instead you're kind of getting
people who were not using prescriptions and think they can
solve it themselves.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Yeah, So your piece was super interesting because it talked
about how Musk was not just using ketamine but psychedelic
mushrooms and ecstasy while he was on the campaign trail
campaigning for President Trump. And then it said, you know,
it wasn't clear whether that use continued once he became
a special government employee with DOGE, but you know, we
(06:52):
watched him do all kinds of things that seemed bizarre,
from inauguration to being on the stage at SPA with
the chainsaw. And what I noticed when I was watching
that was that Musk was wearing sunglasses. And then I
went down this rabbit hole of like, is there like
a link between kettymine use and pupils being dilated and sunglasses?
(07:13):
And I was just curious if there is, Like, you know,
I didn't read like all the deep papers, But was
that a concern that that was a potential sign of
drug use?
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Then, well, people we had talked to had mentioned especially
that Seapack event. So again that's the one where he
kind of came on stage and Javier Malay gave him
a chainsaw and he was waving it around and talking
very fast and kind of giggling at odd times and
sometimes slurring his words. So we, of course, my colleague
(07:44):
Megan Tuey and I were looked into that episode as well,
because people like us were sort of saying, was that
an example of him being on drugs? I will say
I talked to people around that and they didn't notice
anything out of the ordinary. Behind the scenes. This is
the challenge of covering Elon Musk, as you know, which
(08:08):
is that his baseline, as he himself has said, is
fairly odd, and he's always been, you know, not a
great public speaker, so it's always a little bit hard
to tell like is this abnormal? And so in this reporting,
including at the drug reporting I did on him with
(08:28):
my colleagues at the Wall Street Journal, we really relied
on others around him to tell us does this seem unusual?
We don't want to be the ones making that determination, obviously,
and so in that Seapac moment, we definitely had people
telling us this seems unusual, he's acting unusual. So that's
(08:48):
as far as we got with that one.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Yeah, and again to your point, like the Overton window
for what is unusual form Usk is quite wide because
he has acted unusual in many instances.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Now exactly right, exactly.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
So, Kirsten, my recollection is that your story came out
on a Friday morning, and then that afternoon, Musk was
with Trump in the Oval Office kind of having his
farewell goodbye, and he had a black eye and Trump
gave him a key, and then he was asked quite
specifically about your piece. So were you watching that White
(09:30):
House press conference live?
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Oh? Yeah, we were definitely watching for sure. So that
was like at the end of May. The timing was
completely coincidental. That was all kind of these stories take
a very long time because we obviously are fact checking
to the eleventh degree, seeking comment all of this going
through our various editors, and so that was going on
(09:52):
at the same time that all of this was kind
of happening in Washington with Musk leaving Washington, and so
basically we learned there was a press conference that day,
and we of course wanted to watch, and I think
it was one of the first questions asked, and Elon
immediately just didn't even let the reporter I, if I recall,
(10:16):
correctly asked the question. He kind of just brushed him
off and then started saying something about this lawsuit involving
not Elon but the Pulitzer Board and Trump, and it
just he just kind of sides the deflective question. Yeah,
deflected exactly. And so then Trump later that day was
(10:39):
asked about it. I think as he was he was
going somewhere and said, oh, Elon's great, I don't really care.
Nothing he does would bother me. But then what was
interesting about the timing was then over the weekend, as
you know, the whole situation between those two just evolved,
and suddenly it seemed like the drug issue had been
(11:00):
an issue for Trump that whole time, he just hadn't
said anything about it.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Right, And then it got to the point this was
like a day that I was actually off of work,
But that was when they had like the big meltdown
back and forth, like Trump on truth, Social Musk on X,
and like Trump does not drink and has always had
like an issue I think with substance abuse, or at
least that's my understanding. But did Trump actually say something
about it.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
I don't believe Trump specifically address the drug issue anywhere,
but all of a sudden, all these reports were coming
out from like the Post and even our reporters here
at the Times were saying that one of the issues
that led him to kind of part ways with Elon
was this drug issue. Now, I think we still have
(11:47):
no idea what Trump actually knew or saw or or
was just kind of told. I don't know. I will
say that one thing that makes this reporting, not just
on Elon but drug reporting in general very challenging is
no one is just like at their desk, you know,
snorting cocaine right Like it's this This is all happening
(12:12):
in private, So it's it's very secret. It's not something
that some White House aid is probably gonna have seen
out there.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Right. It's not like Musk is on Air Force one
and the concierge doctor like appears at his side like
buf Fey table of recreational drugs. It's happening privately, but
word gets around. Yeah, so after the big blow up.
A lot of the great details in your piece were
about I mean, I loved the detail about the pillbox
(12:43):
and someone traveling with his kind of dedicated pillbox and aid.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Of some kind.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
And then let's talk a little bit about how while
all this drug use is happening, it's overlapping with this
just like incredible drama in his personal life with his
partners and the mothers of his children. I mean, as
you and I have talked about before, like his obsession
with fertility and his growing brood. People always ask me
eternally how many kids does he have? And I always
(13:09):
say he has fathered fourteen children that we know of. However,
it sounds it sounds like there's like the Japanese pop
star and like who knows how many others there are?
But you know, actually, Saint Clair, I mean, this is
all happening simultaneously. She's obviously a big magat influencer. So
I'm curious, have you and Megan were like tracking the
(13:29):
drug stuff as you learned about the other kids stuff,
or were you sort of working on both simultaneously, like,
because it ended up being a really great overlap capturing
sort of his personal chaos.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
Yeah, exactly, no, thank you. We were definitely hearing kind
of both things, right, And at some point it occurred
to us that these are kind of related and that
it's just the chaos, right, and both of us, me
and you, we've written about this fertility issue, and you know,
I've written about like this compound he was trying to
(14:03):
do in Texas and all of this, for all these
kids and the wives and the partners and all of this,
and it's like, at some point, especially when Ashley Saint
Clair revealed herself earlier this year online, that to me
was when I was like, this feels like it's getting
a little out of control for him. It's not just yeah,
(14:27):
I want to pro create and increase the fertility rates
and I have a couple different partners. This is sort
of like, oh, there's actually other secret women out there
that we don't know about. And it seemed related to
the intensity of his drug use that we were also
(14:47):
kind of hearing about, and so that's why we ended
up combining both those things, because his personal life just yeah,
like you said, seemed so chaotic at a time that
he was really rising to political power that.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Now he's sort of sensibly left Washington. He is making
a lot of pronouncements about how he's back focused on
his companies seven you know, twenty four seven, sleeping at
the factories, like all in on Tesla and Robotics and
Starship is going to fly again. What is your sense
now about the drug use rumors now that he's out
of Washington, has it quieted down a bit? I mean,
(15:24):
you're piece published in late May, right, so it's a
couple months later. Is there any updates?
Speaker 3 (15:30):
Well, I wouldn't want to give anything away here, Yeah,
but I would say that on the company side, with
his drug use, it's been interesting. You know, one thing
we reported in that story that I thought personally was
like almost the most interesting fact was that he was
getting advanced warnings at SpaceX ahead of drug tests. And
(15:52):
so that's a very big deal because SpaceX is a
private company, it's a massive government contract. You can't even
like basically take ivprofen with security clearance without reporting it
to the government. Last year, are my colleagues here and
I reported on all these issues with Elon's security clearance
(16:15):
and how they were not reporting his academy news to
the government. And so now we have reported that he
also was getting heads up ahead of these drug tests.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Also, just note that you guys reached out to SpaceX
for comment, right, the company did not respond.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
Yeah, And so it doesn't to me seem like the
companies are taking it very seriously, at least from the
reporting I've done. I've never heard of an internal investigation.
I've never heard of any repercussions. That's not to say
there haven't been any. Maybe I just have not heard
about it. But it doesn't seem too much like anyone
(16:55):
is doing anything either at SpaceX or Tesla, where again,
board members have over the years known about it and
just you know, nothing's really changed.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
So yeah, I mean I remember way back in twenty
eighteen where he smoked pot with Joe Rogan openly on
his podcast and Rogan was like, are you sure like
you can do this, like you know, our investor is
going to freak out, and Musk was like, oh, well,
isn't it legal? And he sort of took this token.
I was watching it thinking, Okay, Tesla investors may or
(17:26):
may not care, but my gud, SpaceX is going to care,
and NASA is going to care, and the Pentagon is
going to care. And yeah, it was really surprising to
me that he would take that risk, given the security
clearance and given SpaceX's role as such a significant government contractor.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
And they did care as you saw, right care. Yeah,
they came right in, They made them clean up their act.
Like I've talked to a bunch of SpaceX employees about
that time since and you know, there was like drug
sniffing dogs in there. They really cracked down for at
least a couple of years, and then it's it's sort
(18:01):
of unclear like what happens since then? Right right? So, yeah, for.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Sure, the first half of twenty twenty five was crazy
for elong Musk. He was running five companies, balancing all
of these children and these multiple partners, very enmeshed with
the government, basically camped out in either Washington, DC or
mar A Lago with President Trump. Now he's kind of pivoted,
(18:27):
ostensibly left Washington, is back focusing on his companies. He
just celebrated his fifty fourth birthday. So here's a guy
who's like a gen xer, middle aged. He's got a
lot to do in the next several months with his companies.
How do you what do you sort of predict in
terms of I don't know his stress like and how
(18:47):
he's going to manage this as we head into the midterms.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
It kind of to me seems like he left a
little bit defeated in a way, like he is now
back to the day he was already doing. And you know,
he he's being paid essentially ready to come back to
his business umpire right, this new twenty nine billion dollar
(19:11):
pay package from Tesla, and he's back at SpaceX. He
opened this Tesla diner. The whole thing A little bit
feels like, Okay, I'm back to where I was before,
and he was already there. You know when you do
some great achievement and then you feel like you should
be moving forward and instead you go back to what
(19:34):
you once had. So I sort of see him like
trying to do all these things. You know, he's obviously
throwing a ton of resources into Xai, his artificial intelligence startup,
to beat Sam Altman at open Ai, and he's moving
forward on that. But I guess I feel like the
enthusiasm seems a little forced to me. And again, this
(19:54):
is just reading what he's posting on x and everything
going on, So it'll be interesting to see, like how
he continues on with politics. I definitely think there's still
an interest there. It's just where he sort of fits
in is the question. And now, you know, his approval
rating is not great among either party because he alienated
(20:17):
the liberals when he, you know, became Trump's special advisor,
and now he is not loved by a lot of
Republicans either. So it'll be interesting to see what he
does in the midterms for sure.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Yeah, I guess one final question about drug use in
Silicon Valley. Yeah, So there's one school of thought that
all of this is people basically self medicating their own
mental health issues. And Musk has certainly been very public
and alluded to his own mental health issues, his highs,
his lows, you know, his depression. He's talked about red
wine and ambient I mean, he has been very open
(20:51):
about that. There's like another school thought that's like people
are all about trying to optimize, like this whole kind
of trend in terms of health, about like optimizing everything
like your diet, your exercise, your sleep so that you
can have like massive brain function and get to squeeze
the most out of every minute. And for Musk, I mean,
he schedules his time in these like increments that must
(21:14):
be it's crazy given everything that he has to do,
and yet like unwinds by playing video games for hours
on end. When you think about his drug use, do
you feel like it's self medicating or is it like
he's trying to optimize his performance or is it a
combination of both.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
I think it's probably a combination of both. From what
we've heard from people. Some of the pushback we get
on the drug reporting is usually like, but he's doing
so great, so like, let him just keep doing what
he's doing, right. But I guess you know, I will
never kind of get out of my head this experience
(21:51):
I had when I was reporting on Tony Shay to
come back to that again, which I went to this
very high end rehab facility that deals a lot wet
billionaires and celebrities and others, and they said, listen, like,
there is no universe where someone is self medicating. That
it's okay, Like that's that's never okay. Now, I'm not,
(22:13):
of course talking about Elon specifically here, I'm just saying generally,
and so I just always have that in my head
when I talk to people who are self medicating or
who think like you're saying they can optimize, which is
kind of that whole like disrupting your health thing I mentioned, right,
So I don't know it's concerning. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Yeah, And to your point, which I think you made
in this story, like everyone's like, well, he's doing so great,
he's this once in a lifetime character. Just like he's
an adult. He can make us some decisions. Why are
you being so schoolmarmy about it. Stop clutching your pearls.
But to your point, like there are real health effects
which you saw with Tony Shea, I mean exactly.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
I mean that's the big warning. And also, you know,
I think a lot about like why do we care
about someone's drug use? Honestly, and I don't think that
for the average person, we do care. Right, But Elon Musk,
let's just put aside that he's like one of the
world's richest people. He's overseeing six companies, just SpaceX alone,
(23:17):
just SpaceX alone, right, the government contract issue, that alone
should be enough to like look into what drugs he
is or isn't using, because that those rules are very clear.
They're black and white. There's no like, yeah, you can
take a little ketamine on Friday. It's like no, right,
(23:37):
no drugs, And so he provides a really easy way
for why this is an important area to look into.
But ahead of everyone, you know, I've looked into related
to drugs, I'm always asking myself, like, why do we
care about this because I'm not here to like out
someone's occasional like mushroom use at a party, Like that's
(24:00):
not the point of this, right. And also, I mean
he was in the White House, right, so there alone
is like a reason to look into whatever is going
on with him and what he's doing. And so he's
an interesting figure. As you know.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
It's the beat that keeps on giving, you know. So,
and sourcing is so hard and is so high, and
it's one of the great challenges in investigative reporting. It's
and I always am I'm so proud of everyone who's
on the beat. Like every time I see a scoop
from a competitor, I'm just happy because I know how
hard thought it is to get that. So congratulations, Thank
(24:40):
you so much for joining.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
Us, Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
This episode was produced by Stacy Wong and edited by Namasirakas.
Blake Maples handles engineering with help from Joyce Tang and
Dave Purcell fan checks. Our supervising producer is Magnus Henrikson.
The elon In theme is written and performed by take
Yasuzawa and Alex Sugira. Sage Bauman is the head of
Bloomberg Podcasts. A big thanks to our supporters Joel Webber
(25:14):
and Brad Stone. I'm David Papadopoulos. If you have a minute,
rate and review our show, it'll help other listeners find us.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
See you next week.
Host
David Papadopoulos
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