Concerns Arise at Tesla, SpaceX Regarding Musk’s Drug Usage

Billionaire Tesla and SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk reportedly has some of the companies’ higher-ups worried about his drug use.

The world’s wealthiest person has used LSD, cocaine, ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms, often at parties where attendees sign nondisclosure agreements, according to the Wall Street Journal.

He’s also smoked marijuana in public and has claimed he’s got a prescription for the anesthetic ketamine, the outlet noted.

But people close to the 52-year-old contrarian are worried the drug use could cause a health crisis — as well as damage his businesses, the Journal reported.

Musk didn’t respond to requests for comment.

But a lawyer for Musk, Alex Spiro, said Musk is “regularly and randomly drug tested at SpaceX and has never failed a test.” Spiro, who said he represents Tesla, also told the Journal “there are other false facts” in its article, though he didn’t specify what they were.

According to the Journal, people around Musk became accustomed to his unpredictable behavior. Some SpaceX executives, however, noticed a change at a company event in late 2017, where Musk was nearly an hour late for a company meeting.

Hundreds of SpaceX employees had gathered around mission control at the rocket company’s headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif., waiting for Musk, who showed nearly an hour late, the Journal reported.

When he took the stage, he was oddly incomprehensible at times, according to the Journal, slurring words, rambling and referring repeatedly to SpaceX’s Big Falcon Rocket prototype, which was known as BFR, as “Big F—ing Rocket.”

One unnamed attendee told the Journal the event as “nonsensical,” “unhinged” and “cringeworthy.”

Spiro called the SpaceX incident “false as has been confirmed by countless people who were present,” the Journal reported.

In 2018, when Musk got into trouble with NASA for smoking marijuana on the Joe Rogan show, SpaceX began randomly testing employees for drugs.

According to the Journal, some Tesla board members and people close to Musk worried he was on drugs when he tweeted in 2018 about plans to take Tesla private; he later agreed to step down as chairman for a time.

In 2023, the Journal reported Musk microdoses ketamine for depression and also takes full doses at parties. Following publication of the article, Musk tweeted that ketamine is a better way to deal with depression compared with more widely prescribed antidepressants that are “zombifying” people.

At Tesla, the code of conduct described the electric-vehicle maker as a drug-free workplace and prohibits all employees, including executives, from using them, even out of the office. Illegal drug use by employees is also in violation of the rules that govern the more than $14 billion in contracts that Musk’s private rocket company, SpaceX, has with the U.S. government for civilian and military space missions.

In the summer of 2018, some people around the billionaire at Tesla began getting concerned that he was losing control, the Journal reported. And several months after the all-hands meeting at SpaceX, Musk tweeted in August that he planned to take Tesla private at $420 a share—“420” is slang for smoking marijuana — and that he had “funding secured.”

He told the New York Times at the time that “This past year has been the most difficult and painful year of my career.” Soon after that, Musk smoked marijuana on the comedian Rogan’s show.