Upon closer calculation, Musk is now in charge of six companies:
Tesla, Twitter, rocket-building SpaceX, brain-computer interface Neuralink, tunnel-digging Boring, and the newly opened artificial intelligence company xAI.
Even if I give each company one day a week, I can only say that I am barely able to practice time management to the extreme.
(Elon Musk's Big Six)
When he bought Twitter, the world discovered his time management secret: he never rested.
One day, just a few weeks after he took over Twitter, employees woke up to find an extra email in their mailbox, sent by Musk in the middle of the night, asking them to work crazy overtime with him or they would leave with severance pay.
He's a workaholic in the truest sense of the word, and he sees overtime as the norm and really doesn't think there's anything wrong with it.
His company often reports negative news about the pressure of work, because in his eyes, employees work overtime with him "for granted", and he is even more ruthless with himself.
It makes sense that such a workaholic is in charge of 6 companies.
However, there is a revelation today, and there may be something else that can support his crazy work....
WSJ found a group of people in the know, some of whom had even seen him take drugs with their own eyes.
According to them, Musk often uses drugs at private parties around the world, smoking a variety of things, including hallucinogens (LSD), cocaine, ecstasy, hallucinogenic mushrooms and ketamine.
For example, in 2018, he knocked several hallucinogens at a party in Los Angeles, and in 2019, he ate hallucinogenic mushrooms at an event in Mexico.
And he not only smokes himself, but also brings others with him.
In 2021, at a family gathering during the Basel art show in Miami, he took ketamine with his younger brother, Kimbal Musk;
In June last year, Musk's younger siblings participated in the nation's largest psychedelic seminar (some studies say psychedelics can reduce the risk of suicide) and spoke on stage.
Kimbar tweeted in support of his wife, saying that he was very proud of her, and it seemed that the family was quite supportive of psychedelics.
(Kimbar tweets in support of his wife)
In addition, Steve Jurvetson, a former Tesla board member and current SpaceX board member, has also taken illegal drugs with Musk.
(Steve Jurvetson和马斯克)
The reason why there has been no news for so many years is because you have to sign a non-disclosure agreement before entering those private parties, or you can't bring your mobile phone.
However, there are still some traces of drug use. At the end of 2017, SpaceX held a corporate event, and hundreds of employees waited for Musk to come to the meeting at the mission center in California, but he was nearly an hour late.
When he finally began to speak, he behaved strangely, speaking vaguely and incomprehensibly, and repeatedly making inappropriate jokes,
说SpaceX的“大猎鹰”火箭叫Big Falcon Rocket，谐音就是“Big Fxxking Rocket”.......
In the end, President Gwynne Shotwell had no choice but to interrupt him and lead the meeting herself.
In fact, the company's executives had a guess at that time: Musk was afraid that he was not angry.
By 2018, he smoked marijuana on Joe Rogan's podcast, and public opinion was in an uproar.
(Musk smokes marijuana)
Within a week, Tesla's stock price plummeted 9%, and the company's accounting and human resources directors resigned on the same day;
His other company, SpaceX, is also being investigated by the U.S. Air Force because it has several large contracts with the military.
(Air Force Survey SpaceX)
However, due to the legalization of marijuana in some countries and regions, this matter was regarded as a joke to some extent, and netizens turned the footage of his smoking into a meme, and it passed after playing for a while.
By 2023, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk was using small doses of ketamine to treat depression and was privately using higher doses for "entertainment."
Soon, Musk expressed a positive attitude towards ketamine on Twitter:
"In the U.S., people diagnosed with depression aren't necessarily depressed, but for some people, it's a problem with brain chemistry. ”
"But there's no doubt that doctors overprescribing SSRIs (an umbrella term for antidepressant anxiety medications) have led to zombification of patients. ”
"From my friends' experience, taking ketamine once in a while is a better option. ”
(Musk's exact words)
In addition, a search for "ketamine" on his Twitter can also see that he has repeatedly expressed similar views:
"I've seen definitely more people who have been helped by psychedelics and ketamine than by SSRIs and amphetamines. ”
"In my opinion, it's much better to take ketamine once in a while. I am sometimes particularly negative, for which I prepared a prescription (prescribing ketamine). ”
(Musk's exact words)
This is also his own admission that he will take ketamine.
may be in Musk's eyes, marijuana and ketamine have been partially legalized, so it is not considered to break the bottom line.
However, we just talked about the cause of death of "Friends" actor Matthew Perry a while ago - ketamine overdose.
He was also exposed to ketamine for depression and eventually died from it.
(Matthew Perry died of ketamine)
The so-called "safe" ketamine is still like this, not to mention the other messy things that Musk smokes.
You must know that sitting in his position, once he has an accident, I don't know how many people's stocks will fall, and how many employees' jobs will be lost.
People around him said they were worried that something was wrong with him, and even if he was fine, his business might be affected.
Even if even business is fine, then SpaceX still cooperates with the Pentagon and NASA, and the US space program may be disrupted........
(SpaceX的 NASA LOGO)
As a result, too many people do not want him to take drugs, and it is not only the disgust of the drugs themselves. I really can't control him, so I can only find an opportunity to cut the table.
The representative of the "Split Faction" is Linda Johnson Rice, who joined Tesla's board of directors in 2017 but quit after only two years.
She was very worried about Musk's capriciousness and drug rumors, and once asked if she wanted to launch an investigation against him, but was refused.
By the time the board of directors changed in 2019, she took the initiative to seek non-re-election and decisively cut off from Musk.
(Linda Johnson Rice)
However, it is undeniable that following Musk can indeed make money, so not everyone respects him like Rice, and Musk is famous for his love of words, so they can only endure it.
According to people familiar with the matter, Tesla's current board chairman, Robyn Denholm, as well as a number of other directors, have long heard about Musk's drug use rumors and have been talking to each other privately for years, but it is also limited to private, and there is no formal meeting.
By 2018, Musk tweeted that he was considering getting Tesla out of the stock market at $420 per share and going private.
And in rap, 420 is the code for smoking marijuana.
(420 is often associated with marijuana)
Musk may think he has a good sense of humor, but his words and deeds represent the attitude of his company, and this tweet frightened the directors - this kid shouldn't be taking drugs again, right?
In the end, they came up with a solution: his brother Kimbal, who was also one of the directors, asked him to intervene.
The exact words were: "They sought his help to solve the problem of Musk's behavior." At this point, they still only dare to talk about "behavioral problems" and avoid the word "drugs" like snakes and scorpions.
In the end, the result of Musk's "humor" was that the US Securities and Exchange Commission opened an investigation against Tesla, and the company was in turmoil, and Musk himself was forced to temporarily resign as chairman.
Ignoring his jokes and looking at the results is really humorous......
(Elon Musk)
In fact, in other companies, the board of directors does not need it at all, and it will not be so cautious. It doesn't matter if you are a real drug addict or a fake drug user, as long as your words and actions have an impact on your business, you will have to bear the consequences.
In 2020, Tony Hsieh, the CEO of shoe company Zappos, was exposed for abusing ketamine, leading to parent company Amazon stepping in and suspending Xie from his job and limiting him to quit within a few months.
But in the end, Xie didn't quit, so he had to leave the company gloomily. At the end of the year he locked himself in a shack, which caught fire and he burned to death inside.
Cigarettes, laughing gas bottles, marijuana pipes and wine bottles were found at the scene, and no one knew whether he was begging for death or smoking and playing around, and it didn't matter if he was gone.
(Tony Shea)
After reading him, and then looking at Tesla's group of directors who are walking on thin ice, I can only say that the fate of people is really very different......
Speaking of Musk, because he openly smoked marijuana and mentioned 420, the regulators were staring at him very closely. In the United States, there is a "Drug-Free Workplace Act", which literally means that drugs cannot be present in the workplace.
The U.S. government has signed a large contract of more than $14 billion with SpaceX, and it is even more impossible to tolerate sand in its eyes.
After he openly smoked marijuana in 2018, NASA asked SpaceX to write a letter of guarantee that they would comply with the Drug-Free Workplace Act.
A year-long drug test was also carried out at the division, culminating in a further $5 million spent on staff training.
During this period, executives of Musk's other companies also began to warn employees to comply with the company's rules, in fact, to ask them not to take drugs, even outside the office, for fear that regulators would investigate.
According to people familiar with the matter, SpaceX even randomly appeared drug detection dogs at that time to ensure that employees were not carrying drugs.......
(Schematic diagram)
Starting a company to this point can be regarded as his contribution to the anti-drug cause.......
Of course, Musk himself will definitely not admit it, a while ago "Musk's Biography" was published, and he said in it:
“我真的不喜欢吸非法药品（I really don't like doing illegal drugs）。 ”
I don't know if this should be interpreted as "legal drugs don't matter........
The Wall Street Journal also reached out to Musk, and unsurprisingly, he did not respond.
His lawyer, Alex Spiro, who claimed he could represent Tesla, refuted WSJ's claims, saying that Musk was "regularly checked and randomly spot-checked" at SpaceX and never failed.
In addition, "the other statements in this article are not entirely untrue." As for what is not true, he did not elaborate.
(Alex Spiro)
Again, to a large extent, Musk's life is no longer only his own. He has lost the privilege of telling bad jokes at will and fooling around like a young man.
Sadly, he himself doesn't seem to be aware of this.
It is foreseeable that after the release of this report, the number of investors who are optimistic about his company will decrease. That is, the U.S. stock market is closed over the weekend, otherwise Tesla's stock price would probably have collapsed at this time......
When the market opens tomorrow, it will be another tragedy......