Excessive use of ketamine can make you feel like you’re ruling the world. And that suits Elon Musk.
Last month, at the Conservative Political Action Conference – CPAC 2025, while enthusiastically waving a chainsaw handed to him by another illustrious agitated figure, Argentine President Javier Milei, Elon Musk stumbled over words and wondered if there really is gold stored at Fort Knox, the United States’ bullion depository, and users of his social media platform X started posting about ketamine.
Musk said he regularly uses ketamine, so over the past two years, public speculation has persisted about how much he takes, whether he is under its influence in some public appearances, or how it could affect his behavior, writes The Atlantic.
Last year, Musk told CNN's Don Lemon that he has a ketamine prescription and uses the drug about once every two weeks to help with depression symptoms. When Lemon asked if he had ever abused ketamine, Musk replied: "I don't think so. If you use too much ketamine, you can't really do your job." And he added that investors in his companies should want him to continue taking the drug.
Not everyone is convinced. The Wall Street Journal reported that Musk uses ketamine for recreational purposes, and in 2023 Ronan Farrow wrote in The New Yorker that Musk's "associates" were concerned that the drug, "along with isolation and his increasingly contentious relationship with the press, could contribute to his tendency to make chaotic and impulsive statements and decisions."
Restructuring the government under the influence of ketamine
Ketamine is considered a dissociative drug because during its approximately one-hour effect, people may feel detached from their bodies, emotions, or the passage of time.
Intensive recreational use - several times a week, for example - has been linked to cognitive effects that last longer than the ketamine's effect, including memory disorders, irrational, delirious thinking, superstitious beliefs, and a sense of self-importance.
Therefore, it is clear why people are questioning the ketamine consumption of someone who aims to create a multiplanetary human life, who has entered global politics, and is trying to restructure the US government.
With Musk's new political power, his cognitive and psychological health is a concern not only for his company's shareholders but for all Americans. His late-night posts on X, mass emails to federal employees, gestures he makes, and the nonsensical statements he utters on television have raised even more questions about his drug use.
But what effect does ketamine actually have on the brain and how can it influence one of the most influential people in the Trump administration? Let's see what the scientific data and experts consulted by the American magazine say.
First, a brief history:
Ketamine's great power has always been its ability to detach those who use it from the world around them. It was first approved as an anesthetic in 1970 because it could make people lose consciousness without affecting their breathing quality.
In the '90s, it became a street drug known as Special K, sought after for the euphoric states it produced. Then, in the 2000s, researchers discovered that ketamine doses that did not put users to sleep could rapidly reduce depression symptoms, as it was believed the drug altered the brain's physical circuits.
In 2019, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a nasal spray containing a form of ketamine, called esketamine, sold under the brand name Spravato, for patients with depression who did not respond to other treatments.
Spravato came on the market with a set of rules on how the drug should be administered, namely in a medically certified setting by a healthcare professional and with limited doses, depending on how long the person has been under treatment.
However, the approval for Spravato was followed by an increase in prescriptions for generic ketamine, which, already approved by the FDA as an anesthetic, can be administered without following the rules applied to esketamine. Recreational use has increased in the past decade. For example, some providers associate low-dose injections with speech therapy.
Across America, so-called personalized ketamine treatment clinics offer injections and pills to treat a wide variety of mental health conditions, including anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
A market report estimated that the ketamine industry reached nearly $3.5 billion in 2023.
Outside the healthcare system, the drug is popular among the technological elite in Silicon Valley and is ubiquitous in some wellness centers, including those for leadership development, corporate team building, or couples counseling.
How does ketamine distort reality
Research has not fully established the long-term side effects of ketamine therapy, but older studies on recreational users offer a perspective on high and prolonged dosages.
According to a 2010 study, those who used ketamine, on average, about three times a month, had worse results in terms of chaotic thinking than former ketamine users, people who used other drugs, and people who did not use drugs at all. Those who had an average of 20 uses per month had even poorer results.
People believed they were the sole recipients of secret messages or that society and the people around them agreed with them.
The psychological profile of a frequent ketamine user was this: a person with "profound" short and long-term memory deficiencies and who was "distinctly dissociated in everyday life."
In most cases, stopping ketamine administration dramatically reduces these side effects, researchers concluded.
Psychedelic substance enthusiasts have been warning for decades about the dangers of prolonged ketamine use, including the risks of severe bladder injuries, intense stomach cramps, and difficulty stopping use.
"A fairly large percentage of those who try ketamine will consume it non-stop until they exhaust their supply," wrote researcher D. M. Turner in 1994.
John Lilly, a neurophysiologist and psychedelic researcher who once used LSD to analyze communication with dolphins, abused ketamine until he came to believe he had been contacted by an extraterrestrial entity that removed his penis.
Why is Musk attracted to ketamine
Such deficiencies would be concerning in any context, let alone when we think of a person who has gained enough power to be described unironically as "co-president of the United States".
Of course, ketamine has nothing to do with his actions - maybe he simply acts in line with his far-right political ideology, notes the publication. Also, Musk boasts about rarely sleeping - which does not help coherent speech or calculated actions, quite the opposite.
Musk has not publicly acknowledged the risks of ketamine, despite once claiming that commonly used depression medications, known generically as SSRIs, have the reputation of "turning patients into zombies."
Other very visible promoters of ketamine tend to do the same. Dylan Beynon, the founder of the telemedicine company with ketamine Mindbloom, recently wrote on X: "Ketamine does not create physical dependence. SSRIs are very difficult to remove for many."
Beynon's wife, the former chief engineer at Mindbloom, now works at DOGE, the government efficiency department led by Musk.
Although ketamine does not cause the same physical withdrawal symptoms as opioids or alcohol, its potential for abuse is widely accepted, partly because people develop a tolerance to the drug very quickly, said Celia Morgan, a professor at the University of Exeter.
In the UK, over 2,000 people received treatment for ketamine dependence in 2023. Specifically, the greatest risks of ketamine depend on how much ketamine a person takes and for how long.
Returning to Elon Musk, his relationship with ketamine can also be explained by the attraction that a part of the technology sector has long shown for the philosophical current of stoicism, which encourages detachment from what is beyond your control.
Stoicism offers excellent strategies for facing difficulties, very useful in an industry where most start-ups fail. However, taken to the extreme, it can also be a path towards detachment from the world and those around you.
Similarly, ketamine can allow its users to create a distance between themselves and overwhelming despair, which could somewhat explain how it may contribute to treating depression, said Mathai, the psychiatrist from Miami.
And it was also well illustrated by the late actor Matthew Perryy, one of the most well-known ketamine users, in his autobiographical volume. But there are dire consequences when you lean too much towards this escape.
T.D.