Late last month, the New York Times published an eyebrow-raising story in which sources claiming that billionaire Elon Musk was traveling with a “daily medication box that held about 20 pills.”
The mercurial CEO has long been known to indulge in drugs, including ketamine, which he has previously claimed to use as an antidepressant, with more reporting linking him to LSD, ecstasy, cocaine, and more.
His ketamine indulgence became so severe that he reportedly told people close to him that it had started affecting his bladder, a known side effect of heavy use of the anaesthetic.
As their relationship imploded, president Donald Trump reportedly called Musk a “big-time drug addict” behind closed doors, according to the Washington Post. In front of reporters, however, the president took a characteristically vague tone, saying that he “really” doesn’t know if Musk took drugs while in the White House.
“I hope not,” Trump told reporters last week.
All of that media attention has clearly gotten to the richest man in the world. In the early morning hours of Tuesday, Musk posted a screenshot of a drug test, allegedly showing that he had tested negative last week for more than a dozen drugs, including ketamine, ecstasy, phencyclidine (PCP), and benzodiazepines, a class of depressants conventionally prescribed to treat anxiety disorders or insomnia. The test was conducted by a lab in South Austin, Texas, on June 11.
“Lol,” Musk wrote in the caption. He provided no evidence that the drug test was based on his own samples.
The mercurial CEO has been on a crusade, trying to swat down negative press surrounding his purported drug use.
“I am NOT taking drugs!” he insisted in a May 31 tweet, a day after the NYT published its piece, accusing the newspaper of “lying their ass off.”
“I tried *prescription* ketamine a few years ago and said so on X, so this not even news,” he added at the time. “It helps for getting out of dark mental holes, but haven’t taken it since then.”
However, it’s always a good idea to take anything Musk claims on his social media platform with a healthy dose of salt. Lab tests can easily be faked, and we have no guarantee that we’re even looking at his results.
While we don’t know the full extent of Musk’s drug use, his behavior has raised plenty of red flags over the last six months as he’s jumped around weirdly on stage, craned his neck and twitched his eyes in public, and given a series of Nazi salutes.
We also don’t know if Musk is flouting any rules at his businesses. According to the NYT‘s reporting last month, Musk was warned in advance of “random” drug tests at his space company SpaceX, allowing him to easily pass them.
More on Musk and drugs: Trump Says He’s Not Sure Whether Musk Was Taking Illegal Drugs in the White House