On Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and the problem of ketamine

The world's richest man has picked a fight with the President of the United States for reasons that only he understands (if he does). I LIKE Elon; I want better for him than this.

The partnership of Elon Musk and Donald Trump was always going to be fraught.

Both are alphas, almost comically so, but their styles are at odds. Musk is an engineer, a visionary, an empire-builder. He sets a goal — electric cars, humans on Mars — and sticks to it no matter the odds. He does not entirely care, or even know, what the people around think of him, or what he’s doing to them as he chases his visions.

Trump is a salesman, a brand-builder, a master politician. He is acutely aware of what supporters and enemies think of him and plays their perceptions to his own ends. He prefers compromise to conflict, as long as he believes he has won the negotiation.

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Both men run on instinct, but Trump sees no shame in changing his mind quickly; Musk digs in. And Trump knows the government is not a business, that trying to change it inevitably stirs powerful resistance that cannot just be waved away.

Those differences let Trump and Musk work together more closely than anyone would have expected. But they also ensured a crackup, if it came, might be ugly.

For neither man really gets the other. Musk views Trump as almost a charlatan, a lightweight who backs down too fast. Trump sees Musk as weird and ultimately disrespectful of the fact that Trump won the votes.

Donald J. Trump, not Elon Musk, is president.

So, yes, no one should be surprised that Musk grew annoyed with the compromises and corporate largesse in the “Big Beautiful Bill.” Or that Musk went public, using his megaphone on X to complain.

But none of that explains why Musk exploded as he did yesterday — and crossed a bright line by claiming he has evidence Trump “is in the Epstein files.”

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(The Rubicon, crossed)

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To say the least, this line of attack is counterproductive.

It isn’t clear what “in the Epstein files” even means. Yes, Trump knew Jeffrey Epstein, who owned an island where powerful men had sex with young and sometimes underage women. Epstein killed himself at a jail in Brooklyn in 2019 after his arrest for sex trafficking. Ever since, rumors have persisted that his suicide was faked and he was killed either as revenge for blackmailing of these elites or to hide their secrets.

So when Musk accuses Trump of being in the files — if he is telling the truth at all — he could mean anything from a previously unseen picture of Trump at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse to a video of Trump having sex with an underage girl.

But since 2015, Trump has gone through three presidential campaigns in which the media and Democratic operatives put him under an unthinkable microscope. It is hard to believe that anything that could have seriously hurt him has not already come out.

Further, a 2020 book on Trump and his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach — a book deeply unfavorable to Trump — reported Trump actually banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago in 2007 for making a teenage girl at the club uncomfortable. Had Trump been worried that Epstein had a way to blackmail him, would he have banned Epstein?

Then there’s this.

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At least for now, the evidence suggests Musk was — at best — stretching the truth about the files and Trump to the point of unrecognizability.

Worse, suppose Musk is telling the truth.

Suppose the files contain something terrible. What then? Musk was willing to overlook Trump’s awful behavior when Trump was doing what he wanted, but not now that Trump has endorsed legislation he doesn’t like?

There’s no scenario where this allegation makes Musk looks good. There are only degrees of ugliness.

A fact that raises the question why Musk raised it at all.

Now we come to an even more uncomfortable topic.

I have said this before and I’ll say it again: I like Elon Musk. I don’t know him very well, but I like him. He spoke out for me in June 2020, when almost no one else would. Last year, he opened the files of old Twitter and provided evidence crucial for Berenson v. Biden (I know, I know, I owe you an update on Berenson v Biden, which has reached a weird but crucial pass). I admire his relentless drive, his risk-taking, his belief that science and technology can still open new paths for humanity.

But.

But.

His drug use appears increasingly out-of-control. In January 2024, the Wall Street Journal ran an investigation of his use of cocaine and other illegal drugs. At the time, I criticized that piece for its reliance on unnamed and ill-defined sources.

But since then, the allegations have exploded. Last week, the New York Times wrote:

Mr. Musk’s drug consumption went well beyond occasional use. He told people he was taking so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that it was affecting his bladder, a known effect of chronic use. He took Ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms. And he traveled with a daily medication box that held about 20 pills, including ones with the markings of the stimulant Adderall, according to a photo of the box and people who have seen it.

And, to put it politely, Musk doesn’t look well. Last week he showed up at the Oval Office - the Oval Office — with a visible black eye. He claimed his five-year-old son X gave it to him.

That’s an awfully strong five-year-old.

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(X marks the spot.)

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Does Musk use cocaine and LSD? I don’t know.

But he does regularly use ketamine, a short-acting anesthetic that causes euphoria and dissociation. He’s acknowledged doing so.

And ketamine is plenty dangerous all by itself, as Matthew Perry learned too late. Perry had survived addictions to alcohol and opiates, but ketamine, which he called a “giant happy shovel,” killed him.

I’m worried about Elon Musk.

He’s not acting like the world’s richest man or the head of a big public company or the owner of the world’s most important platform for journalism or a defense contractor with top-secret security clearances vital to American national security.

He is all those things. Not one. He’s all of them. Which is why he’s the most important private citizen in the world.

But he’s not acting like it. He’s acting like a guy who has fallen prey to heavy drug users and the mood swings, instability, irritability, and impulsivity it provokes.

I hope I’m wrong. I want to be wrong. And if I’m not, I hope Musk takes a break, at a minimum, from ketamine and everything else. I hope he gets the help he needs to deal with stresses and demands that must sometimes feel overwhelming.

I hope I’m wrong.

But this is how users act.