Not since the Summer of Love has drug use become so synonymous with the Bay Area.
Some of Silicon Valley's biggest movers and shakers, it turns out, turn on, tune in and drop out, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.
Their numbers include Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk, who takes ketamine, and Google LLC founder Sergey Brin, who enjoys magic mushrooms, according to The Journal. The executives are using drugs such as those as well as psychedelics like psilocybin and LSD to open their minds to new ideas or to treat depression or other mental illnesses, according to the report.
Eyewitnesses provided the accounts of Musk and Brin partaking of drugs, according to The Journal reported. Neither man responded to interview requests from the Journal, but in a Tweet following the story's online publication, Musk spoke about depression in the U.S. and the overuse of antidepressants.
"Depression is over-diagnosed in the US, but for some people it really is a brain chemistry issue," Musk wrote. "But zombifying people with (traditional antidepressant drugs) for sure happens way too much. From what I've seen with friends, ketamine taken occasionally is a better option."
Silicon Valley's drug use appears to be part of "doing business," according to The Journal, with Founders Fund executives throwing parties where psychedelics were used.
Many participants have begun "micro-dosing," the practice of ingesting small amounts of psychedelic drugs, according to the report. Users believe such small doses can help them relieve anxiety and become more focused, according to the report. However, the casual, recreational micro-dosing going on in Silicon Valley, is not based on any actual science.
Studies of using micro-dosing to treat mental conditions are at best inconclusive, According to a September article in Harvard Health Publishing. Some studies showed some positive effects on users, while others had little to no impact.
Yet, for every tech exec who found success in micro-dosing — like former Iterable Inc. CEO Justin Zhu, who said it helped him cope with depression. "It did really heal a lot of the trauma for me,” he told the Journal — there is the cautionary tale of the late Tony Hsieh, the former Zappos CEO who became addicted to ketamine and died in a 2020 fire while on drugs.
Still, the casual drug use has also spawned huge investments in companies seeking medical treatments using psychedelic drugs. Earlier this year, for example, New York-based Transcend Therapeutics Inc. raised $40 million in a Series A round to develop a post-traumatic stress disorder treatment built around psychoactive drugs.
