Elon Musk draws a link between his ketamine use, Tesla's growth

Billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has revealed using the medication ketamine, though he confessed that he's "almost always" sober during his late-night posting sessions on X, the microblogging platform he owns.

During a recent interview with CNN journalist Don Lemon, the Tesla CEO said ketamine helps get him out of the negative frame of mind.

“When I have sort of a … negative chemical state in my brain, like depression I guess, or depression that’s not linked to any negative news, and ketamine helps get one out of the negative frame of mind,” Musk said.

The billionaire said he uses ketamine under the guidance of a "real doctor" and in "small amounts" every other week.

The billionaire had on previous occasions, too, talked about his use of the anaesthetic drug ketamine. Musk said since he usually puts in around 16 hours of work a day, he can't overuse ketamine. The billionaire confessed in his interview that his depression seems genetic but assured that it'll not put any of his companies at risk.

He said he's building value for investors, which matters the most from the investor's standpoint of view. “Tesla is worth about as much as the rest of the car industry combined … from an investor standpoint, if there is something I’m taking, I should keep taking it.”

Ketamine, an NMDA receptor antagonist, is marketed for the management of different psychiatric illnesses, including depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and chronic pain. It is also marketed for other uses, ranging from Lyme disease to alcoholism to opioid addiction.

Musk has often courted controversies for his late-night posting sessions on X (earlier Twitter). At 12.48 pm on 7 August 2018, he made a bunch of Tesla investors harried after he tweeted he was considering taking "Tesla private at $420. Financing secured”.

The tweet had shot up the Tesla stock price and had also prompted a series of fraud litigations against the billionaire.

During a recent interview, he had lashed out at advertisers for leaving the platform over the rise of controversial content, saying they could “go f**k yourself”. During the interview, Musk said most of the company's advertisers, who had left earlier, have come back to the platform and that the company's revenue is rising rapidly.

Earlier this month, Musk sued AI major OpenAI and its chief executive officer (CEO) Sam Altman, among others, for the breach of the founding agreement and fiduciary duty, and unfair business practices.

Elon Musk said OpenAI should, one of the biggest AI companies in the world valued at $80 billion, adhere to the founding agreement and return to its original mission to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI) for the benefit of humanity and not for technology giant Microsoft.

Musk also attacked OpenAI for a multi-billion-dollar alliance with Microsoft, which, it alleges, stands to make a fortune selling GPT-4 to the public, which would not be possible if OpenAI had not acted contrary to the founding agreement.