Elon Musk hit back in the Wall Street Journal on Sunday after an explosive report from the paper accused the billionaire of using illegal drugs and said executives at his companies were concerned about his alleged penchant for cocaine, Ecstasy, magic mushrooms, ketamine and LSD.
In a post on [poo emoji]” and claimed, “after this one move with [Joe] Rogan, I agreed to conduct random drug testing for three years at NASA's request. Not even traces of drugs or alcohol were found.”
Musk's post referenced a 2018 incident in which he smoked marijuana on Rogan's podcast, which prompted the Pentagon to review his federal security clearance related to his company SpaceX's work with the US AirForce.
Musk's denial that he gets beaten up on a regular basis suggests that his troll-like behavior as the new owner of X/Twitter is just his true personality and not the result of mind-altering substances.
In the Journal's Saturday report, the newspaper claimed that a former Tesla director was so upset by Musk's alleged drug use and erratic behavior that she refused to run for re-election to the board. People with knowledge of the situation said that Linda Johnson Rice, who left Tesla in 2019, asked the board to investigate the billionaire's alleged use of LSD, cocaine, ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms, but it was ignored.
The Journal noted that illegal drug use would most likely violate federal policy, which could jeopardize SpaceX's billion-dollar government contracts as well as tens of thousands of jobs.
According to the newspaper, the first major incident at a SpaceX event occurred in late 2017 when Musk showed up almost an hour late to an all-attendee meeting, slurred his words and chattered for 15 minutes in front of hundreds of employees and executives, then called The company's Big Falcon Rocket (BFR) prototype, the “Big F-ing Rocket”.
At Tesla, current directors have asked Musk's brother Kimbal for help with his behavior, but the outlet said they were careful not to specifically use the word “drugs” in their requests.
Musk did not respond to The Wall Street Journal's request for comment, but his lawyer Alex Spiro insisted that he was “regularly and randomly tested for drugs at SpaceX and has never failed a test.”