Why Elon Musk and Other Tech Leaders Take Psychedelics | WSJ Tech News Briefing

[Music]welcome to Tech news briefing it'sWednesday June 28th I'm Julie Chang forthe Wall Street Journal filling in forZoe Thomas[Music]Elon Musk takes ketamine Googleco-founder Sergey Brin occasionallyenjoys magic mushrooms Executives addVenture Capital firm Founders fund whichhas invested in SpaceX and Facebook havethrown parties that include psychedelicsSilicon Valley has long had a tolerancetoward drug use but while in the pastroutine drug use was squarely and afterhours activity these days it's becomeembedded in corporate culture wsjreporter Catherine bindley has beenspeaking with folks about growing druguse across Silicon Valley and she's withme now Katie I want to start with whatmade you pursue this story psychedelicshave been used among the tech industryfor a while now but what we've beenseeing more recently is really amainstreaming of it instead of peoplebeing more passionate about it peopleare being very vocal about it in someways and we've got examples of executivecoaches who are working with teams onnavigating psychedelic use and Foundersjust being more public about it and whatthey perceive as its benefits when itcomes to business breakthroughs ormaking them think more creatively andthere's been a huge uptick in interestthere's one guy we talked to in thestory who just said even in recentmonths like the number of people who'vecome to him for advice about microdosing has gone up pretty dramaticallyand this organization Maps which is themulti-disciplinary association forpsychedelic studies they host this bigconference in Denver and six years agothey had 3 000 attendees and thisConference was held last week and theyhad 12 000 people there it is certainlyTech and Beyond at this point can yougive us some examples of the people youspoke to and what they said about theirdrug use what were their experienceslike yeah people who use psychedelicsthey can use them for a range of reasonsin some cases it might be to help withdepression or with anxiety in othercases like for example when people aregoing on an Ayahuasca Retreat theremight be a desire to work through sometrauma that they've had in other casesyou have people who are using this toget an edge in business so I spoke witha Founder who just talked about for himhe's not using it for anxiety or fordepression he's using LSD in this caseand he's micro dosing it because hethinks that it helps him think morecreatively he thinks it increases hisfocus and he talked about the highexpectations in the tech industry ofventure capitalists and investors andhis take was that this can lead toFounders basically seeking out some kindof Edge and that he feels psychedelicscan give you an edge when it comes tothe sort of the pressure and theexpectations of investors he said theydon't want a normal person or a normalcompany they want somethingextraordinary you're not bornextraordinary so that kind of helpsexplain the mindset of some of thepeople who are experimenting with thesedrugs if there's something specificabout this particular moment that isfueling the increase in drug activityyeah I think there's a bunch ofdifferent reasons I mean you had Michaelpollan's best-selling book in 2018 thatwas subsequently turned into a Netflixseries in the summer of 2022 I thinkthat caught a lot of people's attentionand then there's also just this enormousbody of research and various studiesgoing on into the ways in whichpsychedelics could potentially helppeople and a ton of money going into thePsychedelic industry as well half ofbecome just accepted as part of doingbusiness you know it really dependswe've talked to coaches who are helpingdifferent teams within companiesnavigate drug use so in some situationsyes it is accepted in other casesdefinitely not I spoke with a CEO whosaid that he had done LSD once in 2019and two years later he was terminatedthe company at the time had sent anemail to staff effectively saying thathe had violated company policy it reallydoes depend I think one of the foundersI spoke with who does LSD made the pointthat he's not just like walking aroundthe office talking about this drug useopenly but if someone were to ask himabout it he is honest you know about hisuse all right that was our reporterKatie binleyand that is it for today's Tech newsbriefing for more Tech stories check outour website wsj.com I'm Julie Chang forthe Wall Street Journal thanks forlistening[Music]