The Elon Musk Double Standard: Patient or Drug Addict?

June 1, 2025

Mental health patient. That's the right lable for Elon and for all humans struggling with drug use or abuse. 

The New York Times reported on May 31, 2025, that Elon Musk, billionaire entrepreneur and former head of the Department of Government Efficiency, had been using a cocktail of drugs —including ketamine, Adderall, ecstasy, and psychedelic mushrooms—while serving as senior advisor to the Trump administration. The revelations are shocking, but what’s more telling is how the conversation unfolds.

Musk’s reported substance use is not being described in the language typically reserved for drug users. Luckily, we’re not calling him a "drug addict". Instead, we lean towards the mental health frame and perspective. That is the correct frame. 

Unfortunately, the mental health framework for drug use or abuse is not applied evenly in society. Had Musk been poor, Black, Latino, or the Lord forbid an illegal immigrant, almost certainly he would be labeled a drug addict and maybe a criminal. The same society that labels a Wall Street executive’s cocaine use as a “symptom of burnout” would call a struggling Black teenager with the same substance in his pocket a “criminal.”

This is a class warfare and race double standard. It's as old as America’s failed and misguided war on drugs.

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Drug Abuse Is a Public Health Issue, Not a Moral Failure

The scientific and medical communities agree: addiction is a mental health condition, not a character flaw. Substance use disorder alters the brain’s chemistry, often driven by underlying trauma, stress, or mental illness. Whether it's a billionaire microdosing ketamine to “enhance productivity” or a single mother using opioids to numb emotional pain, the underlying need is the same: relief, escape, or regulation.

Yet the legal and social consequences differ drastically depending on the individual’s identity and resources.

• Elon Musk is described as eccentric, brilliant, and stressed. Some applaud his drug use. Some will emulate and imitate the conduct trying to obtain an edge.

• A working-class person would likely be labeled reckless, dangerous, or criminal. The authorities would look into ways of prosecuting the drug abuse.

The disparity is not in the science of addiction; it’s in the social framing and institutional response in our cultural obsession with success and the timeless cult of money.

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We Can’t Have Two Systems of Compassion

If drug use by billionaires is a mental health issue, it must also be a mental health issue for everyone else. If we are ready to understand Elon Musk’s drug use as part of a broader pattern of psychological strain, maybe due in part to post traumatic stress disorder due to his upbringing in South Africa, we must also offer the same understanding to marginalized communities that have been over-policed, over-incarcerated, and under-treated for decades.

Compassion cannot be reserved for the wealthy. Accountability cannot be spared for the powerful. And reform must not be tailored only for the influential.

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Moving Forward: One Standard, One Approach

America stands at a crossroads. We can either:

• Continue to treat substance abuse as a moral failing for the poor and a mental health crisis for the rich, or

• Acknowledge the scientific truth: drug abuse is a health issue, and the path to recovery should be open and humane for all.

Elon Musk shouldn't be demonized over his drug addiction. No one should be demonized. Elon's case should be used as mirror, reflecting how empathy, dignity, and science must guide our approach to addiction for everyone, not just the privileged few.

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If we agree that addiction is about mental health, then fairness demands we extend that understanding equally in our society. It cannot be that rich addicts are mentally ill and poor ones are criminals. Correct? What do you think? 

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