Sam Altman says taking psychedelics during a weekend retreat in Mexico changed his life – DNyuz

Sam Altman, the tech CEO behind ChatGPT, is also a big advocate of psychedelics.

The OpenAI co-founder shared some personal anecdotes in a recent appearance on the “Life in Seven Songs” podcast, in which he said that taking psychedelics was one of the most transformative experiences of his life. Altman said that psychedelic experiences can be “absolutely incredible,” and for him, they have been life-changing.

You may be surprised to learn that the billionaire, who is described as very confident and charming, previously considered himself a “very anxious, unhappy person.”

“If you had told me that, say, one weekend away in Mexico would change that significantly, I would have said absolutely no,” Altman said. “And it really did.”

The CEO didn’t specify which psychedelics he was taking, but he said the experience changed him in many ways. One of the biggest was that he now feels like a “calm person” and the change has improved his quality of life and also helped him work through difficult things.

While the CEO said he has also experimented with psychedelics at Burning Man, he said the “life-changing” experiences for him were those where he traveled and went through the experience with a guide. The Burning Man version, he said, was less life-changing and a rare occurrence.

It’s not the first time the tech mogul has spoken out publicly about psychedelics.

In addition to several health startups the billionaire has invested in, Altman was chairman of a startup called Journey Colab, which aims to help people with addiction by developing and deploying clinical psychedelic drugs for therapy. It’s unclear whether he will remain in that role, and Journey Colab did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment on his involvement with the company.

Altman also posted on X in 2022 about psychedelics, which prompted a response from Elon Musk, who has also been vocal about his support for psychedelics, about how “amphetamines negatively impact empathy” and “psychedelics do the opposite.”

Many crazy stories start with too many amphetamines and end with too few psychedelics

— Sam Altman (@sama) November 13, 2022

The trend of tech moguls experimenting with psychedelics isn’t new. Steve Jobs famously took LSD. More recently, PayPal Mafia member Peter Thiel funded a psychedelic therapy startup.

In the US, too, a significant number of people have experimented with psychedelics. For example, 28% of US adults surveyed by YouGov in 2022 said they had used a psychedelic substance at least once in their lives.

In 2020, Oregon became the first U.S. state to legalize psilocybin, the psychedelic compound in magic mushrooms, for therapeutic use. Denver, Colorado, and Oakland, California, have decriminalized magic mushrooms in recent years.

The demand for luxury psychedelic retreats has also increased. Some professionals have also turned to psychedelics and other substances such as ketamine in an attempt to improve their work performance.

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