Elon Musk has spoken on numerous occasions about his mental health problems. The famous businessman may be the creator of some of the most famous companies in the world, but he has also confessed to having "demons" that prevent him from enjoying life as he would like.
Two years ago, the founder of SpaceX revealed that he suffers from Asperger's Syndrome, a developmental disorder included in the autism spectrum that affects social interaction. However, the businessman has given a new interview to the New York Times in which he goes further, even admitting that he thought about taking his own life when he was only 12 years old.
At 52 years old, the businessman sat down with Aaron Ross Sorkin for this new interview, part of the DealBook Summit 2023, and confessed that he lives with certain "demons" in his life, constantly. Some problematic thoughts - which the tycoon described as a "storm" - that he also carried as a teenager and that led him into a spiral of lack of control.
According to the South African, at that time he became obsessed with reading religious texts and German philosophers, which made him become very negative about life. This led him to think, at only 12 years old: "In the end all this is useless? Why not commit suicide? Why exist?"
However, there was one book that changed his life: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. A novel that helped him understand that finding the meaning of life should not focus on one answer, but on all the questions one can ask.
"My motivation then was, well, my life is really finite... but if we can expand the scope and scale of consciousness then we will be better able to figure out what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe and maybe we can figure out what It is the meaning of life," said the businessman.
Now, Musk recognizes that he has been able to redirect things towards other, more positive ends. Of course, the "storm" in his head is still all the ideas that circulate through his mind. "It seems like a dangerous storm, because I have a constant source of ideas," he explained.
Musk's mental health crisis was notorious in 2022. The businessman locked himself in his offices and seemed not to respond to anything or anyone. "They called the San Francisco police because they thought it was going to end everything," writer Ben Mezrich said a few weeks ago in an interview with CNBC.
