LOST IN THE K-HOLE
The Curious Connection Between Mindbloom, Elon Musk and DOGE
Many of you are familiar with my sobriety via the rooms of AA. Closing in on six years, one day at a time. But many more probably don't realize I'm also a proponent of psychedelic health.
Yes, I'm an advocate of prescribing select psychedelic medications — examples: psilocybin (mushrooms), ketamine (K) and MDMA (ecstasy) — to treat a wide range of mental-health disorders in a controlled clinical setting under the supervision of a physician and therapist.
(And no, this doesn't conflict with my understanding of AA guidance and suggestion; being abstinent from alcohol isn't mutually exclusive from being conceptually OK with doctor-prescribed drugs such as MDMA to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). And double-no, I'm not "California sober" nor currently using psychedelics, recreationally or therapeutically.)
The list of mental-health issues these psychedelic meds can treat is quite extensive, but generally includes depression, PTSD, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), eating disorders and alcohol/substance addiction.
Admittedly, I have, uhhh, dabbled with several of these drugs in the past. But my path and reasoning might not be what you assume. I was genuinely fascinated — enlightened from multiple psychology and pharmacology courses in high school and college — by the possibility of psychedelics playing a role in achieving higher states of consciousness and spirituality, unlocking our true human potential, and healing past traumas.
(To be honest and transparent, my own experiences with these drugs were exclusively positive and hopeful. And yes, I was also very lucky to have escaped any of the potential negatives these experiments can cause.)
Yet my interest in psychedelic health has followed me into sobriety; I keep updated about the latest legal challenges, clinical-trial results and commercialization advancements. I'm pretty low-key about it — occasionally posting on social channels — and follow several thought-leaders and companies in that space.
And that leads me to Mindbloom. I've been tracking the U.S. telehealth company — considered the market leader in ketamine-assisted therapy — and its CEO Dylan Beynon on LinkedIn for the past several years. In general, telehealth is where the healthcare industry is heading, providing routine care and maintenance visits while cutting costs. It's a bullish direction and a theoretical win-win.
From my lofty assessment, Dylan's posts have traditionally been focused on non-controversial advocacy for psychedelic health and his company. Pretty much status-quo. Until a few days ago.
On February 20, he re-posted a podcast on LinkedIn from Truemed — a system that electronically allows patients to pay for healthcare services using HSA/FSA funds — in which he inserted his own editorial comments. (Truemed's original post teased "exercise and quality sleep outperform selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors [SSRIs] for depression" for its accompanying video podcast.)
Dylan included a longer list of therapies that also help improve mental health in his re-post comment. However, talk-therapy wasn't among the modalities listed. I then commented, "Curious … Therapy not on your list?" Dylan soon replied, writing talk-therapy was no more effective than "sugar pills" and SSRIs are equally ineffective.
(Full-disclosure: I'm currently taking an SSRI — escitalopram (generic for Lexapro) — and engaged in 1:1 talk-therapy as well as group therapy via AA.)
OK, a differing POV. That's why we engage, right? No issues there. But then another commenter chimed in, challenging Dylan to post the clinical studies he was referencing to (he kinda did, yet the studies didn't align with what he originally posted). Then the following day, Dylan added a subsequent comment further railing against talk-therapy and SSRIs — including the bro-culture language "inconvenient truth" and "time to wake up." And back-and-forth it went.
Then news broke on February 21 about Elon Musk's alleged ketamine-soaked "performance" at CPAC the previous night, complete with chainsaw swinging and wearing-my-sunglasses-at-night schtick. Musk has gone on-record multiple times discussing his therapeutic — and presumed legal — use of ketamine to treat depression. Cool-cool.
As I was digging through media reports about his self-proclaimed appetite for ketamine, I came across recent articles from ProPublica, The Washington Post and Newsweek profiling Musk’s DOGE team — including names and descriptions of key personnel. All three stories listed an employee with a particularly curious connection to psychedelic therapy — Alexandra T. Beynon, a former software engineer at Mindbloom and current wife of its CEO Dylan Beynon.
Hmmm …
Yep, Dylan's wife, Alexandra, is one of the DOGE stooges who are waging Blitzkrieg-bop against our federal government — along with a scorched-Earth policy to destroy them all and ask questions never. Pillow-talk aside, WTF are those two Mindblooms really up to?
I do have an idea of how I imagine this all began and then played out. As noted, Musk hasn't been shy his ketamine therapy; he's a longtime user and true-believer. Mindbloom, based in Austin, opened its virtual doors in 2018 and began a slow-but-steady ascent to market dominance in remote ketamine-assisted therapy.
My guess is somewhere along this journey, Dylan crossed paths with richest-human-on-the-planet Musk. Possibly a meeting of minds ensued; Dylan's company was a ketamine-prescriber and Musk was a depression patient in search of treatment. A deal was struck and a friendship grew. Mindbloom was now Musk's legal-ketamine supplier?
How Dylan's wife Alexandra was exactly dropped in this mix is wholly unclear; she previously held an IT role at Mindbloom until several weeks ago. Presumably, she also met Musk during this period and was on a shortlist of candidates for the DOGE team due to this relationship. I'm not so interested in the nuts-and-bolts of how this transaction happened, but much more in the "Why?"
Here we have Mindbloom — a seemingly above-board company — with a clinical mission to help those with mental-health disorders plus altruistic overtones. Sure, the psychedelic-health space is considered novel, controversial and pretty much unregulated; to-date, ketamine is the only FDA-approved medication in this class to legally treat depression (psilocybin and MDMA are still mired in clinical trials).
For me, the DOGE connection is troubling to say the least. Without getting into a long discourse about Musk and his merry band of nihilistic demons — that's 2,500 words for another day — Mindbloom seems to be inserting itself via Alexandra into deep-state MAGA politics for corporate and/or deregulatory gain.
Yeah — nothing particularly shocking there. And I'm far-far from being naïve about how this shit works behind closed doors. Yet the inherent conflicts run deep — which, not surprising, is the DOGE modus operandi — and no one is even looking because "flood the zone." But a ketamine-assisted therapy company having its tentacles on Musk's Team DOGE and its wrecking-ball destruction ain't good for anyone but themselves. ### Image credits: Forbes, LinkedIn, Reuters, DOGE, ProPublica
Disclaimer: all content expressed is solely my opinion and all assertions presented are alleged actions and/or working theories as protected under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. (copyright 2025 — daniel fuller)
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