"The demons of the mind are in my head." Elon Musk said that at the age of 12 he encountered depression and wanted to commit suicide

The head of Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk, said that he wanted to commit suicide at the age of 12 due to an existential crisis. He told the New York Times on Wednesday at the DealBook Summit 2023.

According to him, one day when he was a teenager, he thought: “Is all this pointless?” Why not just commit suicide? Why exist?"

Musk admitted that at the time he was fascinated by religious texts and also read books on German philosophy, which made him “very depressed.”

The book "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" helped him reconsider his views. Douglas Adams. According to him, after reading it, he realized that the search for the meaning of life comes down not to a simple answer, but to what questions should be asked.

"My motivation then was that my life really was finite. But if we can expand the scope and scope of consciousness, then we can better understand what questions to ask, and perhaps we can figure out what the meaning of life is.”

He noted that he perceived his mind as a "very strong storm" because a "fountain of ideas" was constantly passing through him. According to him, this cannot be called pleasant. “I think to some extent I was born this way, but to be honest it was made worse by a difficult childhood.” As a child, Elon Musk, according to him, was bullied at school. In addition, his mother May Musk spoke about the aggression of her ex-husband, father Elon Musk.

He noted that as a child, even in happy moments, he felt “violent forces in his mind.”

"These mind demons in my head are mostly used for productive purposes. But sometimes, you know, things don’t go as they should.”

Previously, the author of a biography of Elon Musk wrote in his book about the character and characteristics of Elon Musk: Asperger's syndrome and depression. And writer Ben Mezrich recently said that in 2022 Musk faced a mental breakdown. He said he locked himself in his office and did not leave it for a long time, which led his employees to call the police because they thought he might harm himself.