Elon Musk’s Former Caffeine Addiction Is Absolutely Terrifying

Photo: OnInnovation on Flickr

Apparently, being a genius billionaire entrepreneur like Elon Musk requires some serious levels of caffeine intake.

A 2007 report from Inc. recently uncovered by Business Insider reveals that while Musk was getting Tesla and SpaceX off the ground, he was working a grueling 100 hours a week and gutting through the entire process through the power of caffeine. On a regular day, he used to go through EIGHT cans of Diet Coke, plus a few large cups of coffee, every single day.

A regular can of Diet Coke has 42 mg of caffeine per can, meaning that on just the soda alone, Musk was consuming a whopping 334 mg every single day. And that’s before factoring in the large cups of coffee, each of which can have up to 410 milligrams of caffeine. Considering that adults are recommended to only ingest 400 mg of caffeine daily, it’s safe to say Musk was WAY over that limit.

For Elon, that caffeine intake amount was so bad that he felt like he was losing his peripheral vision because of how wired he was. Thank God he didn’t overdose on caffeine during that time, since it’s likely that he could have with all of that consumption. Nowadays, he’s done an about-face on intake, putting caffeine-free Diet Coke in the office to help his intake go down.

While we probably will never work for the same amount of time in a week that Elon Musk was back in 2007, we can all learn from him on one crucial life lesson: Don’t overdo it on the caffeine.