UMEM Educational Pearls

Title: The Toxicology of Steve Jobs

Category: Toxicology

Keywords: LSD, hashish, marijuana, jobs (PubMed Search)

Posted: 8/30/2012 by Fermin Barrueto (Updated: 12/13/2024)
Click here to contact Fermin Barrueto

I was reading the biography of Steve Jobs looking for incredible insights into leadership and innovation. I have realized that you basically have to be a genuis and it doesn't matter what you do. His favorite drug was LSD which he believed was necessary to improve creativity and innovation. His description of the hallucinations confirm that he was taking this drug.

We describe LSD hallucinations as a crossing of the senses or "synesthesias" - you hear the color blue, you see the smell of roses.

Steve Jobs describes a moment in a wheat field while on LSD and (paraphrasing from the biography) ..." the wheat was playing Bach beautifully"

If you have a patient describing this type of hallucination you can almost be guaranteed that they have taken LSD or some other tryptamine.