Microsoft founder Bill Gates says that while he wouldn’t recommend it, he experimented with LSD a half-dozen times and was partial to marijuana in his youth—in part because he felt it could help him impress girls.
The multi-billionaire discussed his youthful adventures with various drugs in his new memoir, Source Code, that’s set to be published next week.
That included a time during high school—on senior “skip day” when students ceremonially ditch classes—when Gates took acid and recalled that he continued to feel the effects the following day at a dental appointment.
He told PEOPLE that he blamed his friend, the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, for his experimentation. “Everything I did, I’m blaming it on him and Jimi Hendrix,” Gates joked.
“Paul always got a kick out of challenging the things like [not] drinking. And he gave me a bunch of whiskey, which I still don’t like the taste of, because that first night I drank too much,” Gates said. “I’m a huge risk-taker willing to try new things, but I also like my mind working well. And so both during those trips and even after, you wonder, ‘Hey, did I scramble up my mind?’”
“So I gave it up after, I think we did [LSD] four or five times in total. I think the last time was when I was like 21,” he said. “And I’m definitely not recommending that because even though you think some of your thoughts are profound, in retrospect, they’re not.”
He also weighed in on his past cannabis using, saying he felt smoking marijuana was a way to “try to look cool.” Gates said he thought “maybe some girls would be impressed.”
“It didn’t work out—but I tried,” he said.
Gates hasn’t been shy about his past experience with marijuana.
In 2023, he said during a conversation with actor Seth Rogen that it’s “amazing” how marijuana policy and culture have evolved since his high school days smoking cannabis to fit in with his peers—and he thinks the ongoing federal-state marijuana law conflict has “got to be resolved.”
“It wasn’t so much smoking pot for pot’s sake, as it was being part of the crowd,” Gates said. “It’s amazing how it’s changed. You know, when I grew up, it was just kind of a rebellion thing.”
The conversation also turned to cannabis potency, with Gates observing that “a lot of us who were smoking when it was illegal, the dosage was actually pretty modest.”
“So at least as you move into this legal pot world, you can be getting like really extreme doses, particularly on the edibles,” he said. “I mean, I think I know, ‘okay, if I puff five times’ what that means, whereas if you ingest I have no clue.”
Photo courtesy of Mike Latimer.
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