Chris Pan announced on LinkedIn that he took psychedelics to write his commencement speech at Ohio State University Sunday.
Pan, a social entrepreneur and investor, said in his post that he received “extra heartfelt” inspiration for the commencement speech he gave to “60k grads” and their relatives at the university “from AI (Ayahuasca Intelligence).” Pan added that he tried ChatGPT first “but wasn’t that good.” (RELATED: Police Say They Busted $8.5 Million ‘Magic Mushroom Factory’ Hidden In Suburban Connecticut Home)
In case there was any doubt about what reference to Ayahuasca was, Pan wrote that the substance used “enhances creative divergent thinking while decreasing conventional convergent thinking.” This was in response to someone inquiring if it was wise to regard “the gods [as] a reliable source of information.” Pan left a link to a 2016 study published by Springer that explored whether Ayahuasca, a psychedelic plant tea originating from South America, has an effect on creativity.
The psychedelic was first used for a variety of ritualistic and medical purposes by tribes in the Amazon, according to a 2021 study published by Frontiers in Pharmacology. The substance can also cause frightening hallucinations, anxiety, fear, paranoia, confusion and other symptoms, according to the Australian Alcohol and Drug Foundation.
The Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) in Ayahuasca was made illegal in the United States under the 1970 Controlled Substances Act, according to Newport Academy. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2006 that a tea form of ayahuasca could be legally consumed for religious reasons.
The speech did not go down well as booing could be heard during the livestream as Pan tried to get the attendees to buy cryptocurrency, WCMH reported. “Saving is not enough because inflation exploded after the pandemic, which is why everything got so expensive … I see Bitcoin as a very misunderstood asset class,” Pan said, according to the outlet. “It’s decentralized and finite, which means no government can print more at will.
The entire 19-minute speech can be viewed on YouTube.
Further evidence of negative responses to the speech can be seen in the responses to his LinkedIn post. One LinkedIn user wrote that he was a graduate and was “extremely upset I didn’t get a better speech.” A parent of a graduate wrote that the speech “came off as an infomercial and not an uplifting speech to send them out into the workforce.”