Ohio State commencement speaker says he got help from psychedelics while writing speech
Ohio State's chosen commencement speaker for the class of 2024, entrepreneur Chris Pan, was high on ayahuasca while he wrote his speech, according to posts he made on social media.
"Got some help from AI (Ayahuasca Intelligence) this week to write my commencement speech for 60k grads and family members at Ohio State University next Sunday," he wrote in a LinkedIn post before graduation.
Ayahuasca is a psychedelic liquid made from heating or boiling multiple psychoactive plants from South America, according to the Alcohol and Drug Foundation of Australia.
Pan also said he tried using ChatGPT and artificial intelligence to write his speech, according to his LinkedIn post and an Instagram post.
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In the weeks preceding graduation, Pan shared multiple drafts of his speech on Instagram. His earliest posted draft included a lengthy section about the Israel-Palestine conflict and a moment where he removed his shirt.
But on Sunday, Pan did not explicitly mention Gaza, Israel or Palestine (or remove his shirt). Rather, he remarked, how after holding multicultural events over the past few months, we must "end suffering on both sides."
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"What I learned is that there is so much pain and trauma in both communities. Pain causes hate and violence. Hurt people hurt people. Healed people help people," he said. "When we heal ourselves, we heal the world. World peace starts with inner peace."
Pan also led the crowd through two brief musical numbers — "What's Going On?" by the 4 Non Blondes and "This Little Light of Mine" by Harry Dixon Loes — and espoused how he thinks Bitcoin is "a very misunderstood asset class," which was met by groans from audience members. (He promised everyone in attendance a free bracelet from his company, MyIntent, "as an apology for listening to me talk about Bitcoin.").
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Pan graduated from OSU in 1999 and went on to receive an MBA from Harvard Business School. He worked at consulting firm McKinsey and Company, PepsiCo and Facebook before starting his own business, MyIntent.org, in 2014, according to his LinkedIn profile.
MyIntent sells jewelry with a custom word of the customer's choosing etched in it, according to the company's website.
Dispatch reporter Sheridan Hendrix contributed to this report.
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: OSU commencement speaker took psychedelic to write speech, he says
