Treasury Secretary Yellen Says First Time Smoking Marijuana Was ‘OK’ And She’d Recommend ‘Delicious’ Psychedelic Mushrooms She Ate

As Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen prepares to leave office, she has a couple of personal observations to share: Her experience smoking marijuana for the first time was “OK,” and the psychedelic mushrooms she inadvertently ate in China amid “high-stakes meetings” representing the Biden administration were “delicious.” In fact, she’d recommend them.

Yellen, whose tenure at the Biden administration will come to a close after President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated, hasn’t shied away from questions about her own substance experimentation—whether consumed deliberately in her youth or unknowingly as one of the nation’s top federal economic officials.

During an interview on the Late Show With Stephen Colbert that aired on Wednesday, she was reminded of the headlines she made after her trip to Beijing as treasury secretary, when she went to a restaurant and consumed “very delicious” mushrooms, only to later learn that the fungi produces hallucinogenic effects if improperly cooked. In her case, she said it was a “great restaurant” and the mushrooms were “cooked properly,” averting a potential psychedelic trip.

The mushroom dish, which has seen a surge in popularity since her dining experience was first reported, was made of the psychoactive Lanmaoa asiatica, a species of fungi native to Asia.

Chinese media quickly picked up on the culinary adventure, and when word got back to the U.S., Yellen indulged follow-ups, including from Colbert who started the segment by saying he is legally obligated to ask if she was “high right now” and whether she was hallucinating him with a “wolf head and a spider body.”

“Well, I asked for some hallucinogenic mushrooms before coming on, but I haven’t had them so you’re safe,” Yellen quipped back.

“We had no idea that there was anything about these mushrooms until we realized this had become a media frenzy,” she said of the dining experience in China. “They were delicious, and I recommend it.”

Colbert then asked whether the Biden official had ever smoked marijuana, to which she said, “I think the answer is yes… I did have an opportunity to smoke pot when I was in college.”

As she’s shared previously, Yellen explained how she had an “opportunity” to try cannabis for the first time and was “really looking forward to it,” but she wanted to prepare by learning how to inhale smoke so she decided to buy a pack of cigarettes and experiment with her methodology.

“The first time I smoked these cigarettes was awful—ugh. I was coughing. It was terrible. I couldn’t imagine how anybody could inhale,” she said. But it would still be a couple weeks before her scheduled marijuana session, so she kept at it with the cigarettes and, “finally, I learned to inhale.”

“So we smoked pot. That was OK. You know, neither here nor there,” Yellen said. “I didn’t really do it again for the rest of my life—but within six months, I was smoking three packs [of cigarettes] a day.”

That habit followed her for 10 years, she said, until one day she quit “cold turkey.”

Notwithstanding her relatively limited personal experience with cannabis and psychedelics, as treasury secretary Yellen has also spoken to the need for certain federal reforms, telling a congressional committee last March that prohibition has created a “real problem” for banks amid the growing state legalization movement, for example.

“The fact that marijuana is outlawed by the federal government creates an impediment to [banks’] willingness to provide banking services to cannabis firms, and it creates all the problems that you’re familiar with,” she said. “I think legislation may be necessary to raise the comfort level that banks have with doing this business.”

Yellen has long expressed frustration about ongoing barriers to traditional financial services for the marijuana industry under federal prohibition, saying in 2023 that it is “unfortunately” the case that banks remain reluctant to work with state-licensed cannabis businesses, and it’s something regulators “have been looking for solutions to.”

In 2022, she said that it’s “extremely frustrating” that Congress has so far been unable to pass marijuana banking reform legislation and that Treasury is “supportive” of the proposal.

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