(Julianna Frieman, Headline USA) Outgoing Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen spoke at length about getting “high” Wednesday during an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
Yellen, 78, giddily addressed the time she ate mushrooms that can have psychedelic effects during a state visit to Beijing in July 2023. Colbert asked the giggling Biden administration official, “Are you high right now?”
Yellen joked that she “asked for simple hallucinogenic mushrooms before coming on” in response to Colbert questioning whether he had a “wolf head” or a “spider’s body.”
She told the host that he was “safe” before detailing her experience dining in China.
“We landed in Beijing for very high-stakes meetings,” Yellen said before talking about the dinner. “We went to a restaurant that serves Hunanese food.”
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen addresses THAT mushroom “media frenzy” before giving a history of all the time she got high.
“They were delicious, and I recommend it.” pic.twitter.com/RLeNdccgAh
— Julianna Frieman (@JuliannaFrieman) January 16, 2025
Yellen said she learned from a Chinese social media “tweet storm” that the “delicious” mushrooms she consumed are hallucinogenic if cooked incorrectly.
“They were cooked properly,” she claimed. “We had no idea that there was anything about these mushrooms until we realized that this had become a media frenzy.”
The head of the US Treasury admitted that she used hallucinogenic mushrooms.
Janet Yellen, 77, toldCNN that on her last visit to China, she went to a "very good" restaurant with a group of friends.
“There was a delicious dish of mushrooms. I didn't know these mushrooms had… pic.twitter.com/FwawH5XYcA
— Sprinter Observer (@SprinterObserve) August 16, 2023
Colbert took his interview with Yellen to another level when he asked the Treasury secretary, “Have you ever inhaled?”
“I think the answer is yes,” Yellen said, which prompted the audience to clap and cheer.
Egged on by the applause, Yellen revealed that she started smoking pot after graduating college.
“The first time I smoked these cigarettes, ugh, it was awful,” Yellen said. “I couldn’t imagine how anybody could inhale.”
Yellen said she spent weeks practicing smoking cigarettes until she “finally” learned how to inhale.
“Well, so, we smoked pot. It was OK. Neither here nor there,” she said.
Yellen said she “didn’t do it again”—until she found herself smoking three packs of cigarettes a day for 10 years.
“Within six months, I was smoking three packs a day,” Yellen said, revealing she did so for one decade. “And then I quit cold turkey.”
It is unclear whether China may have exploited Yellen’s substance-abuse problems during her visits to the rival nation, which has been plotting to promote an alternate global reserve currency that would supplant the U.S. dollar.
In December, the Treasury Department acknowledged that China had succeeded in hacking into its workstations and gaining access to data after somehow obtaining a security key.
Julianna Frieman is a freelance writer published by the Daily Caller, Headline USA, The Federalist, and the American Spectator. Follow her on Twitter at @JuliannaFrieman.
