Tesla CEO Elon Musk continues to court controversy, smoking a joint on comedian Joe Rogan's podcast.

Elon Musk has always generated plenty of buzz, but he may have taken it to new highs this week, sipping whiskey and lighting up a joint during an appearance on California comedian Joe Rogan’s widely followed podcast.

Unfortunately, Tesla shareholders seem to be having something of a bad trip, the 2-1/2 hour interview just the latest in what some see as increasingly erratic behavior by the carmaker’s chief executive. And investors aren’t alone.There has been an escalating exodus of talent from Tesla in recent months, including the July departure of its chief engineer.

On Friday morning, two more top executives, including its human resources director and its chief accountant revealed they are joining an escalating exodus of top Tesla talent.

In a regulatory filing, Chief Accounting Officer Dave Morton said, “I still believe in Tesla,” but he said it was time to leave the company he had joined less than five weeks earlier. “Since I joined Tesla on August 6th, the level of public attention placed on the company, as well as the pace within the company, have exceeded my expectations.”

(Tesla takes heat as Musk lashes out. Click Here for the story.)

If Morton had expected a quiet ride poring over the Tesla books, he got a rude awakening on Aug. 7, just a day after he started his new job, CEO Musk shocking Wall Street with a tweet suggesting his intent to take Tesla private and concluding “financing secured.”

Joe Rogan, left, spoke with Tesla CEO Elon Musk for more than two hours on his podcast.

That quickly sent Tesla stock soaring to record levels – but only for a matter of days, shares soon taking a double-digit plunge. And the roller-coaster ride has only accelerated in recent weeks, investors trying to balance what appears to be Tesla’s improving production and sales numbers against Musk’s behavior. This week alone, the stock has surged as high as $302 a share and fallen as low as $260. As of noon on Friday, it stood at around $265, down 5.5% for the day, though it was off nearly 8% at one point.

For a car company, something north of $260 a share is still a stratospheric number, Ford Motor Co. struggling to push its stock back up above $10. Tesla is treated more like a promising tech stock than a traditional metal-bender. And part of its high share price can be credited to Musk who has created a loyal following positioning himself as a maverick genius who reaches directly out to a cadre of followers using social media.

But, of late, that hasn’t been playing out as well as it had in the past – much as Twitter posts have come to give grief to another frequent user, Pres. Donald Trump.

Over the last few months, Musk has found himself repeatedly called out for odd and sometimes reckless moves:

• In May, he chastised several analysts during an earnings conference call, cutting them off for asking “boring” questions;
• He got into a flam war with Vernon Unsworth, one of the divers who helped rescue a soccer team trapped in a flooded Thai cave, at one point calling the Brit “pedo man,” slang for pedophile;
• Musk subsequently apologized but, early this week, the Tesla CEO suddenly attacked Unsworth again, calling him a “child rapist,” and urging him to sue. Calling it an “ongoing campaign of publishing vile and false accusations,” Unsworth’s attorney L. Lin Wood said that’s precisely what he plans to do;
• Then there’s the unexpected tweet that, on August 7, indicated Musk was not only ready to take Tesla private but that “funding (was) secured.” In a blog post the following week, the 47-year-old executive acknowledged funding was not in place and the whole idea arose after conversations with officials from a Saudi Arabian sovereign investment fund.

So, Musk now faces not only a lawsuit by diver Unsworth but the prospect of lawsuits filed by short-sellers who lost hundreds of millions of dollars following the original privatization tweet. Potentially even worse, both Musk and Tesla are now under the microscope as the SEC launches a probe into the affair.

(Click Here for more about Tesla staying public; CEO Musk facing more scrutiny.)

Musk enjoyed a small glass of whiskey while talking to Rogan about a variety of topics.

What’s behind what critics are calling less-than-professional behavior. Don’t blame marijuana. Musk told podcast host Rogan, “I’m not a regular smoker of weed.” Could other substances, illegal or otherwise be at play?

Last month, rap singer Azealia Banks, a friend of the singer Grimes, whom Musk has been dating, put out a tweet claiming she saw Musk high on LSD at the time he tweeted about taking Tesla private. He has forcefully denied her claim and insists Banks was not at his home that fateful night.

Meanwhile, the New York Times last month cited sources close to the Tesla board who were worried about Musk’s reliance on the sleep aid Ambien. That detail came out following a lengthy, and at times teary, interview in which the CEO claimed to have been working as much as 120 hours a week as he struggled to get production problems resolved at Tesla’s Fremont, California assembly plant. He admitted that the past year had been “excruciating,” and that he feared “the worst is yet to come.”

Considering the way things have been shaking out in recent months, that very well could be the case. The SEC investigation alone could lead to hefty fines and other penalties for both Musk, Tesla and its board members.

No surprise that Tigress Financial Partners analyst Ivan Feinseth told Reuters this week that Musk, “should not tweet about things outside of car production and the auto industry.”

Meanwhile, there is growing pressure on the board to consider lifting some of the company co-founder’s duties, perhaps by appointing an independent chairman.

(Musk raises new concerns about leadership by publicly reviving old spat. Click Here for the story.)

The irony of all this is that Tesla’s three product lines were the three best-selling EVs in America last month which actually gives Musk credibility on what matters most to many investors: his promise of profits for the second half of 2019 after years of heavy losses.