Almost immediately, the yeses began to outweigh the nos, prompting a follow up tweet from Musk: “As the saying goes, be careful what you wish, as you might get it.”

But it’s not just Twitter users who want Musk to resign as CEO. It’s shareholders, too. Last week, Gary Black, an investor and managing partner of Future Fund, which owns about $50 million worth of Tesla, took Musk to task for “polarizing political views” that “are hurting customer perceptions” of Tesla’s electric vehicles. Black said that he hoped Musk would “come to his senses” and “tone down his political views.”

The next day, in a Washington Post story about QAnon finding a home on Elon Musk’s Twitter, technology reporter Drew Harwell reported that Elon Musk’s closest allies doubt Musk “believes some of the wilder things he says online.” In their estimation, he’s just trolling for attention. “He wants to muck it up,” one close associate told Harwell.

In other words, like so many of us, Elon Musk has a Twitter addiction. And what he needs from the people who care about him is a Twittervention.

Musk’s lack of impulse control, flip-flopping on divisive issues, and banning journalists from Twitter and then reinstating them, reveals his failure to emotionally regulate, as he needs to in order to be the clear-eyed CEO his investors entrusted him to be.

It’s time for a real-life intervention by those close to Musk to form a circle of trust and say, “Elon, we love you. But you risk losing everything. Snap out of it before it’s too late.”

Musk is playing with fire by opting to “muck it up” rather than run his companies with discipline. At stake are billions of dollars in NASA contracts for Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, as well as the future of Tesla and his own reputation, brand equity and personal wealth.

Musk has way over-leveraged his wealth already, selling billions of dollars worth of Tesla shares to take Twitter private. That risky move and the recent spate of Twitter controversies may stoke his attention addiction, but they have also helped tank Tesla share prices in half, virtually inviting strong Tesla board intervention due to pressure from shareholders.

Meanwhile, the embattled tech baron has slipped from first to second place on the Forbes billionaire list, which has been attributed to a loss of investor confidence in Tesla because Musk’s attention is so heavily focused on Twitter.

Tesla’s 10 largest investors, including Vanguard, BlackRock, and Musk himself, have reportedly lost almost $133 billion since the Twitter board accepted Musk’s buyout.

Musk is just “not doing the math,” as Gary Black put it.

But the truth seems to be worse: Musk can’t help himself when it comes to his Twitter addiction.

Understanding this may help angry investors and shareholders confounded as to why Musk, who hasn’t traditionally skewed politically Left or Right, would make a reputational U-turn by choosing to “muck it up” rather than run his companies with discipline.

As for Musk himself, he should draw caution from the recent downfall of another celebrity who has paid a stiff price for his own attention addiction—the rapper Kanye West who now goes by Ye, who lost his status as a billionaire after insisting on spewing antisemitic hate speech.

When the Washington Post reporter emailed Musk seeking his response before publishing his QAnon story, Musk simply responded “lol”—a classic sign of an addict.

For Elon Musk to kick his attention addiction, he’s going to have to take a break from Twitter and put his mind to running Tesla and SPACEX and doing what is his true mission: helping the world escape gravity and colonize time and space in the way that only he knows how.

Chitra Ragavan, executive coach and strategic advisor to the founders and CEOs of technology firms.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.