9 Questions I'm Obsessed With About Psychedelics Right Now

Welcome to The Psychedelic Blog. Bestselling essayist & Psychedelic cultural analyst examining how altered states shape relationships, grief, death & meaning.

This week: The 1st edition of a new monthly series featuring the questions about Psychedelics I can’t stop thinking about.

I was on a call recently when the topic of adolescents & young adults taking Psychedelics came up. As people shared their opinions, I noticed something interesting: every response was framed exclusively through the lens of healing.

My thoughts on the subject aren’t nearly as interesting as how automatic it’s become to associate Psychedelics with healing. This is odd when considering healing is a relatively modern framing.

My view is simple: Psychedelics can be used for healing, but they can also be used for curiosity, awe, pleasure, joy, creativity or simply to explore consciousness. Adults don’t need anyone’s permission to alter their consciousness.

Let me get ahead of the inevitable comment I field almost daily: “Their use as therapeutic tools helped destigmatize them!” I get it. But that narrative is almost a decade old…it’s job is done. It’s time to evolve the story.

As a rule, I don’t bet. But man...I’d put all my money on microdosing if I did.

The reality is that of all the people who eventually work with Psychedelics, only a small fraction will ever do a hero dose of Psilocybin, spend 11 hours with LSD or fly to the Amazon to sit with Ayahuasca.

The future is microdosing:

• Psilocybin

• LSD

• Perhaps one day, even 5-MeO-DMT nasal spray

Ironically, it also solves one of the biggest concerns raised by prohibitionists. (Funny how their arguments are never directed toward alcohol, adderall or painkillers…)

For people without major contraindications, such as a personal or family history of psychosis or mania, the risks associated with very small doses appear to be substantially lower than the scenarios most people imagine.

So relax. The future isn’t multi-day ceremonies filled with millions of people dissolving their egos in the jungle. It’s a CPA taking a mushroom cap instead of pouring a glass of wine after work.

Kind of boring, honestly. And I suspect that’s exactly where this is headed.

A few years ago I was listening to a podcast where the otherwise very smart investor Chamath Palihapitiya went on a diatribe about how he’d never done drugs, never understood the appeal & didn’t understand why they were such a big issue. Fair play…drugs aren’t for everyone.

But a few minutes later he went on a tangent about his love of wine. How he & his wife fly to Italy every year because it’s their favorite wine region. How he’s in an exclusive wine club where expensive bottles get shipped to his house each week.

How could he not see the contradiction?

Well, he’s not alone. My comments section is filled with people who love drugs...just not the ones the government told them were drugs.

The dismissiveness toward Psychedelics can be traced back to the power of associations. Tell someone from an early age that this is a drug & that isn’t, and it doesn't matter whether science or chemistry is on your side…the association remains. This is IQ-agnostic.

Sidenote: this is how propaganda works in places like North Korea. Tell people something often enough & with enough confidence, and they'll believe it regardless of whether it's true.

One of the most underexplored aspects of Psychedelics is that these tools amplify what’s already there. I suspect a relic of DARE-era propaganda still drives a narrative that looks something like:

Person + Substance = Getting High

Reality doesn’t work that way. Especially not with powerful tools that allow unfettered access to altered states of consciousness.

The reality is we are who meets the substance. If we approach these experiences with reverence, humility & enough self-awareness to actually want to change...they can do exactly that. If someone treats these tools like drugs or a ceremony like a vacation, chances are in 90 days they’ll be the exact same person.

I can personally confirm that, in the right context, Psychedelics can make us lighter, more present, more thoughtful, more compassionate & more grounded people.

One of the most common things people say after a profound Psychedelic experience is, “I saw the truth.” (This includes me circa 2019).

Maybe. Or maybe you just saw a different perspective. I don’t know anyone who can definitively answer that question.

Psychedelics have convinced people they should quit their jobs, save their marriages, end their marriages, start companies, believe in God, stop believing in God & everything in between. They can’t all be objectively true.

What I do think Psychedelics do exceptionally well is break us out of our default way of seeing the world. Sometimes that new perspective reveals something we’ve been avoiding for years. Other times it simply gives us another lens to look through.

The mistake is assuming every insight deserves immediate action. Some do, others don’t. The real work isn’t having the revelation. It’s living with it long enough to find out whether it survives contact with ordinary life.

My Uber driver on the way to the airport yesterday told me she’s been on Ozempic, lost 71 pounds, quit drinking & no longer craves alcohol. She plans to lose another 100 pounds.

That conversation reinforced something I’ve been thinking about for a while: GLP-1s are a much bigger story than weight loss.

Psychedelics may transform millions of lives. GLP-1s are likely to transform how hundreds of millions of people eat, drink, date, socialize, shop, travel, age & think about obesity itself.

I don’t think we’re correctly pricing what changing human impulse control, a core tenet of being human since we came down from the trees, will do to society.

Some predictions are obvious: the slow death of places like Vegas, wellness spas replacing fast-food chains in suburban strip malls, dramatically lower healthcare costs. Others, I suspect, are so fundamental to being human that we can’t predict them yet.

The most consequential drug of the 2020s will not be Psychedelics. It will be a weekly injection.

Most AI criticism fails to distinguish between AI for businesses & AI for consumers. That lack of nuance reveals how unserious much of the conversation still is.

I’m optimistic about AI for businesses: disease modeling, eliminating ridiculous customer service hold times, making supply chains actually work, solving absurd bottlenecks like TSA & Customs…we shouldn’t have to leave for the airport at Noon for a 3 pm flight.

Where I think the concerns are more legitimate is AI for consumers…we already saw what happened with social media. Using AI as your only integration coach strikes me as a bad idea.

To steelman the argument, the upside is obvious. AI can synthesize hundreds of thousands of Psychedelic experiences & offer guidance informed by far more data than any one human could ever possess. But the downside is that every Psychedelic experience is unique. Integration requires judgment, agency & the discipline to carry what you’ve learned back into your actual life.

So I don’t see it as human integration coach versus AI integration coach. Like many professions, I suspect we’ll have AI-assisted integration coaches for decades before full AI replacement. The bigger risk is treating either AI or a human as a crutch. Part of choosing this path is accepting that some of the answers have to come from you. You have to be willing to live with the uncertainty & carve your own path.

Yes. And unlike many in the Psychedelic world, I don’t see that as a bad thing.

The reality is many people simply can’t afford to fly to the Amazon to work with Ayahuasca. Others have physiological or psychiatric contraindications that make certain traditional Psychedelics a bad idea. Then there are ecological concerns around harvesting toads, peyote & other naturally occurring substances where synthetic alternatives solve very real problems.

I suspect I diverge from many in this space because I don’t see the world as zero sum. Some will fly to Gabon to sit in a traditional Iboga ceremony. Many others may benefit from synthetic Ibogaine’s unprecedented potential to treat opioid addiction.

The future is both. Traditional Psychedelics aren’t going anywhere, but synthetic Psychedelics & designer compounds will help countless people who otherwise wouldn’t have access or wouldn’t be good candidates for naturally occurring Psychedelics.

Better lives should always trump ideological purity.

Let’s start with the counterfactual: what a Psychedelic society doesn’t look like.

I’m fresh off a week in New Jersey, so I can confidently say it looks a lot like what most people call “normal.” There is plenty of good in that, but there’s also something missing: attention.

Spend time in suburban New Jersey (or almost anywhere in America) & you’ll see people compulsively checking their phones, keeping conversations safely confined to real estate, traffic & the local sports team. They dress how everyone else dresses, drive what everyone else drives & vacation where everyone else vacations. It can feel like people are moving through scripts they never consciously chose.

In a society where microdosing Psilocybin is as common as ordering an IPA, an annual MDMA journey replaces the golf getaway & blasting off with 5-MeO is as ordinary as a trip to Europe, I don’t think the biggest change is what people do…I think it’s what they pay attention to.

More agency over the nature of our thoughts…the ability to witness them instead of being dragged around by them. Conversations that actually go somewhere…people talking about the moments that changed them instead of the latest mortgage rate. Phones returning to what they were always supposed to be: tools, not destinations.

I don’t actually think society changes all that much. People still fall in love, raise families, build businesses, argue about politics, train hard, go on vacation & watch football.

The difference is they are finally present enough to experience the lives they already have.

This Week's Sunday Insider: The Psychedelic future is coming…just not the one we were promised.

If this piece resonated, tap the ❤️, leave a comment or restack it for someone else who might enjoy it.

And if you want the deeper essays, join The Insider by becoming a Paid Subscriber.

Thank you to everyone who has contributed so far! I’ve been genuinely overwhelmed by the submissions over the past few weeks…it means more than you know.

If you’ve attended a retreat, worked with a facilitator, visited a clinic, or participated in a ceremony, I want to hear from you.

Share your experience anonymously at Psychedelic Watch. Whether it was exceptional, disappointing, or somewhere in between, your report can help others make more informed decisions.