Global Altered States: Anytown, USA

This Week's Sunday Insider, Global Altered States: The Psychedelic Revolution is smaller than it looks.

I have always been interested in the counterfactual…I suppose it’s how my brain makes sense of the world.

Take my time in Austin: I was unhappy there. I missed the beach, dating after years in LA felt like being sent to the minor leagues & alcohol was still the primary drug of choice.

To assuage that discontent, I would explore the counterfactual: what would life have looked like if I had stayed in LA? I would have spent considerably more money, never made new friends & always wondered whether Austin could have been home. Only living there provided the answer: no, it definitely could not.

Applying that same thinking to Psychedelics, it’s easy to get caught up in the places where Psychedelia is thriving: LA, Austin, CDMX. But what about Anytown, USA?

• Are mushrooms making an appearance?

• Are couples realizing MDMA doesn’t destroy your brain & isn’t relegated to the club?

• Are people slowly replacing booze with substances like Kanna?

Those are the questions I set out to answer in this edition of Global Altered States.

If you removed LA, Austin, Denver & a handful of other bubbles from the map, how much has American drug culture actually changed?

Well…not much.

Psychedelics have gained legitimacy, Cannabis has normalized substantially & curiosity is spreading. But in Anytown, USA, alcohol still dominates social life, MDMA is still viewed as a party drug, mushrooms remain weird drugs people did in college once & things like 2C-B barely register.

That tension is the story: the Psychedelic movement changed the conversation more than it has changed behavior.

The major exception is Cannabis.

Walking around Cape May, NJ, I stumbled across a dispensary & went inside. What struck me wasn’t the weed…it was the clientele.

These weren’t Deadheads or 24-year-olds wearing mushroom necklaces. They were people I would have expected to see sitting 3 stools down at a beach bar: flip-flops, beer-company T-shirts & those XL board shorts so ugly they looked like they’d lost a bet.

That matters.

Every time someone tells me cannabis use is skyrocketing, I ask: compared to what?

Because the counterfactual isn’t sobriety. That guy buying gummies used to drink 6 Bud Lights. The couple picking up a pre-roll would have split a bottle of wine. Cannabis taking market share from alcohol is a cultural godsend.

A guy who gets high on his couch is considerably less likely to yell at his wife or wrap his car around a telephone pole than the version of himself who spent 4 hours drinking at the bar.

That doesn’t make Cannabis harmless…it means the alternative matters.

And whatever you think about weed, something remarkable has happened: Cannabis became boring. A dispensary in a New Jersey beach town no longer feels particularly countercultural…it’s just another store.

Psychedelics aren’t there yet.