WELCOME TO THE PSYCHEDELIC AGE, BITCH!
| DRUGS | In this election, drugs are winning the war on drugs
Illustration by Richard A Chance (via VICE)
Ketamine is saving my sanity this week and I know I’m not the only one. America is stuck in the stultifying paralysis of election anxiety, frozen in this fog of uncertainty while waiting for our fate to be sealed. On election night, I wandered over to my friend’s apartment in Hollywood past boarded-up businesses, and the humid air felt plump with dread. The weed vape wasn’t helping much as we stared glazed-eyed at cable news; I felt like I was about to snap. Around midnight my friend and I looked at each other knowingly and reached for the baggie. Within seconds, CNN’s frenetic tableaus of red and blue morphed into an aesthetically pleasing light show, and Trump’s absurd declaration of victory elicited laughter instead of nausea. A wave of relief washing over me, it was like my brain was kicking back in a warm spa with a deep aaah.
Ketamine has finally hit its mainstream stride in 2020. The drug has already been trending hard in the rave scene for the last few years, steadily replacing cocaine as the powder-of-choice on rave dancefloors everywhere from Brooklyn to Berlin. But this pandemic has proven to be ketamine’s watershed moment, with even the normies waking up to its therapeutic capacities. “I just think it’s great that everyone is doing this drug with antidepressive effects,” said my friend last night, as if summing up the dark and druggie optimism (or is it nihilism?) of our times.
Recently, my editor at VICE asked if I could look into ketamine use in quarantine. At first, I wasn’t sure what the story would be; ketamine’s trendiness has been so endlessly discussed that even tweeting about it too much is considered cringe, and besides, I’ve already written about the phenomenon of k-sprays. Then I started thinking about how every era is shaped by its drug diet, and maybe ketamine is currently capturing the cultural zeitgeist of this dissociation generation, becoming the defining substance of this pandemic. After all, the give-no-fucks zen of ketamine makes it the perfect balm for this hellish quarantine condition. We’re already living in a temporal state of anxiety-ridden acceleration, and the last thing we need is to slam further into hyperdrive with tweaky uppers; instead, soaking in the yawning void of ketamine’s blank nothingness is what actually brings sweet, dissociative relief. “Cocaine is pointy brain, K is smooth brain,” as my friend Rachel Rabbit White put it, and right now, when processing this fractured reality is like swallowing shards of glass, I would like my brain to feel like a baby’s bare bottom, thank you very much.
Also, I just love talking to people about drugs.
So I hit up drug dealers on both the East and West Coast, and confirmed a suspicion: ketamine sales have been spiking in New York, while Los Angeles is actually way more into shrooms. (I think this comes down to space: k’s languid high is perfect for being confined in tight apartments, while shroom hikes in LA are as popular as brunch.) Then I stumbled across another interesting finding: data from a recent global drug survey actually suggests that ketamine use hasn’t increased during quarantine, with most users reporting that their consumption has largely stayed the same. (Weed, on the other hand, is way up.) The drug dealers also told me that their supplies were impacted by border closures earlier this spring—which probably fueled the reports of ketamine droughts that friends in Berlin were desperately complaining about—but that business now is mostly back to usual.
. So what I think is actually happening is that ketamine’s reputation has gotten a major PR makeover, and thus more people are comfortable with talking about it in public. It’s kind of crazy that a drug that, just a few years ago, was regarded by most people outside the rave scene as a “scary horse tranquilizer” is now seen as a therapeutic medicine that can be included in weekend wellness regimes alongside, like, CBD bath bombs. When I was in New York, I met white-collar executives who’d sniff their medical ketamine nasal sprays during lunch breaks. Yesterday, one of my friends—a literary type who used to do heroin and cocaine at alt-lit book parties before he fled New York out of self-preservation—called me to talk about how he’s doing ketamine alone in a castle in Italy to work through deep trauma. “I don’t know if a voodoo prince dances on top of this or something, but ketamine’s got some juju to it,” he said. “I feel a presence on the other end, someone guiding and healing me.” Later, he also said: “Ketamine reminds me of tissue paper, flesh, the universe, god.”
Wearing some shroom streetwear from (where else?) Online Ceramics
I woke up the next day after the elections with no hangover and a barrage of news headlines and PR emails celebrating a sweeping overhaul of America’s drug laws. Basically, every single drug policy bill put up to vote was passed on Tuesday, indicating a major paradigm shift in the way drugs are perceived and valued in America’s psyche. “The Real Winner Of The Election? Drugs,” crowed Buzzfeed, while Reason wisecracked that “Drugs are winning the war on drugs.”
Here’s a quick tally of what we won:
In the biggest blockbuster move, Oregon decriminalized all hard drugs (!!!), making it the first state where you won’t get punished with jail time for personal possession, even for drugs like heroin, cocaine, and meth. Rather, you’ll have the option of paying a small fine or attending new “addiction recovery centers,” which are funded by millions of dollars of tax revenue from the state’s legal weed industry.
Oregon also legalized medical mushrooms, which means that soon, you’ll be able to walk into a licensed treatment center and trip on shrooms under the supervision of a medical practitioner. (There are currently no limitations on what types of conditions make a patient eligible for treatment.)
Arizona, New Jersey, Montana, and South Dakota legalized recreational weed, while Misssisspi and South Dakota also legalized medical marjuana.
Washington DC decriminalized natural psychedelic plants and fungi, including psilocybin mushrooms, ayahuasca, and mescaline-containing cacti.
Despite all the bleak bullshit, this gives me a reason to feel good about the future—something I we all desperately need. Like ketamine, there is no doubt that a major driver of this sweeping reform is the medical momentum behind psychedelics, which has greatly destigmatized their use—as well as this optimization-centered culture that recontextualizes drugs as wellness and productivity tools. “The buzz around microdosing, FDA-approved research, and the movement to decriminalize psilocybin or all entheogenic plants in places like Denver or Oakland has helped reduce the stigma and validate the experiences of those who have benefited from these substances,” recently wrote Madison Margolin, co-founder of my fave psychedelic magazine, DoubleBlind.
Sign at a recent shroom party I hit in Echo Park
It’s worthwhile to note how Oregon chose to simultaneously greenlight two different paths towards ending the war on drugs: decriminalizing all drugs AND legalizing medical psychedelics. There has been a debate around the concept of “psychedelic exceptionalism” in the psychedelic community, and Madison delves into the question of whether legalizing psychedelics under a medical model—rather than decriminalizing all drugs PERIOD—reinforces the divide between “good” and “bad” drugs. In other words, does focusing on the therapeutic value of psychedelics pave the way for more drug policy reform down the line, or does the profit-driven incentives of medical psychedelic clinics preclude people from having the freedom to decide how, and where, they want to use drugs?
It’s also cool that sweeping drug reform is happening as part of a wider, systemic push for social justice in America. I’ll get into this more in a future newsletter, but the system of drug criminalization and incarceration has always been fueled by the state’s racist agenda, and there has been a strong push from social justice groups for cannabis tax revenue to be reinvested into communities impacted by cannabis arrests, with varying degrees of success. Commenting on New Jersey’s legal weed win, a social justice organization leader told the New York Times: “This has the potential to be a powerful step forward in our fight against the drug war — or it could perpetuate a status quo that continues to oppress communities of color. The path forward is now in our hands.”
One thing is for sure: corporate investors with big swinging money bags are already invading the psychedelic space, lining their ducks up for wider legalization. Following the election results, shroom stocks are spiking, and Wall Street types are jumping on the psychedelic wave the same way they did with weed. Recently, I’ve also been discovering a plethora of designer shroom brands floating around the market—sleekly packaged, properly dosed, and flashily marketed, this next wave of tripper products would sit pretty on department store shelves.
The other night, I was at an outdoor strip club party for Halloween when a drug dealer with a broken nose sat next to me and showed me a box of microdosed shroom chocolates with hologram packaging and cartoon designs. “Check this shit out, you’re going to love it,” he said. “It’s so cute.”
Not gonna lie, he was right—I was very stoked. The energy and excitement in the psychedelic space, and the potential for new brands and aesthetics to redefine the face of shroom culture, reminds me of the vibe that brought me to California in 2017 to witness the legal weed revolution. While the cannabis industry kind of turned into a boring parade of IPO announcements and wellness products, I’m hoping the shroom revolution will actually harken the paradigmatic consciousness shift we need to veer off this road to extinction. One thing is for sure: The War on Drugs is ending, and drugs won. Welcome to the psychedelic age, bitch! It’s going to be a trip.