(Originally printed in BREAKING CONVENTION: MUSINGS AND MEDITATIONS ON PSYCHEDELIA)

Q: What do you get when you combine a 20-year-old life coach with a microdosing protocol and a Canva subscription?

A: The shamanic wunderkind of the 21st century.

From fifteen-year-old Russian ayahuasqueros in Bali to unlimited plant

and animal subscription services, you can’t make this stuff up.

Well, I mean, you can make some of it up - for instance, the

subscription bundle referenced above hasn’t technically been done yet,

but I have no doubt that a TikTok influencer in Tulum or Ibiza is setting

up shop in a trendy Selena coworking space or a rented Airbnb villa as

we speak, framing the subscription model in spiritual jargon (bonus

points for using the terms ‘modality’, ‘quantum’ and ‘new paradigm’)

and airing the pitch to a worldwide audience of social media followers.

Once upon a time, visionary plants held a sacred place in society.

A curandero was initiated into a prolonged study of the local flora,

fauna and funga in solitude, or perhaps tested by exposure to merciless

elements or starvation as a means of earning access to the divine. Today,

one can simply enroll in a 6 week plant medicine ‘container’ discovered

via paid Facebook advertising, and shortly thereafter be facilitating their

own interpretation of a 5-MeO-DMT ceremony utilizing a branded

vape bought on Etsy in an airbnb near Medellin. When people in the

psychedelic medicine space speak of ‘abundance’, surely a line of gap

year vagabonds ready to pay $150 a ceremony to an expatriate from

Liverpool illegally running trap house-style retreats on a tourist visa is

included in the scope of this magical quality.

I think I even recently saw an Instagram ad for my old 7th grade

English teacher offering Reiki and microdosing consultation services

in Denver, Colorado. And if it wasn’t him, it was a doppelganger.

I messaged the account advertising the services but only received an

automated response asking me if I was ready to meet my true self and an

accompanying list of sliding scale prices for various healing ceremonies.

But it’s not just the influencers synthesizing a brave new psychedelic

medicine world - corporate executives are increasingly banding

together for microdosing protocols and ayahuasca retreats, plumbing

the depths of their collective subconscious and summoning entities

to gain a competitive edge in today’s hypercompetitive global market.

Since money and clout are the most spiritual of all elements, it’s only

natural to assume that ancient indigenous plant knowledge holds the key

to unlocking massive untapped quarterly returns and portfolio boosts

in today’s economy. I personally think Datura has a lot to offer in this

regard, so long as you can bring the whole team back in one piece with

no permanent damage to their ocular nerves or inverted epistemologies.

The simple fact of the matter is that the world has changed, and

we must change with it. Just as the Bufo Alvarius toad species evolved

for millions of years with nobody forcibly stimulating it to obtain it’s

extremely psychoactive defense mechanism goo, before all of a sudden

someone discovered that you could smoke it and see God, and now

there’s a synthetic tradition of ceremonial use which somehow predates

the organic compound because there was never any actual historical use

among any indigenous tribes, just trustafarians and yuppies who read

Tihkal and Pihkal - This is the medicine of our times indeed.

I’m just glad that RFJ Jr. is being considered for a potentially

extremely influential position in the forthcoming U.S. presidential

administration. I learned about this potential appointment on X - or

Twitter - the final boss in the misinformation timeline. RFK, finally

someone with some real sense. Perhaps we’ll finally get a member of the

president’s inner circle to open up a K hole in the Oval Office. This could

have any number of beneficial attributes to it. If nothing else, I want to

see Pentagon documents pertaining to the nature of UFO and aliens

declassified, because if they indeed exist and have achieved intergalactic

travel capabilities, I imagine the psychoactive molecules and knowledge

of advanced chemistry they must also harbor within their expansive

alien IP probably has some extraordinary drug intelligence contained

within it.

In many ways, logging onto one’s social media timeline and curating

an algorithm that feeds you nonstop psychedelic braggadocio and thinly-

veiled advertisements masquerading as consciousness expansion and

generational trauma healing is the ultimate state of zen. Spiritual cringe

has its own way of inviting healing and higher vibrational attunement.

If I’ve learned one thing from my psychedelic experiences, it’s that the

flow state flows more lucidly when America’s Next Top Model is the one

mixing and matching the elements of various decontextualized sacred

traditions. New age 5-MeO-DMT rituals facilitated by an Adonis like

mystery man with chiseled abs and bronzed skin, 200-hour yoga teacher

training certificate to boot are a one way ticket to Utopia (no refunds

if it doesn’t work for you, that’s on you). There’s a distinctly Turkish

element to the ceremony that I can’t quite put my finger on - maybe the

billowy white curtains which scream ‘Antalya’, or the oriental rugs and

floor pillows, or the hookah that the beautiful maestro is chain smoking

double mint apple shisha out of to encourage the onset of our ecstatic

rite.

And as with the old adage ‘If a tree falls in the forest and no one is

around to hear, did it make a sound?’

We now have “if you participate in a sacred medicine ceremony and

don’t post about it online, did it happen at all?”

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There are rules to the game - for example, to qualify as a real,

honest to god microdosing facilitator-cum-life coach, you need to have

the purest entheogens possible available for your clients at all times.

What else distinguishes you from the lowly therapist if not the ability

- nay, the duty - to overhype and then sell Schedule One substances -

euphemistically referred to as ‘plant medicines’ - to your clients?

You are a therapist’s wet dream - no FDA to worry about, no license

to lose, nothing but a pure soul living out their Dharma and enjoying

healthy margins on each transaction.

Think of TikTok like a portal to the liminal wilds of pure imagination.

You never know what will come up once you’ve entered the aether it

occupies, but as long as the clicks keep coming and the eyeballs stay

glued to your profile, it’s all love and light.

I have no doubt that we will soon experience advertising during our trips

- the Akashic records have been crowdsourced and sold to the lowest

bidder, and the astral plane too is compromised.

Imagine it: The onset special, where brands imprint upon your subconscious

just as you are entering the flow state, making the journeyer feel very

connected to the sponsor.

The best mushroom coffee on the market: Mycroboost

Or perhaps the peak package, where deep and extremely personal

insights are commingled with brand messaging from the sponsor, forging

a breakable bond deep in the psyche of the subjective experiencer.

Then you have the comedown special, which leaves the journeyer

feeling very grateful for the products and services the brand offers.

The more portals that people open to the fifth dimension, the more

fuckery comes in and out.

Imagine if Kykeon was distributed on demand to the citizens of

Ancient Greece - the pearl clutchers of antiquity would be running

around with their togas in a knot, citing recent spikes in chariot crashes

as irrefutable evidence that psychedelics unravel the social fabric of

society when displaced from the Eleusinian mystery rites by which

they’re administered in strict ceremonial procession and tied to capital

punishment if done outside of such.

What comes next?

At least we can have a sense of humor about it. Turns out that humor is

the Achilles Heel of inhumanity. A blind spot where truth can conceal

itself from the many masks of obfuscation and amnesia. In truth, the

psychedelic DMT mescaline mushroom iboga etcetera genie is already

out of the bottle. It’s not going back in. At this point we can safely

imagine that major hotel chains like Kempinsi and Four Seasons will be

offering ayahuasca upgrades on their honeymoon suite packages, with

even lowbrow dives like the Motel 6 running One Up magic chocolate

bars packed with 4-AcO-DMT and loads of as of yet undetermined

research chemicals out of vending machines in the hallways.

This isn’t the ‘Breakthrough Therapy’ version of the revolution

that the naive folks at the FDA and complementary alphabet agencies

dreamed up when they first afforded MDMA and Psilocybin the vaunted

designation as treatments for highly pathologized indications that ignore

the socioeconomic, cultural and environmental factors underpinning

mental illness and chronic disease in 2017 and 2018 respectively. This

is something very different, and wholly uncontainable unless we want

to escalate the drug war to Maduro-esque heights - send the military

knocking on doors in Venice Beach and SoHo, heavy artillery at the

ready to suppress suburban microdosing moms and magic mushroom

enhanced sound healing seminars. Who knows. It could happen.

Until then, enjoy the madhouse and stop to smell the rich vaporized

plastic scent of DMT filling up the carnival funhouse of mirrors that is

the psychedelic renaissance in all of its tainted and guardrail-less glory - brought to you on social media.

Psychedelics In the Age of Social Media: A Satirical Goldmine

The Far-Left has inherited the Drug prohibitionist mantle