Member-only story
DMT Is the Drug for Our Collective Crisis of Meaning
It’s increasingly popular and there’s a good reason why
Every era has the drugs that define it. The Victorians embraced opium for relaxation and cocaine-infused wine for pep. Post-Second World War businessmen had Martini lunches, their disaffected housewives had Valium; both indulged in amphetamine-laced pills. Today, Adderall provides the same focus and confidence of yesterday’s stimulants, while opioid pharmaceuticals fill our bathroom cabinets.
There are countless reasons people take drugs. To wake up. To fall asleep. To concentrate. To dissociate. To numb pain. To enhance pleasure. But the need that psychedelics meet is hard to pinpoint. Is it to commune with others? Connect with a higher power? Delve deep inside? All of the above?
Whatever the reason, LSD has become inextricably connected to the zeitgeist of the sixties as the first psychedelic to attain popularity in western civilization. Devotees felt it allowed them to understand the world in a completely new way. It didn’t just make you feel good, it made everything glow with significance. As LSD’s inventor Albert Hofman put it: “I felt that I saw the world as it really was.”
If we were to look for a drug that defined our culture today, it may very well be N,N-Dimethyltryptamine, or…
