15 interesting stories I'm following

Seeing as I wrote a big beefy essay for Tuesday I thought I would do the brunch this Friday, so here are 15 interesting stories or trends I’m following:

1. Can the psychedelic industry outgrow the habits of the underground?

I wrote an article for Persuasion, a politics magazine edited by Yascha Mounk, asking if the nascent psychedelic industry can shed the habits of the underground.

Since psychedelic drugs were made illegal in 1970, they have occupied a small, relatively stable corner in Western culture. Roughly 1% of Americans used psychedelic drugs in any given year. Many of them were students or occasional ravers. And then there was also a small, “psychedelic underground,” in which psychedelic drugs were a central part of members’ beliefs, identity, culture, and even livelihood. The psychedelic underground was a niche subculture, with its own rituals, terminology and sacred sites, its heroes, and its Dionysian ethics of altered states, blurred boundaries, and psychedelic polyamory. When harm, misconduct, rapes, or deaths occurred, they were rarely reported and generally accepted. This was the jungle, literal or metaphorical. What’s happened in the last five years is this underground has gone overground and attracted millions of newbies, and it’s now set to become part of mainstream U.S. mental healthcare. The question is: can psychedelic culture shed the Dionysian ethics of the underground and become professionalized, bureaucratized and normal? What would be gained by that? And what lost?

2. DOGE hires a ketamine queen

At the end of the Persuasion article, I suggested the ‘psychedelic underground’ has now become ‘the psychedelic establishment’ (this was a nod to two fantastic books by occult historian James Webb - The Occult Underground and the Occult Establishment). One instance of the Psychedelic Establishment and the growing links between psychedelic culture / industry and the MAGA government is the appointment by Elon Musk of Alexandra Beynon at DOGE. Benyon is the wife of Dylan Beynon, founder of ketamine telehealth company Mindbloom, and she was previously head of engineering at Mindbloom. Musk is apparently a regular user of ketamine for his ‘negative frame of mind’. Mindbloom CEO Dylan Beynon, whose entire profit model depends on the US government permitting Mindbloom to continue selling ‘home injectables’, accused the media of doxxing her (ie naming her as a DOGE employee) and labelling them ‘murderers’.

Meanwhile Mindbloom tried to reassure customers concerned their medical data could be somehow available to DOGE…

3. One year of Australia’s legal psychedelic therapy - free event on March 13

Come to this free online event at 6.30pm EST on March 13. Three leading figures in the Australian legal psychedelic industry will share their experience after the first year of legal PAT. Monica Schweickle is Clinical Psychologist & Director of Peridot Clinic, and will speak about her experience setting up one of Australia’s first legal PAT programme. Bernadette Fitzgibbon is Deputy Director of Research at Monarch Research Institute and will speak about her experience setting up the Australian National University (ANU) National Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy outcome register. Biana Sebben is a Clinical Psychologist and integration therapist who will speak about her experience supporting clients dealing with adverse experiences after legal PAT treatment

4. American Christianity is growing again…and getting wilder

Christianity is (somewhat) growing again in the US, according to the new Pew Religious Landscape Study. Analysis from the New York Times suggests one of the reasons is young American men becoming more conservative and embracing Christianity as a part of that. American Christianity is also becoming more charismatic and radical. Check out this very good in-depth podcast series on the politicization of the neo-Charismatic movement and how it fed into the January 6 riots.

5. Old content on YouTube is outperforming new content on other streaming platforms

I met up with a friend recently and we didn’t discuss the new HBO or Apple show - we discussed YouTube archive footage of our favourite guests from Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show. Streaming platforms like HBO, Disney, Netflix and Apple are spending less on new content (have you noticed there are no new mega-shows being discussed round the water-cooler?) while raising their prices. As a result, people are spending less time and money on streaming platforms and more on YouTube, either watching independently-made content or (in my case) clips from the 70s and 80s from the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Yes we’ve officially become a zombie culture, haunted by the ghosts of showbiz past. So who are my favourite Carson guests to watch on YouTube? Don Rickles, Robin Williams and Richard Pryor. How about you?

OK more after the paywall, including the launch of Founders Club (monthly zooms for Founding Members), a fitness influencer one-shots themselves with ayahuasca, and will Ozempic change the world and human nature more than psychedelics?