How Social Media is Dropping Acid on Psychedelic Culture
Social media exude the therapeutic promise of psychedelics but promote reckless recreational use as well.
Remember when your parents told you not to believe everything you read online? Well, they were onto something, especially when it comes to psychedelics on social media.
From Reddit to Twitter, drug chatter is expanding into uncharted digital realms. As a new generation of trippers learns the highs and lows, social platforms are becoming spaces to crowdsource wisdom…or to seek shrooms behind mom’s back. And with an $8 billion US psychedelics market projected by 2028, according to Forbes, business is booming alongside grassroots guidance.
But how are these exchanges shaping our trips? Researchers dove into the threads to find out, uncovering social media’s complex role in psychedelia’s second coming.
On Reddit’s r/THCO page, they traced excitement and worry over THC-O-Acetate — the new cannabinoid darling. Its hazy highs were described as blissful or terrifying, energizing or coma-inducing:
“I took a fat dab of THC-O and actually felt like I was on a low dose of shrooms,” wrote one user.
Others were less enthralled: “I haven’t been feeling it at all. I thought it was me and my tolerance.”
Fans and skeptics unpacked compound mysteries, debating THC-O’s psychedelic potency. Yet amid promises of suped-up cannabis, few seemed aware of vaping risks posed by THC-O’s chemistry.
As an acetate ester, THC-O-acetate can break down at high temperatures into ketene — a highly toxic gas that caused mass vaping injuries during 2019’s EVALI outbreak, hospitalizing over 2,800 people in the US, according to the CDC. But with limited research available, Reddit’s crowdsourced wisdom remained a guessing game.
And Reddit wasn’t the only platform clouding judgment. Scientists explored thousands of antidepressant tweets from medical pros. While 14% raved about ketamine and magic mushrooms’ therapeutic powers for stubborn depression, others questioned if Big Pharma’s pills tap the placebo effect:
“More evidence of placebo effects in antidepressant treatments,” wrote one doctor, linking a journal article. “Subjective symptom ratings don’t prove the drugs work.”
As patients weighed SSRI options, this expert debate played out publicly through hot takes and academic citations. Such transparency allows doctors to share breaking treatment news. Yet conflicting opinions could also confuse suffering souls seeking hope.
But social media’s most trippy influence may be among recreational users — no prescription required. Researchers examined tweets linking psychedelics to opioids and illegal abuse. Some praised psychic relief from shroom tea over pain pills:
“Helped me get off opioids when nothing else worked,” wrote one user.
Others plotted to intensity opiate highs with DMT:
“Anyone used DMT to boost their high on pain killers?” tweeted another.
Such public posts illuminate our cultural craving for boundary-dissolving escapes, regardless of risks. They also raise important questions about promoting responsible use while avoiding censorship.
How can harm-reduction information spread safely when content moderation remains a gray area? Platforms like Facebook and Instagram currently ban psychedelic images and hashtags through broad “drug policy” restrictions — yet grassroots communities continue flowering through code words and symbolic shorthand known to those in the know. How can users make wise decisions informed by science and community support if open discussion faces barriers?
Perhaps it’s time we expand inner space, not cyberspace, to harvest psychedelics’ full potential. As the late ethnobotanist Terence McKenna famously said:
“Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third-story window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behavior and information processing.”
Yet until opinions change, we cannot unquestioningly swallow social media’s psychedelic thoughts. For now, believing everything we read about this trip remains the mother of all bad trips.
References
Bonar, E. E., Bauermeister, J. A., Blow, F. C., Bohnert, A. S. B., Bourque, C., Coughlin, L. N., Davis, A. K., Florimbio, A. R., Goldstick, J. E., Wisnieski, D. M., Young, S. D., & Walton, M. A. (2022). A randomized controlled trial of social media interventions for risky drinking among adolescents and emerging adults. Drug and alcohol dependence, 237, 109532. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2022.109532
Dong, Y., & Weir, N. M. (2023). Antidepressants: A content analysis of healthcare providers’ tweets. Exploratory research in clinical and social pharmacy, 9, 100232. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rcsop.2023.100232
Kruger, D. J., Amila, K., Kaplan, S. M., Redfield, J., Stacy, T., Agarwal, V., Faqqouseh, M., & Bone, C. C. (2023). A Content Analysis of Social Media Discussions on THC-O-Acetate. Cannabis (Albuquerque, N.M.), 6(2), 13–21. https://doi.org/10.26828/cannabis/2023/000164
Palamar, J. J., Le, A., & Acosta, P. (2020). Posting, texting, and related social risk behavior while high. Substance abuse, 41(3), 382–390. https://doi.org/10.1080/08897077.2019.1635966
Sellers, E. M., & Romach, M. K. (2023). Psychedelics: Science sabotaged by Social Media. Neuropharmacology, 227, 109426. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropharm.2023.109426
This article was written with the assistance of artificial intelligence from Anthropic.
