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Why Psychedelics Matter to the Future
“Environmental anxiety” is a hot buzzword on the Internet these days, but it’s not a fun thing to feel.
The first time I truly communed with nature, I was under the influence of LSD.
The sky was a special shade of blue and it shone through the tops of the pine trees dripping Spanish moss like long gray beards. Those beards waved in the wind, shadows crossing over our bodies as we strode in and out of the shade of the canopy. It was a warm day and leaves rustled beneath our feet. We sat in a loose circle of camping chairs, passing a joint around us, and a small but merry fire crackled in the pit dug in the soil. A man in a tie-dyed mumu cooked hot dogs for everyone over its heat.
I was standing to the side, staring at the spaces between the trees. They seemed to open up, to hold doorways to the future.
“I realized something,” I said aloud, and my friend Kristina looked up from her hands, a warm smile on her face. “Our generation will be the same age as our parents when climate change starts to happen.”
The smile melted off of her face. “That’s comforting,” she said sarcastically.
