Pscyhedelics and Revolution

Build an inclusive revolutionary movement before liberals demonize psychedelics

Jul 28, 2025

The Guardian piece above is interesting. Why, exactly, would a paper that deems itself progressive publish a piece that smears psychedelics by association with its use among reactionaries? Now, first of all, anyone who has studied logic can easily find the flaw in this essentially straw man approach, using correlation when there is no available data to support a causative relationship: “Hitler and Pol Pot both drank milk, so did Atilla the Hun. You know what they did, so you wanna tell me why you drinking milk is a good idea?…”

Or, in the words of the Guardian’s anonymous editorialist, who writes with an invisible source of ennunciation, like the God of the Old Testament speaking truth into existence:

Psychedelics can certainly increase openness – but this can be openness to Nazism, eco-fascism or UFO cults as well as to peace and love. Julius Evola, an Italian philosopher and fascist admired by both Hitler and Steve Bannon, was a staunch LSD advocate. Governor Greg Abbott of Texas, who recently made headlines for sending buses of migrants to New York, Washington and Chicago, signed a 2021 state bill to study the medical benefits of psychedelics. Steve Bannon supports legalized psychedelics, too.

From what cloud did they pull this gibberish?

The propagandistic power that is generated declares its authority by: 1) the anonymous enunciation, imbuing the statement with God-like or kingly power, 2) the association of psychedelics with scoundrels, namely Steve Bannon.

The subheading is National Inquirer-level clickbait: “.. a substance as powerful as psychedelics can be dangerous if it falls into the wrong hands…” I watched anti-dope propaganda movies in my classrooms in the 1960s that were more refined and subtle than this imperious proclamation based on absolutely no evidence. Anything that falls into the wrong hands can be dangerous, including a baseball bat or a chef’s knife. Before I get into why I’m interested in bringing the psychedelic community into the fold, I’ll give you a hypothesis that some may consider controversial, but which my intuition - I admit it, I cannot yet prove this — tells me is dead-on:

Just like liberals smeared ideas and people by associating them with Trump, as we saw during Russiagate and COVID, liberals will use this issue and dissuade people from exploring psychedelics because it leads to truly radical ideas. The compassion and awareness it creates in individuals make them allergic to bullshit DSA accommodationist theory, as well as all that global neoliberal finance capitalist drivel that has devastated the planet.

That’s why liberals want people to fear psychedelics. And let me tell you, that hype and propaganda and dissemination of horrible ideas is something we do not need. When you put that DMT pipe to your mouth and blast off, it is serious business, not some frat boy nonsense that one forgets about after a few hours of GTA. It’s hard enough to screw up the courage to do it in the first place. We don’t need all this hysterical PR from anonymous Guardian editorials.

OK, now that liberals are gunning for me, I’ve done my duty. I feel ready to rock.

I found it necessary, rhetorically speaking, to lead with my reflections on the Guardian piece in order to give everyone an idea of how propaganda works and what we will be facing as revolutionaries: a relentless assault on the truth.

But what else is new?

I think it’s best to provide you with a little personal history, and anyone uptight enough to unsubscribe over this, well, fare thee well and no hard feelings.

I first took LSD in high school. It was not a good quality product. It was laced with speed, and I was with a bunch of idiots: total ignorance of set and setting. I didn’t really understand what I had experienced, but there were none of the cliche things they’d talk about in Life magazine when I was a kid. I did not think I could fly, and mailboxes did not transform into unicorns or marching bands. But I was already on the way to believing that I’d been told a bunch of absurd and non-productive ideas by people running the world in a very messed-up way. Being young, I couldn’t articulate it any better than I just did in the previous sentence. But I knew that most of what society tells us is utter shite, and while it wasn’t even a full experience, it surely convinced me that I was more right than wrong in my assumption about the world.

The real mind bender came when I was in my twenties. By this time, I’d done the dance with mescaline and a few other substances, and I’d always used marijuana: the only psychedelic that gives me bad trips, but that’s only when I do not use it habitually. In any case, I’d just been fired, and I didn’t care. I’d been a bartender at an upscale French restaurant atop the Breaker’s Hotel in Long Beach, California. I probably deserved to be fired; I have never put much effort into wage slavery and didn’t care much about the gig.

I like to trip in moments of crisis, and this particular voyage was special. I was with a good friend, with no one around, at night. There’s a limit to the value of long trip reports because people really can’t relay the experience in words. But in my case, I stuck my hand inside a tree and realized that there was no separation.

That was a life-changing experience.

Just like Richard Nixon, I grew up a son of Orange County, in the most reactionary suburb in California, a haven for Young Republicans, Mega-Churches, Minute Men, and Birchers. I had to fight to learn, and luckily, I was curious. Which was a good thing, because being born in Westminster into a lower-middle-class working family, my daily life was a good deal different than that of a kid being raised by Jewish intellectuals in Brooklyn. It was a vacuum of culture and a hotbed of intolerance. Finding a great album or book meant taking three buses or begging your broke friend for a ride and paying for his gas. I still shudder when I have to go there to see friends and family. It’s more integrated and diverse now, thanks to the influx of new immigrants. But the hardcore OC boys, the ones who look like Fred Durst and wear their baseball caps backwards and beat people up outside clubs, they’re still there as well. Plus, my first non-political arrest was in Huntington Beach: smoking weed in a car. We thought it would be a good idea to park next to a vacant lot.

That’s enough digression. Suffice it to say that although I did become cynical for a while — lost my way both politically and spiritually, turned into a harsh realist and a historical materialist self-defined by my ideologies — I still came back home like the prodigal son. I have always done things the wrong, or at least heterodox way: I’ve become more radical as I age, and psychedelics helped save me from suicidal clinical depression.

The first part of the decade began with a bang. It’s not that I suffered anything different than what others suffer in the course of life. It just hit all at once, over about 18 months. I got fired unjustly (age discrimination, I DID NOT PROVE IT - I HAVE TO SAY THAT), my mom developed severe Alzheimer’s and we had to take her in, I couldn’t find enough work, and although I won a settlement against California State University — sorry, assholes, you didn’t make me sign an NDA — I was forced into an agreement saying that I could never work at another CSU as long as I live. That’s because the people who write the laws are, like George Carlin reminds us, all in one big club that we’re not a part of. I think I’ve been blackballed from teaching statewide, but again, I CAN’T PROVE IT. My mom died, my lawyer (a former friend, yes I know, stupid…) betrayed me, cost me over one hundred thousand dollars, refusing to do what he said he would and instead choosing to preserve his business connections with the university (he was a labor lawyer who worked with CSU). Then, one of my closest friends ended a thirty-year relationship because I said, “Hillary Clinton is a warmonger.” As the nationwide craziness grew, I was forced to go and work in China, and finally, my wife left me, and my bone tumor started getting very painful again.

Now, admittedly, I did not deal well with this particular set of circumstances. I was, nevertheless, able to claw my way back from the lowest low. I mean the low you would read about in some symbolist novel about Satanism from 19th-century France, one of those books where a young man dabbles in the dark arts and starts smoking opium…going mad, starving to death in a Parisian tenement… That’s about the only way I can describe how bad it was.

Intervention came in the form of six ketamine treatments. It did not completely heal me, but it was a real big life preserver, easy to grab onto, and it did the job. Though I now use psychedelics for other things — for instance, I’m using them to help me get off SSRIs, and I am almost there — I hit a road bump recently. Here’s a tip: SSRIs blunt visionary experience. I noticed the difference when I continued my personal psychedelic shamanic work (I ain't no enlightened guru or magician, just using the agreed upon terminology so we can communicate). I will be match fit in about 6-8 weeks, but don’t waste your money if you’re on SSRIs, and educate yourself.

I can’t stress that last bit of advice enough. If you’re on an SSRI and someone gives you a prescription MAO inhibitor before a DMT voyage, you may not get up off the couch again. Ever. So do your homework.

This is what I am suggesting: If you’re interested, reach out in your community. Join FB groups, subscribe to online publications, go to conferences, read books, and most importantly, make friends. Because IT IS OUR JOB TO SAVE THE PSYCHEDELIC LEFTIES FROM THE WARMONGERING, GENOCIDAL DEMS AND THE CRAZED, REACTIONARY MAGA KOOKS.

Both parties are involved in crushing real anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist psychedelic activism. According to one activist in a piece from Left Voice, published in 2023, reactionary forces inside conferences are even banning anti-capitalist groups from attending and presenting.

We need to put a stop to this immediately.

Enlightenment is something we want on our side. If you're interested, I put a couple of links below. I would start with the Andrew Gallimore book, but feel free to go out and follow your own path. You can find a slew of chat groups, Reddit threads, books, and podcasts that deal with the subject in an intelligent manner. Substack itself has a couple of sites as well.

This week’s serendipity included a reconnection with two friends I thought long gone, and some email correspondence with the great Dennis McKenna, who has proven to be as generous and as erudite as I imagined him to be. I’ve offered to volunteer at his institute, and you can as well, if you wish. The link is below.

I hope I have not overreacted to the Guardian piece, but a piece it was, and its intent is obvious. As I said before, our propaganda is so effective because it is seamless, it does not present as propaganda, but instead weaves itself, as Gramsci tells us, into every cultural expression; every song, film, ringtone, news feed, is loaded with a non-stop assault of political and cultural messaging, the aim of which is reinforcement of the dominant ideology.

Women, be careful. There are sometimes creepy cops/cop types in these groups, and they often troll female members, pretending they want to buy drugs. It’s a drag, and it’s messed up that they combine their fascist agenda with rapey behavior. But you can see them coming a mile away.

The ruling class has a sophisticated machine. They’re winning. This is one time we can get a step ahead of Team Bastard. Do your best to make the psychedelic movement a part of the real resistance, and bring its advocates and others on the fringe into the fold. Help move us into a better and more humane world, one where the principles and rights we talk about, such as economic democracy, tolerance, healthcare, acccess to food & shelter, freedom of speech, and yes, the right to use psychedelics, don‘t fade away, but rather actually continue to stand for what they signify and exist for each and everyone one of us to share and benefit from.

Stay safe out there,

Pauly

PS - I am not doing well financially, and I have few paid subscribers, but I promise to never add a paywall, and that’s the best I can do. Help if you can by subscribing. Thanks!

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