The middle class women who go crazy

Imagine the platonic ideal of the Millennial woman, and you probably think of someone like Rachel.

At 42, she has enviably flawless skin and a nose piercing – nostril, not septum – in which she wears a delicate gold hoop. She has been married to her college sweetheart for almost two decades, with whom she has three children under the age of 13. She worked in healthcare for ten years before becoming a full-time mother. She rides a Peloton every morning, attends PTA meetings in the afternoon, and in her free time knits beautiful, understated sweaters that look like the kind of item Gwyneth Paltrow would wear on a trip to the Scottish Highlands.

But Rachel has another hobby that sets her a little apart from the other moms in her Texas suburb—not that she talks to them about it. About once a month, after she and her husband put the kids to bed, Rachel texts her in-laws, who live next door, to make sure they’re home and available in case of an emergency.

And then Rachel takes a generous dose of magic mushrooms, or sometimes MDMA, and – there’s really no other way to put it – spends the next few hours tripping balls.

“Everything feels incredible. Everything tastes incredible. All your sensory experiences are truly intense. Sex is incredible too,” she told me. “When you take MDMA with a partner, it almost feels like you can accomplish in one night what you would accomplish in about five years of couples counseling.”

In American popular culture, psychedelic drugs are probably best known as recreational substances, beloved by the sort of dreadlocked, patchouli-marinated camper van dwellers who take sound baths instead of real baths and just want it Free his mind, man. But their use has increased dramatically in the last decade or so; A study published in July 2024 found that the proportion of adults ages 35 to 50 who had used hallucinogens in the past year was seven times higher than in 2014. And it’s not just hippies driving this trend.

Celebrities of all stripes – from Mike Tyson to Miley Cyrus – have made their love of psychedelics public; Prince Harry’s memoir describes how he used it to cope with his mother’s death. And in the tech community, where optimization-obsessed men are always trying to live better through chemistry, microdosing has become a ubiquitous practice; a 2023 Wall Street Journal Article titled Psychedelics “The Drugs That Power Silicon Valley.”

But beyond the tech bros and their Hollywood neighbors, there’s a less vocal cohort of psychedelic users: high-achieving women who use the drugs as a form of self-care.

There are few statistics, but the trend is noticeable and no one seems quite sure what to make of it. In an exasperating NPR segment about microdosing mothers – sometimes known by the somewhat derogatory nickname “mushroom moms” – there was much hand-wringing from doctors about what could possibly lead women to do such a thing, including a psychiatrist who this ominously proclaimed “basically experimenting on yourself.”

And of course, engaging in drug use without fear of arrest or incarceration comes with a certain level of privilege—which leads to questions about whether the women who staff the loose network of ketamine clinics and holistic therapists are not just dangerous, but Also disgusting are , and “Spirit Journey” resorts that have sprung up to cater to a younger generation of drug users. The website of one such luxury retreat greets visitors with a millennial pink backdrop and boho-style sizzle ribbon and asks, “Are you ready to stop medicating and start healing?” Is this just a hallucinogenic twist on the $2,500 anti-racist dinner party or the $300 jade vagina ice cream?

I spoke to a dozen women who regularly use psychedelics and found that they are a diverse group: they come from different generations and socioeconomic backgrounds; They take different types of medications, at different times and for different reasons. And despite the Goop-esque vibe, no one was taking psychedelics in search of a woo-woo wellness experience; In fact, many of them only began experimenting with MDMA, LSD, mushrooms, or ketamine after years of struggling with the limitations of a medical system that continually failed them. Some suffered from treatment-resistant depression, severe anxiety, or post-traumatic stress disorder caused by severe trauma.

What they all have in common is a passionate belief in psychedelics as a source of healing and a force for good, which can sometimes border on evangelical. However, they are aware that their zeal is not shared by the federal government or the average human resources department – which is why everyone featured in this story has been given a pseudonym to protect their privacy. As Rachel put it, “I like having custody of my kids.”

The stigma associated with these substances is a source of frustration, but also something that many of these women understand – particularly those who came of age at the height of the 1990s War on Drugs and the government’s accompanying DARE program, a brave, but sick The fateful attempt to turn the country’s middle school students into an army of tiny drug dealers. As she read, Rachel realized how many of the “just say no” messages were based on fear rather than fact How to change your mind Michael Pollan’s book on the science of psychedelics.

“I feel like we were just lied to like that,” Rachel said. “Mushrooms or LSD or MDMA, the way they were sold as gateway drugs. “You’ll end up on the street and get raped.” But these are really impressive experiences.”

“They changed my life in really significant ways,” she added.

She is not alone in this.