WIRED does drugs. Surprise! We always have. We're a West Coast publication, with a certain psychedelic reputation to uphold. (Picture us tripping constantly, swaying to the rhythms of the future.) But that's why we don't publish many stories about drugs. They bore us. We know drugs open minds, cure depressions, expand consciousnesses, etc. So you've tried mushrooms for the first time in your 50s? Good for you! Not for us. Unless, well, you're Justin E. H. Smith, one of the greatest living philosophers of technology. We've been nonstop readers of his for years—first his blog, then his Substack. (Also his books, which we've excerpted.) So when he told us that he, at 50, wanted to try mushrooms for the first time and write about the experience for WIRED, we made an easy exception to our rule. Off he went. Are you a lost soul? Maybe a bit depressed? Uncertain what it's all for? So is Justin. But drugs—they didn't just help him. As you'll read in his marvelous essay, they revolutionized his outlook on just about everything: philosophy, life, even the meaning of "everything." Stick with the piece. It's not a work of philosophy, necessarily, but it is philosophical. It'll move you, challenge you, and it may even change you. It also contains one of the longest sentences WIRED has ever published. Because Justin's that good. He's a scholar with style. A thinker who feels. Just a guy, with so many uncertainties, on an impossible search for the thing that'll save him: the truth. —Jason Kehe | Senior Editor |
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