10 Things Psychedelics Will Ruin for You (In the Best Way Possible)
Welcome to the Psychedelic Blog. I write about the Impact of Psychedelics on Grieving, Relationships, Culture & Death. This week, we're talking about all the things Psychedelics will ruin for you—don’t worry, it's a good thing.
“Reality is just a crutch for people who can’t handle drugs.”— Robin Williams
Most people talk about the healing, the visions, the breakthroughs. But there’s another side to Psychedelics—one that doesn’t get enough airtime.
They ruin things.
In the best way possible.
Once you’ve communed with the divine, good luck enjoying small talk or scrolling LinkedIn. Here are ten things that become permanently unpalatable after a few trips to the other side.
1. Small Talk
“So, what do you do?”
God no. The idea of volleying scripted niceties feels like chewing cardboard while your soul is screaming to talk about death, dreams, or why plants are conscious. We don’t care about traffic. We’ve become allergic to the Netflix Top Ten (with a rare exception for Black Mirror, obviously). Your kid’s little league stats? Love that for you. Genuinely. But for the rest of us—it’s a hard no.
To steel man the case: small talk does serve a purpose. It’s a centuries-old social scan to determine—friend, foe, or something else entirely? It filters for baseline sanity. I get that. But just because it’s useful doesn’t mean I have to enjoy it. I don’t. And if you’re reading this, chances are, neither do you.
2. LinkedIn
Once a sacred altar to your high-achieving persona. Now? A cringe buffet of ego masquerading as humility. A dystopian hellscape where the rules of engagement are absurd—self-aggrandizement? Expected. Bragging about your W2? Encouraged. Fabricating a story about crushing an interview for your dream job? Bonus points.
The dominant tone is one of overly agreeable takes on aggressively banal topics. The algorithm rewards mundanity.
What isn’t allowed on LinkedIn? Truth. Real, uncomfortable, unvarnished truth. Occasionally, an actual expert sneaks through with something worth reading, but it’s quickly buried under a landslide of plagiarized platitudes & recycled startup wisdom.
Post-awakening, LinkedIn feels like a digital graveyard for souls who haven’t realized they’re dead yet.
3. Heavy Drinking
Or drinking at all, really. The number of people I know who’ve broken up with booze post-Psychedelics only continues to rise. Some of my Psychonaut friends still enjoy the occasional drink—and there’s nothing wrong with that. But heavy drinking? That chapter closes fast.
Sure, part of it is age. We get older, our bodies can no longer handle alcohol, especially the hangovers. There’s nothing cool about blacking out in your 40s. But that’s only half the story. The real shift happens after a deep Psychedelic experience—when you’ve touched something sacred, it’s hard to go back to numbing.
It’s no coincidence that I had my last drink almost exactly one year after my first Bufo ceremony. As I wrote about last week, couples are starting to replace booze with Psilocybin & MDMA. And that’s not just a personal choice—it’s a cultural shift. One we should be very excited about.
4. Shopping Malls
Once a temple of consumer joy. Now? A glitchy simulation built by entities who’ve heard of happiness but never actually felt it. Is there anywhere more soulless than a mall? More vapid? It’s joy-as-a-product, fulfillment shrink-wrapped and sold under fluorescent lights.
Sure, sometimes you have to go. You’ve got a wedding, you need a tie. Fine. But you feel it now—the hum of artificiality, the spiritual hollowness. A mall isn’t just a building—it’s a monument to the lie that more stuff will fix the pain.
We go in, we get out. But we don’t pretend it’s anything more than what it is: a warehouse of empty promises dressed up as solutions.
5. Mindless Activities
Fantasy football. Doom scrolling. Hours of sports. Background podcasts. Celebrity drama. Your favorite influencer’s every move. Numbing out in front of a screen.
Guilty on all counts. But post-awakening, these things reveal themselves for what they are: a catastrophic waste of time.
There’s a whole world out there—raw, chaotic, beautiful—and most people miss it while glued to secondhand lives. Your favorite podcast guest? They didn’t get there by watching. They went out and did something. Something worth sharing.
That’s the real takeaway: great lives aren’t lived vicariously. They’re earned.
6. Trendy Places
I spent over three years in a relationship with someone who only went to the “best” places in town—Bavel, Bestia, Avra, Lavo… (why do they all kind of sound the same?). Your reservation is never honored. They’re “very busy,” of course. You drop a small fortune on tiny plates that leave you both hungry & exhausted.
Why do people keep doing this? Because someone, somewhere—who they’ve decided has social capital—said they should. That’s it. That’s the whole reason.
I lived that life. I can confirm: it’s exactly as vapid as it sounds.
Now, when I go out—and I still love going out—it’s for great food, warm service, and actual connection. Not performative status games with a garnish on top.
7. The Constant Desire for More
We all know the type. It’s never enough. Not enough money, not enough recognition, not enough stuff. Always a new pair of shoes. A newer car. A better zip code. A shinier version of the exact same life.
To the initiated—to those who’ve sat with themselves, faced the void, or taken the inward journey—this lifestyle doesn’t read as aspirational. It reads as exhausting.
Because once you’ve touched something real, something beyond ego, the game of accumulation feels hollow. You start to see it clearly: the people who always want more are rarely satisfied with what is. And deep down, you can sense it—they’re not as happy as they want you to believe.
There’s nothing wrong with ambition. But chasing more for the sake of more is a treadmill with no off switch. And once you’ve stepped off, you start to wonder why anyone ever thought that was the goal.
8. Polite Laughter
Not only do I loathe polite laughter—I actively avoid situations where I might be forced to participate in it. Earlier this year, I turned down a lucrative consulting project simply because it involved being in an office… with golf guys. I could already hear the forced laughs & performative dialogue. The money wasn’t worth it.
Don’t get me wrong—laughter is everything. I love stand-up. I’m drawn to women who are funny, witty, and irreverent. I laugh a lot. But post-Psychedelics, polite laughter hits different. It’s not just fake—it’s soul-numbing. It represents the performance, the suppression, the silent contract that says, “I’ll pretend this is funny if you pretend I belong.”
To the initiated, it’s nails on a chalkboard. A quiet tragedy wearing a smile.
9. The News
What once felt essential now reads like weaponized cortisol. You don’t need another outrage cycle—you need a walk outside and a challenging workout.
Here’s what they don’t show you:
Every plane that landed safely today.
The thousands of surgeries that went well.
The company building AI-powered plush toys to teach kids about the wonders of the world.
(All true, by the way.)
The news isn’t designed to inform—it’s designed to provoke. It shows you what’s profitable, not what’s true.
Last month in the Congo, 70 Christians were beheaded by Islamic jihadists. You’re hearing about that for the first time? Exactly.
Even after we cut the cable cord, the madness continues. YouTube headlines read: (Insert name) SHUTS DOWN (Insert name)—and then the reverse, depending on whether the channel is right or left wing. Please…make it stop.
More & more thinkers are waking up to the idea that reading the news daily is a net negative. Psychonauts figured this out by rediscovering awe. Once you’ve seen behind the curtain—felt the vibration of the universe, witnessed the sacred geometry, experienced the quiet magic in everyday life—the latest drama at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue just doesn’t hit the same.
10. Our Priorities
We still play status games—we just know which ones we’re playing. That awareness is everything.
So many people spend their one precious life chasing someone else’s dream. Deep down, they suspect it. They feel the misalignment. But then comes the commitment fallacy—I’ve come this far, I might as well keep going—and so they do. I suspect that’s one reason many avoid Psychedelics entirely: they don’t want the truth they’ve buried to surface.
Contrary to popular belief, working with Ayahuasca doesn’t mean you won’t want the house, the car, or the successful life. What it does mean—if integrated properly—is that those pursuits are actually yours. They hold meaning for you. And when you’re acting from that place? It’s powerful.
Psychiatrist Dr. Paul Conti says the two most important variables for happiness are agency & gratitude. Psychedelics restore both. They act like a truth serum, peeling back the layers of conditioning you never opted into. You start to see how your choices were shaped by childhood, hormones, life stage, personality, culture. That clarity alone creates meaningful, lasting change. Always for the better.
That polished, performative self? Dead.
What emerged is stronger, stranger, truer.
And you wouldn’t go back if you could.
Psychedelics aren’t just about bliss—they’re about clarity. And clarity comes with a cost. It makes it nearly impossible to tolerate the noise, the nonsense, the numbing distractions we once called “normal.”
That’s the trade-off: you lose your tolerance for bullshit and gain a reverence for what’s real. You stop wasting time on things you only pretended to enjoy. What actually matters rises to the surface—and stays there.
Presence deepens. Gratitude expands. Love flows more freely.
And in return, the things that once captivated you?
They start to feel empty. Banal. Boring.
If that’s not a fair exchange, I don’t know what is.
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I actually wish the term “drugs” did not include psychedelics. Because in my humble opinion, there are drugs, which includes alcohol, and then there are psychedelics that are in a realm of their own.
Fantastic list, each thing here is something that is absolutely true. After you've tasted the bliss of the divine or have seen the true nature of reality things such as small talk, god how fucking excruciating it is, to shopping for "stuff" no longer resonates with a psychonaut. The thought of going to the mall to buy clothes makes me want to scream, even when I actually need to buy new clothes. This is why psychedelics have been demonized and illegalized, they provide you with the perception to see beyond the conditioning of society and show you a path through the madness we call normal life in this world. Once your perception changes you cannot go back to who you were, nor do you want to even if being part of normal society may have been easier. Also, you're definitely right about alcohol, I used to love me some booze but over the past 5 years I have cut it out of my life almost completely, only time I drink to excess is when I'm at my family's trailer at a campground, other than that I have zero desire to drink.