Used & Abused

What does the war on drugs have to do with cults?

Cult Adjacent | In “Nine Perfect Strangers” Nicole Kidman stars as Masha, a sketchy new age healer. Much of Masha’s success is due to her innovative therapy practices, which include giving her clients microdoses of psychedelics. Masha’s preferred drug is psilocybin, a mushroom she claims has the power to curb drug addiction and symptoms of depression, and help users connect with the dead.* While I don’t think what happens at Tranquillum House is exactly culty, her control over her followers certainly is. Masha microdoses her clients without their permission lies about a death on the property and pushes them all further than they want to go in their therapy. While initially, it seemed “unrealistic” that everyone did not immediately pack their bags, it occurred to me that these actions occurred after the group had come to trust her. 

*Yes, contact the dead. If it sounds weird, it’s because by the time this is revealed the show has gone completely off the rails.

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The Big Post | I have been thinking a lot about the relationship between cults and drugs. I was inspired to investigate this after revisiting Big Machine. In the novel, Ricky Rice tells readers about how his addiction to heroin is linked to his experiences growing up in a suicide cult. I started thinking about the different links between cults and drug use (besides post-escape addiction). This led me down a series of rabbit holes about how late 60s cult leaders have used and abused drugs to control their followers.

Obviously, my top research results were hallucinogens which date further back than the 1500s. During its introduction into the midcentury American consciousness, psychedelics were largely dismissed as “hippie” drugs. In a 1966 Christianity Today article, the magazine describes using LSD to expand one’s consciousness as “bizarre.” John Marco Allegro's publication, The Sacred Mushroom, and the Cross, probably did not help with this kind of generalization. Allegro argues that the “Bible (and the New Testament in particular) is really just a series of myths that describe the secrets of the Amanita muscaria fertility cult rather than real people.”