Mamdani's wife Rama Duwaji is visibly emotional as Mamdani shouts her out

Make America Hallucinate Again. @matthabusby.bsky.social on the “counter-counter-cultural turn” in psychedelics that means it's now the US right championing legal access - via the rhetorical KO (in the US context) of military veteran PTSD treatment. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Psychedelics once belonged to the cultural left: anti-war, anti-capitalist, suspicious of the church and state. Now, the drugs are being championed by evangelical Christians, Republican governors, military veterans and big tech billionaires. For @theguardian.com www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

I wrote this piece because I only learned about pelvic floors a few years ago, despite having had one all my life. And then it turned out to be where I store all my issues. And then that turned out to be true for a lot of people www.wired.com/story/the-pe...

Dispatch from Philadelphia on the rise of hellish drug medetomodine — and why people want to ‘Make Dope Heroin Again’ ‘I’m all for safe supply. You can have someone do pure heroin, where you know what it does, or you can have this other crazy stuff.’ www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

I spoke to the people who continue to shape their lives around avoiding Covid and only breathing ‘clean’ air ‘Refusing to mask during an ongoing pandemic is absolutely violent and it’s undeniably participating in social murder.’ For @telegraph.co.uk www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/12...

An online marketplace is selling code modules that simulate the effects of cannabis, ketamine, cocaine, ayahuasca, and alcohol when they are uploaded to ChatGPT. www.wired.com/story/people...

People are paying up to $50 to get their chatbots high on "drugs" (code modules) that simulate the effects of cocaine, ayahuasca, cannabis, alcohol, and ketamine. Some tell @matthabusby.bsky.social it's made their chatbots more "human" and "free-thinking."

Great article by @matthabusby.bsky.social on the origin story of psychonaut scientist Bruce Damer & the origin story of life on earth, and Bruce's MINDS project exploring the use of psychedelic for scientific creative problem solving nautil.us/the-psychede... see also doi.org/10.1177/2050...

My profile of Bruce Damer — computer scientist, psychonaut, astrophysicist — and how he became the first protocell during an ayahuasca trip. Psychedelics, he told me, shape the lens of the mind. ‘Suddenly new things come into view.’ For @nautil.us nautil.us/the-psychede...

A heartbreaking piece www.nytimes.com/2025/10/26/m...

Gary Youds, ‘the cannabis martyr’, who has been arrested more than 50 times en route to five jail stints in his determined fight to operate a cannabis cafe in Liverpool. An extraordinary story of perseverance detailed in this fantastic new BBC podcast featuring me! www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

If Mitch McConnell’s hemp ban goes into effect next November as planned, cannabis seeds will be rendered illegal based on the plants they output. But experts say this is illogical, as the same seeds can produce very different THC concentrations etc. My latest. www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

"The World Health Organization had a historic opportunity to ease a global ban on the coca leaf," reports @matthabusby.bsky.social. "But the agency has chosen not to do so." The December 2 decision goes against the findings of the WHO's own expert review, which detailed harms of prohibition:

The longevity entrepreneur’s five-and-a-half-hour livestreamed trip is antithetical to the introspective nature of the drug. But the stunt could reduce stigma around psychedelics. For @wired.com www.wired.com/story/bryan-...

I spent two days in America’s most notorious open drug scene, hearing how the new tranq, medetomidine, has the most fast-acting and dangerous withdrawal symptoms of all drugs. And why its prevalence is the result of the drug war. For @dispatchmedia.bsky.social dispatch-media.com/the-real-peo...

“You do it, you wake up, you’re sick,” says Christine. “You don’t even know you’re passing out.” @matthabusby.bsky.social reports from Kensington Avenue, Philadelphia, where a new drug called medetomidine is being mixed with fentanyl.

As President Donald Trump acknowledged in 1990 before becoming a politician, legalizing drugs is the only way to end the war on drugs. After all, people really want to sniff cocaine. ‘You have to legalize drugs to win that war,’ Trump said For @theintercept.com theintercept.com/2025/11/30/l...

The war on drugs has failed, and Trump’s deadly boat strikes are only doubling down on decades of failed policy.

Psychedelics may have once promised transcendence, but now they promise engagement. In 2026, the psychedelic renaissance will not just be televised — it will be livestreamed Latest for DoubleBlind newsletter.doubleblindmag.com/p/people-are...

Interesting piece which highlights leftwing politicians’ wider - and increasingly inexplicable - reluctance to support drug policy reform. How can the left reclaim the ‘effervescence of irrationality’ from the right? I guess they need to trip…

The Relay app allows users to track their porn-free streaks and get group support. Its creators say they’re taking a stand against porn and AI erotica. www.wired.com/story/young-...

Young Mormons Built an App to Help Men Quit Gooning "At a certain point, you enter what I can really only describe as a trance state. I plan a session for when I have no responsibilities and devote that time to my own enjoyment" — Josh, a gooner from Arizona www.wired.com/story/young-...

An app founded by Mormon students is helping ‘gooners’ who use porn compulsively to turn off their screens. But porn advocates maintain that government controls on porn are part of an age-old war on self-pleasure New for WIRED (h/t @manishakrishnan.bsky.social) www.wired.com/story/young-...

Mormon college students built an app to help men quit watching porn, which they describe as “a modern epidemic." But one "gooner" tells @matthabusby.bsky.social it's a form of therapy for him: www.wired.com/story/young-...

The first time I took ketamine aged 16 I walked into a sliding glass door and broke my nose. Since then, I’ve seen how it can be a moreish, destructive drug for some — but I’ve also learned that taken responsibly K is therapeutic. For @theipaper.com inews.co.uk/inews-lifest...

I was nervous when I agreed to be interviewed for CBC’s Fifth Estate about safe supply, but they got the angle exactly right. Safe supply was never implemented properly because govts were scared to prescribe what people are actually addicted to. It was set up to fail. www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XJ-...

Happy to be working with the BBC’s Strange But True Crime podcast on the extraordinary story of Gary Youds, who has now done five stints in prison for running a Liverpool cannabis cafe, most recently in July this year, for repeatedly reopening after raids and arrests www.vice.com/en/article/t...

Porn has been the closest thing I’ve ever had to an addiction. Now, a couple of months dry from porn again — after only a momentary relapse! — it’s strange how abstaining from it can make you feel more alive… inews.co.uk/inews-lifest...

In the 1980s, amid fears of Soviet psychic warfare, the CIA commissioned an evaluation of a far out program teaching out of body experiences and 'remote viewing'. The report deemed it ‘plausible in terms of its essential objectives’ Latest for @wired.com www.wired.com/story/the-ci...

There were high hopes for psychedelic policy reform when Trump returned to the White House. Nine months into his second term, with a host of advocates in senior government positions for the first time in history, what happens next is anyone’s guess For the MAPS Bulletin maps.org/news/bulleti...

After an American died on a psychedelic retreat in Costa Rica, her family were forced onto a wild goose chase ‘I called the police to make a missing persons report and that’s how I found out she had passed.’ For Vice (who just reposted this on socials) www.vice.com/en/article/i...

The HyperCard inventor was a huge proponent of taking lower doses of 5-MeO-DMT, which is widely considered the strongest psychedelic in the world.

Bill Atkinson was a computing pioneer who effectively made Apple computers usable for everyday people. But few people know that later in life he was a secret advocate of what’s widely considered the world’s most potent psychedelic: 5-MeO-DMT New for WIRED www.wired.com/story/apple-...

The Psychedelic Turf Wars Have Begun But who is behind attacks in Toronto that have left shroom shops sprayed with bullets and rammed by trucks? And aren’t mushrooms supposed to dissolve the ego?! Latest for DoubleBlind newsletter.doubleblindmag.com/p/the-psyche...

I rounded up drug news of the last month for the first edition of THE BUMP. Includes the NYT Amy Griffin story, a barbershop banger from @matthabusby.bsky.social and @maxdaly.bsky.social on the secret of tusi's success. substack.com/home/post/p-...

Cocaine carnage is coming to Britain Budget blow has exploded beyond control 🖊️ Mattha Busby www.newstatesman.com/politi...

‘Soon as you’re at the boozer that’s what it’s all about. Have a drink and have a ‘shizzle mcnizzle’,’ one leading coke-using influencer recently told his 77,000 followers My first for New Statesman www.newstatesman.com/politics/soc...

'There’s people telling me I’m about to spend the rest of my life in prison over some edibles.' American basketball player Jarred Shaw talks to @matthabusby.bsky.social from prison in Indonesia

twenty strangers walk into a hikrodose, a portmanteau of microdose and hike; could a reconnection with nature come out? a fun one from @matthabusby.bsky.social, out today in @atmosmag.bsky.social 🌎

Mushroom-infused hikes have gotten a bad rap lately. Hikers have made headlines after becoming incapacitated and hallucinating. I hoped there would be no such mishaps at our more regimented and measured affair Inside the rise of hikrodosing for @atmosmag.bsky.social atmos.earth/science-and-...

Exclusive: The long-awaited WHO-commissioned review on coca leaves is unequivocal - No "evidence of clinically meaningful public health harms associated with use," but research "robustly" shows harms "associated with coca control strategies." Mattha Busby reports:

Human design, which places people into archetypal personality types, is approaching a high-watermark cultural moment. In the new season of Love is Blind: UK, a human design coach propels the phrase 'trust your spleen' into the zeitgeist For @wired.com www.wired.com/story/human-...

A great piece from this current issue of The Fence. @matthabusby.bsky.social usby.bsky.social dives deep into the hive mind of Simon Buxton: the "bee shaman" beloved by Tori Amos, who sat at the centre of a collapsing colony of cultish devotion and then disappeared www.the-fence.com/men-beehivin...

Is there no such thing as a bad trip, or can they actually be traumatizing? This debate is playing out in the psychedelics field… ‘Most young adults who get cancer feel they experienced personal growth from it. That doesn’t mean you want them to get cancer.’ statesofmind.com/psychedelic-...

What happens when your backyard is no longer private, and your life can be upended by a government ‘code enforcer’ with a silent camera in the sky? How one California county launched a drug war 2.0 on legal cannabis growers, and what it morphed into For @reason.com reason.com/2025/09/09/t...

Peyote is holy to many Native Americans. Can a band of true believers stop it from disappearing from the Texas-Mexico border? https://www.texasmonthly.com/being-texan/peyote-native-americans-texas-mexico/

When Daniel Khalife, a British soldier accused of spying for Iran, escaped from Wandsworth Prison, he became a social media celebrity... Was he a threat to national security? Or just a mixed up kid? My latest for GQ, a story of angst and espionage... www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/dani...

what does cocaine legalization have to do with climate change? from clandestine airstrips carved into the Amazon, to laundering drug money through dirty businesses—it's a whole lot more than you think, reports @matthabusby.bsky.social for @atmosmag.bsky.social 🧪🌎

‘The criminal infrastructure built principally for cocaine is increasingly facilitating illegal deforestation, timber trafficking, and illegal gold mining.’ Latest for @atmosmag.bsky.social atmos.earth/the-surprisi...