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https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/12/briefing/ceos-are-tripping.html
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Psychedelic drugs have come a long way. They once belonged to the counterculture (“tune in, drop out”). Now they are finding a home in the C-suite.
LSD, magic mushrooms and some other psychedelic drugs have been federally prohibited since the early 1970s. But people are taking them widely: Researchers at the RAND Corporation estimated that eight million adults in the U.S. used psilocybin (the main psychedelic substance in magic mushrooms) in 2023.
Today, a growing number of business leaders are using psychedelics, according to executives, coaches and researchers I interviewed. We don’t have data on how often they trip, but many executives believe that the drugs can infuse their work with some coveted missing ingredient — calm, vulnerability, imagination. They sometimes take psychedelics on fancy retreats, where they lie blindfolded on mattresses while therapists guide them. I spoke to several of these executives for a story The Times published today.
Corporate leaders are often stressed out, fed up, creatively blocked or emotionally worn. For many in that group, two changes have made psychedelics more appealing. In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain.
The creativity push
Corporate culture has been loosening for decades.
Sterile, gray cubicle farms turned into bustling open floor plans. Technology companies added game rooms and ball pits to make their offices zany and colorful — places where workers could anchor not just their professional but also their social lives. Business leaders exhorted employees to exhibit imaginative thinking. (Sam Franklin, a historian, says this came out of a Cold War-era effort to distinguish freewheeling American companies from their rigid Soviet counterparts.)
There’s a reason that people see psychedelic drugs as a way to boost creativity. The drugs increase the amount of information moving around in the brain, according to Robin Carhart-Harris, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco. While the brain usually tries to compress information, psychedelics create chaos and disorganization. That’s enticing to people looking for out-of-the-box ideas.
