Ketamine King: Tech Bros, AI Delusions, and the Politics of Dissociation
Mar 30, 2025
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Taija Mars McDougall, author of "King Ketamine," dives into the intriguing world of ketamine use among tech elites like Elon Musk. She discusses how this substance acts as a catalyst for disassociation and reflects the bizarre realities of billionaire culture. McDougall explores the political implications of drug use on social movements, critiques AI's ethical dilemmas, and shares her own experiences with altered states of consciousness. The conversation touches on everything from hallucinations to the intersection of psychoanalysis and American culture.
The podcast critiques ketamine's role as a favored escape for tech elites, highlighting its potential to exacerbate disassociation and unrealistic self-perceptions.
It discusses the troubling intersection of wealth and power dynamics in tech culture, where prominent figures dehumanize marginalized communities, framing their success through demonization.
The conversation questions the potential for ketamine or similar substances to inspire communal activism, suggesting they might lead to further isolation rather than collective political engagement.
Deep dives
The Rise of Ketamine and Techno-Fascism
Ketamine has gained attention as both a therapeutic drug and a substance associated with some members of the billionaire class, suggesting a deeper social commentary about addiction and societal norms. While often touted as non-addictive, personal experiences reveal the darker side of ketamine, where users can slide into psychosis and a blurred line between reality and fantasy. This phenomenon raises concerns about how individuals, especially prominent tech figures, use ketamine to escape the impacts of their wealth and power. The discussion underscores the dangers of treating sensual indulgences as benign, which can promote both personal and societal deterioration.
Dissociation and Tech Culture
The transformative effects of ketamine can amplify a sense of detachment characteristic of those entrenched in tech culture, creating a parallel between drug use and social media experiences. The dissociative state induced by ketamine can define one's financial and ideological behaviors, leading to risk-taking that lacks any discernible moral compass. It becomes evident that the wealthy can become caught in their illuminated bubble, feeling emboldened to enact dangerous ideologies with a self-perceived, almost divine, justification. This elevated sense of self among wealthy tech individuals can distort their perceptions, causing them to journey through a 'slop world' of questionable ideas and contradictions.
Racial Dynamics and Class Distinction
The podcast delves into how influential figures like Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen define themselves against marginalized communities, framing their success within a narrative that demonizes others. The idea of the 'savage' serves as a tool for the elite to rationalize their positions and actions against those who differ from them, often using marginalized groups as testing grounds for their notions of power and dominance. This mindset links to broader observations about the tech industry's culture and its resulting sociopolitical landscape, demonstrating a troubling intersection where race, class, and power conflate. Ultimately, this critique spotlights how certain elite behaviors perpetuate systemic inequality and violence.
The Political Dimension of Drug Use
While drugs like ketamine can offer temporary escapes, they often reinforce existing themes of alienation and atomization in society, particularly among users who are already privileged. The discussion raises questions about whether such drugs can ever serve as catalysts for political action or community building, or if they instead lead users further into isolation. The notion of communal drug use is examined, without clear answers on feasibility, suggesting that traditional political activism and meaningful collective action remain paramount. Thus, the idea of drugs as a political project is called into question, emphasizing that dependency on substances may ultimately weaken communal bonds.
The Ethics of AI and Surveillant Technologies
Amid the rapid rise of artificial intelligence, the implications of using AI as a tool for surveillance and control come into sharp focus, revealing uncomfortable truths about data ethics and societal oversight. The podcast underscores that while AI systems can create images and influence perceptions, they lack moral agency and cannot comprehend ethical dimensions in the same way that human beings can. This leads to a concerning acceptance of automated decisions that further entrench existing power disparities, particularly in how they might threaten marginalized communities. The connection between ketamine's effects on perception and the distortion of reality created by AI highlights a significant danger of losing touch with ethical considerations within a hyper-digitized context.
CW: Includes references to drug use and racialized violence discourse.
King Ketamine: https://www.parapraxismagazine.com/articles/king-ketamine
Acid Horizon welcomes back Taija Mars McDougall to discuss her latest essay “King Ketamine,” published in Parapraxis Magazine. Together, we examine how ketamine—favored by Silicon Valley elites like Elon Musk—has become the drug of the techno-fascist sacrament, fueling disassociation and delusions of divine-like Promethean capitalism. Drawing on personal encounters and haunting hallucinations, Taija explores how the drug mirrors and intensifies a chimerical ruling-class subjectivity in which power is sanctified through suffering and algorithmic detachment. The conversation charts a chilling terrain: from the political theology of tech billionaires and the racial substrate of “techno-optimism” to the convergence of AI, surveillance, and “libertarian” psychoanalysis.
