Slow Down or Burn Out: Psychedelics vs. the Attention Economy
April 09, 2025
Almost everyone carries within them a distant desire: to isolate themselves on a farm, surrounded by children, animals and silence. Melancholic, they recall this longing as they go up the subway escalator, crushed by routine. Why does this happen? Because every animal cries out for the rest of its nature. Living in concrete jungles is not natural , life in modern capitals is a farce sold as success. Take the interiorpill.
But while we dream of land and freedom, real estate speculation turns the right to housing into a perpetual nightmare. People spend their entire lives working to pay for a roof over their heads, grow old in debt and, when they finally pay off their last cent, they no longer have time to enjoy the rest they deserve. The net work of a lifetime, then, ends up in the hands of property owners , the same ones who profit from the artificial scarcity of habitable land. Meanwhile, the unequal distribution of land pushes millions to the fringes of existence, condemned to live as eternal tenants of a system that denies the most basic thing: the right to belong somewhere.
The city consumes, speculation enslaves, and the dream of a farm becomes just a sigh between one season and the next. For how long?
Coffee was the first fuel of urban modernity , a legalized drug that accelerated the pace of factories and offices, transforming bodies into productivity machines. With it, time ceased to be solar and became timed, and cities grew in line with the human capacity to stay awake. But coffee only paved the way for something worse: cocaine refined this logic, making tiredness a forbidden luxury. Behind the scenes of late capitalism, cocaine (and later methylphenidate, modafinil, and other "cognitive enhancers") became a bargaining chip between those who need to perform endlessly and those who profit from this surrender. The pharmaceutical industry, of course, does not sell cures , it sells the illusion that it is possible to survive the insane pace that it helps to impose.
The Internet and the Dictatorship of the Instant Ego: If coffee accelerated the body and cocaine accelerated the mind, the Internet accelerated the soul. Now, it is not enough to produce , you have to perform, sell yourself, and exhaust yourself with likes and algorithms. Advertising no longer sells products; it sells disposable identities, fueling a cycle of anxiety and consumption that dictates even the most intimate desires. Social media is the new opium of the people , a drug that is even more efficient because the user believes he or she is in control. Meanwhile, the owners of the digital infrastructure profit from the fragmentation of attention, transforming hate, addiction, and vanity into commodities. The dream of a farm now competes with the nightmare of the infinite feed, where no one rests, but everyone pretends to be living.
The Great Lie of Chemical and Digital Freedom: We were promised freedom, but what we have is a collection of invisible shackles. The same corporations that control legal psychostimulants are the ones that criminalize the substances of the poor; the same oligopolies that profit from hyperconnection are the ones that leave us increasingly isolated. Meanwhile, the land , the true wealth , remains concentrated in the hands of a few, and the dream of escaping to the countryside becomes a nostalgic meme, shared between one task and another. The system doesn’t want you to rest. It wants you to buy one more coffee, click on one more ad, take one more pill. And when your body finally breaks down, there will be someone selling the next drug , or the next screen , so you can forget that you were once an animal who only wanted to rest.
Human attention has become the most valuable drug of the 21st century, and social media is the perfect slot machine,designed to exploit our reward circuitry with endless scrolls, intermittent notifications, and content that oscillates between ecstasy and outrage. Every like, every view, every feed update is like a slot machine lever pulled by a dopaminergic monkey, in search of the next random reward. Doomscrolling is addiction without substance, an overdose of information that doesn’t nourish, only consumes. Meanwhile, the owners of these platforms profit from our inability to switch off, transforming boredom, curiosity, and even despair into engagement,and, ultimately, money. The solution? Detox. Disconnect. Remember that you are not a rat in a maze of algorithms, even if the world insists on treating you like one.
The Sacred Slowdown: Psychotropics that Open Doors to Thought While modernity pushes us toward insane acceleration, some traditional psychotropics , such as ayahuasca tea, psilocybin mushrooms, or peyote , do the opposite: they slow down time, suspend urgency, and invite us to look at life with critical and contemplative eyes. These substances, consumed for millennia by indigenous peoples, do not serve to increase productivity or numb pain, but to awaken questions. They dismantle the illusion of the self fragmented by the rhythm of cities and reveal, even if only for brief moments, that philosophy is not an academic luxury , it is a visceral possibility, as old as humanity. While synthetic drugs and algorithms keep us trapped in cycles of anxiety, these entheogens remind us that the true revolution may lie precisely in the act of stopping. Philosophy as Experience, Not Theory: it is no coincidence that these substances have been banned or marginalized by the industrialized world: they are incompatible with the logic of infinite yield. While cocaine and pharmaceutical stimulants keep us running in circles, traditional psychedelics force us to sit on the ground and question the foundations of our existence. They do not offer ready-made answers, but create the silent space where philosophy ceases to be a discourse and becomes an experience. Perhaps the solution is not more coffee, more doomscrolling, or more sleeping pills , perhaps the answer lies precisely in what has been criminalized: the ability to stop, to feel, to reconnect with the ancestral rhythm that still pulses, even under the asphalt of the cities. The true interior pill is not in escape, but in diving. And it is older than you imagine.
heaven on earth
this is a gouache painting of the most stunning place I've been. every time i feel distressed I picture myself looking at this peaceful clouds over the sea. This lil hidden paradise is Tabatinga beach, at Paraíba Brazil
Party Portal Intersect