By Terry Gotham

While there are literally thousands of sober people at Burning Man every year, and how to guides & resources for individuals who choose to not drink or do drugs at Burning Man, we can’t seem to shake the monkey on our back. The class of drugs that seem to be tethered most tightly to Burning Man (besides Margaritas & poorly rolled joints) is psychedelics, acid in particular. For better or worse, it’s as if LSD & Burning Man have become linked. There is something deeply primal about taking certain kinds of drugs and dancing to a beat in the middle of nowhere until dawn. The trope of “taking acid at Burning Man” has been so deeply embedded into the American alternative cultural landscape that there’s an extensively upvoted list of answers for the “What should you think about before trying LSD for the first time and doing so at Burning Man?” question on Quora.

Not just because of the psytrancers or the hippies either. With more and more of the tech landscape believing psychedelics can generate “out of the box thinking” or a predeliction for black turtle necks, the merging between the technorati, the 1% & Black Rock City will most likely remain psychedelic. There are dozens of trip reports from the playa and with reporters being granted expanded access to Burning Man, the potential for your private LSD-drenched art walk to make it into The Atlantic or Salon grows every year. But, that doesn’t mean that people aren’t having resonant, powerful experiences on playa consuming this stuff, or even merely orbiting those that do. Continue reading →