THE WHITE DRUG DEALER IN THE GUISE OF THE SHAMAN: Why the Psychedelic and Cannabis Subcultures Are Ruled by Glorified Drug Merchants

 

The modern psychedelic and cannabis subcultures like to imagine themselves as heirs to ancient wisdom traditions—keepers of sacred plants, stewards of mystical experience, champions of liberation, consciousness, and personal healing. Their public mythology floats somewhere between Carlos Castaneda, Aldous Huxley, and a TED Talk. But peel away the incense smoke and technicolor rhetoric and what remains is starkly simple: The leading figures of the psychedelic/cannabis subculture are, in all structural and economic senses, glorified drug dealers.

Some hide behind activist language. Others dress it in anthropological costumes. Some wrap it in pseudo-historiography or “spiritual healing” language. But the economic bedrock is the same: the selling of a substance, or the selling of the narratives that justify the substance. This is not moralism. It is sociological clarity, and once you see the underlying machinery, the rest of the theater becomes impossible to take seriously.

The Market Behind the Mysticism

The psychedelic subculture insists it is a spiritual movement. Yet the entire ecosystem revolves around distribution networks, supply chains, consumer markets, retreat-tourism money, mind-body-spirit merchandising, psychonaut influencer monetisation, commercial “shamanic” services, podcast empires, and lifestyle merchandising. Strip away the OM symbols and ethnobotanical jargon and you are left with a straightforward countercultural market economy, one that markets itself through therapeutic language and mystical branding. The lineage is not mystical—it is commercial.

From the Brotherhood of Eternal Love to Owsley’s LSD labs, to cannabis “activists” who also move literal tonnes of product, the pattern is unmistakable: An aesthetic of spirituality masking an economic enterprise. This is why the subculture aggressively polices criticism. Anything that threatens their myth-membrane threatens their business model.

Modern Psychedelic Influencers = Rebranded Dealers

Today’s psychedelic “thought leaders” are typically microdosing gurus selling books, psychedelic retreat operators charging $3,000+ for a weekend, digital shaman-brands monetising parasocial communities, ayahuasca tourism brokers, mushroom Substack evangelists, cannabis zealots with merchandise, and podcasters whose revenue depends on normalising drug use as metaphysical necessity. These figures are not intellectuals, theologians, or historians. They are market players.

Some used to sell substances directly; now they sell courses, retreats, paid newsletters, enlightenment packages, “spiritual integration” services, and personalised substance protocols. The dealer has simply changed his outfit—from trench coat to poncho, from corner to festival tent, from back alley to Substack.

The Dealer-to-Shaman Pipeline

One of the defining psychological transformations of this culture is what I call the Dealer-to-Shaman Pipeline. It works like this:

1. Start as a user.

2. Become a supplier.

3. Develop a community.

4. Rebrand as a guide.

5. Monetise the mysticism.

6. Attack critics as “anti-medicine” or “anti-plant-spirit.”

The “shaman” identity functions as a moral laundering mechanism, turning what is essentially parasitic or mercantile behaviour into something framed as benevolent, wise, and spiritually necessary. This is why the subculture cannot tolerate intellectual critique. Critiquing the mythology threatens their moral legitimacy, and therefore their income stream.

Why the Subculture is Ripe for Far-Right Infiltration

The psychedelic/cannabis world is not politically neutral. Contrary to the 1960s fantasy, it is not inherently left-wing or progressive. In fact, the subculture today is a perfect host for Nordicist “Aryan shamanism,” folkish neopagan revivalism, libertarian ego-theologies, manosphere-adjacent “psychedelic masculinity,” wellness fascism, conspiracy-theory mysticism (QAnon with mushrooms), anti-Semitic qua Islamophobic “entheogenic origins of religion” tropes, and esoteric white nationalism. This is where Chris Bennett’s writing belongs. His rhetorical register—calling the Bāb “drug-crazed” or a “madman”—is indistinguishable from the language used by Rosita Šorytė in her Bitter Winter/CESNUR diatribes.

When the exact same language appears in Canadian cannabis culture hit pieces and CESNUR’s anti-cult propaganda, one should be alarmed. The nexus is real:

• same rhetorical frames,
• same delegitimising tropes,
• same Orientalist scaffolding,
• and the same political substructures.

These people are not historians. They are ideological entrepreneurs using “psychedelics” as cultural capital.

The Orientalist Skeleton Beneath Their Myths

Whenever a Middle Eastern or South Asian religious figure is involved, the psychedelic subculture defaults to its favourite colonial trope: “They were mad, drugged, intoxicated, delusional.” This is the oldest Orientalist cliché in the Western archive applied to Ismāʿīlīs qua “Assassins,” to Sufis, to Qalandars, and to any mystic who disrupts Western epistemic order. Chris Bennett’s entire thesis about the Bāb is just this same colonial reflex in cannabis-cult cosplay. CESNUR does the same thing in its hit pieces. This is not coincidence. It is a shared ideological template.

Psychedelia Has Become a Commercial Spirituality

In reality, the present-day psychedelic “movement” is just one branch of the broader commercial spirituality economy that includes:

• yoga commodification,
• tantra commodification,
• mindfulness commercialization,
• Instagram shamans,
• numerology influencers,
• neo-Jungian masculinity monetizers,
• and New Age MLM evangelists.

These sectors cross-pollinate constantly with psychedelic branding:

• ayahuasca tourism to wellness industry
• mushroom retreats to spiritual coaching
• cannabis culture to lifestyle aesthetics
• microdosing to self-help performance optimisation

It is a single, fluid marketplace of commodified gnosis. They are not “freeing minds.” They are selling an experience.

Why They React With Rage When Challenged

The psychedelic influencer ecosystem relies on mythology, narrative authority, spiritual branding, “entheogenic legitimacy,” and the pseudo-sacred framing of substances. When these are punctured—especially by someone outside their ideological circle—they behave not like scholars but like threatened retailers. This explains the violent, defamatory behaviour from individuals like Chris Bennett because I threatened not his “research,” but his market identity, his status as a storyteller, and his economic turf in the cannabis world. This is also why CESNUR and Bennett’s rhetoric mirror one another: both operate in sectors where myth is market capital, and dissent is treated as a threat to brand survival.

The Psychedelic Subculture Is a Market, Not a Metaphysics

The conclusion is unavoidable: What presents itself as a spiritual movement is, in fact, a personality-driven, commercially structured subculture run by glorified drug dealers wearing the aesthetic of shamans, healers, historians, and sages. They are not inheritors of mystical traditions. They are avatars of countercultural capitalism. They do not protect “sacred plant medicine.” They protect market share—and they are predominantly white and middle-class. And when their fantasies collide with criticism—especially from scholars or practitioners outside their ideological cartography—they react with the same predictable aggression and dishonesty one would expect from any cornered merchant. Thus, the “psychedelic renaissance” is not a spiritual revolution. It is a branding revolution which is counter-revolutionary to the core. And like all branding revolutions, it collapses the moment someone says what I say: These people are nothing more than glorified drug dealers.