We complain about living in a post-truth world, yet we purchase products that clinically induce false memories. It is time to rethink what we call ‘wellness.’
The Hallucination of the Past
Picture the clinical white lights of a laboratory in Washington State. A test subject sits in a chair, having recently consumed a standard, legally available dose of THC. The researcher asks them to recite a list of words presented earlier. The subject leans forward and confidently speaks. They are absolute in their conviction. The problem? Half of the words they recall were never spoken. They are not guessing; they are vividly remembering an event that never happened. They have, voluntarily and legally, installed a deepfake into their own neurochemistry.
The Illusion of Harmless Escapism
I have watched the cultural narrative around cannabis shift from prohibition to enthusiastic, uncritical embrace. You probably have, too. We are told it is wellness. We are told it is a necessary escape from the frictions of modern life. But what exactly are we escaping from, and what is the cost of the ticket? A recent study found that THC disrupts fifteen out of twenty-one human memory systems. It doesn’t just make you forgetful; it destroys your source memory. You remember the ‘fact,’ but you forget whether you read it in a history book or saw it in a propagandist’s meme. When we willingly consume the biological equivalent of a deepfake, we are not practicing wellness; we are abdicating our only defense against tyranny.
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The Perfect Subject for a Post-Truth Age
We spend our days lamenting the death of truth in the media, yet we spend our evenings paying for the privilege of erasing truth in our own minds. There is a deep, uncomfortable hypocrisy here. We cannot demand a reality-based society while chemically sedating our own capacity to track reality.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.
– Hannah Arendt
We must confront why we are so eager to let the past slip through our fingers.
The future is only an indifferent void no one cares about, but the past is filled with life, and its countenance irritates us, provokes us, insults us, and so we want to destroy or repaint it.
– Milan Kundera
The ultimate danger is not the drug itself, but our willingness to repaint our own past to avoid the burden of being fully, agonizingly awake.