Ketamine King: Tech Bros, AI Delusions, and the Politics of Dissociation

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.

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