Over dinner recently, a top agent told us that the night before he had attended a party hosted by an A-list comedian’s company. There were two waiters at the entrance with mysterious little spritz bottles.
After all, the spritz wasn’t a molecular gastronomy hors d’oeuvre or an artisanal binaka to freshen people’s breath. These were vehicles for microdosing LSD. Is it 1 spritz or 2 spritz?
Hollywood has a long history with acids, which were invented in 1938 by a Swiss chemist named Albert Hoffmann. Some might point to the famous graveyard stumble scene in the groundbreaking counterculture film Easy Rider as the starting point for that relationship. But in reality, it goes back even further.
At the height of his fame, Cary Grant indulged in more than 100 LSD trips over a three-year period in the late 1950s. And before the publication of Timothy Leary’s hippie exploits and Tom Wolfe’s 1968 acid opus, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, 40,000 patients were reportedly prescribed lysergic acid to treat illnesses ranging from schizophrenia and PTSD to alcoholism. (Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill Wilson first dropped acid in 1956 under the direction of doctors at a Los Angeles Veterans Administration hospital and continued to do so until 1959.) The drug was outlawed in 1968 as part of Nixon’s War on Drugs.
Now, before you read on, we also found it hard to believe that aerated acid would be used at a Hollywood industry party. Well after the Bungalow 8 and Beatrice Inn days when synthetics were prized, we certainly used to attend plenty of sophisticated parties where the other guests devoured the more modern, sustainably sourced varieties. That included a rally in New York where a venerable art collector handed out cannabis gummies as stars from Paul McCartney to Chris Martin to Dakota Johnson circulated. (I don’t know if they participated or not, but Macca did make some funny comments about it on his way out.)
We also previously wrote on Page Six about how magic mushrooms became a staple at preppy parents’ parties from Brooklyn Heights to Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and how everyone, no matter who you are, is microdosing them. One leading author told me at a lavish hedgefunder-filled gala in Connecticut that he microdoses all the time, popping gummy bears at our table.
But LSD? Even in a city like Los Angeles, where ketamine-assisted therapy has become almost commonplace, it seemed like the next frontier.
Sources say it’s called “unicorn spray” and costs $200 a bottle. It’s all the rage among industry insiders and thoughtful millennial parents. (One attendee at a recent party said the vigorous waving motion was “not similar” and the small, buzzing motion was “similar.”)
Another source, perhaps more eloquently, said, “This is a way of microdosing LSD. It comes in the form of a spray, and most people take one or two sprays and go about their daily lives. It’s a way to get through the day and get through mundane tasks like dropping off and picking up the kids.” “This is kind of a mood vibe. It’s not meant to trip the ball up,” the source warned. “In the same way that mushroom microdosing has become a thing, I think this is the next level. Some people are using it every day, and some are using it to replace their happy hour wine.”
As a health treatment, “Due to the influence of hormones, mothers are trying to level up their mood (with LSD spray) and improve their mood and energy.” Sign up!
At another recent dinner at a private club in West Hollywood, a top industry executive said MDMA and psychedelic shroom gummies (combined into microdoses) are also popular, and that savvy parents in Hancock Park and Larchmont Village are sourcing them locally.
Back in 2021, our always ahead of the curve colleague Peter Keefer wrote an article on the cover of Los Angeles Magazine about why the city is “in the grip of psychedelic fever” with the title, “‘Shrooms! Shamans! Kosher LSD! Why Los Angeles is suddenly tripping out.”
The article explained, “Malibu’s soccer moms are now exchanging notes over microdosing. Shamans are being flown in from Brazil and Peru to perform rituals in Topanga Valley, with some charging thousands of dollars per session,” and “Los Angeles-based companies like My Ketamine Home, Field Trips, and Acasa Journeys are now offering guided therapy sessions that include ketamine and psilocybin treatments.”
Perhaps proving that drugs of all kinds are making a comeback in Hollywood, another source recently sent The Pack’s Matt Belloni an anonymous photo of a side table in a conference room at an unnamed studio. There were three bottles of high-quality water, as well as a small bag of white powder that someone had left behind.
Not to ruin the party, but there is of course a dark side to recreational spa drugs. “Friends” star Matthew Perry died from an uncontrolled ketamine addiction in which he was injecting the drug six to eight times a day and then allegedly accidentally overdosing, according to prosecutors who charged the doctor in the case. And during the industry’s cocaine boom in the ’80s and ’90s, there were the ODs of Hollywood stars and power players of the past, from John Belushi to Don Simpson.
But it was certainly the era of macrodosing, and you weren’t ingesting a “light spritz” on your way to Erewhon with your family.
