Drugs and grand narratives are inextricably linked in history. We can plausibly conjecture a precise relationship: the more incoherent the prevailing story, the stronger, and more varied, the drugs required to navigate it while the retconning is in progress. I’ve always found it odd that in the Dune science fiction series, the hyperspace navigators were the ones who lived suspended in a psychotropic “spice” melange: it is not those who can successfully navigate strange new realities who need drugs, it is everybody else.
