G. Scott Graham on Medium

A poem about the psychedelic afterglow and the ordinary world seen anew“The vast blue opening between the branches.” Photograph by G. Scott GrahamThis morning.The world has returned to its familiar shape.Yet something remains open in me.Lying on the ground, I look up through the towering trees into the deep blue sky.Nothing moved in impossible ways two days ago.Nothing shimmered or changed form.Today, the tree is simply a tree.The sky is simply the sky.Immensity.The rough bark.Sunlight caught in the leaves.The vast blue opening between the branches.Even the delicate little creature wandering across my bag.They are worthy of my complete attention.There is a quiet spaciousness this morning.A gentle equanimity.A […]

AI-generated illustration representing my move from Evernote to Obsidian and UpNote after a steep subscription price increase.Before I could leave, I had to figure out what to do with 42,870 notes.I’ve used Evernote since 2005, back when I was trying almost every new tool that came along. I’ve always been an early adopter.I started with the original desktop-era Evernote, before the cloud-connected service most people know today launched publicly in 2008. I loved it. It gave me one place to put anything I thought I might need again, and I put everything in it. Everything.By the time I started planning my escape, […]

Authoritarian Drift in the United StatesExhaustion rarely looks dramatic. It just keeps going.Exhaustion rarely looks dramatic. It just keeps going.Many people right now in the United States are not disengaging because they don’t care.They’re disengaging because they’re exhausted.Exhaustion doesn’t require belief in any one political story, only sustained pressure and no relief.There is always another crisis, another escalation, another headline that feels worse than the last. Citizens are killed, authority expands, institutions strain and before there is time to absorb one development, the next one arrives. It can be overwhelming.It’s a cycle. People start out trying to stay informed and responsible. Over time, vigilance […]

Political theater and psychedelics: contrast between blocked psilocybin research and a high-profile executive order announcement.If you’ve been tracking the federal government’s erratic handling of psychedelic medicine in 2026, you’ve watched a fairly blatant exercise in political maneuvering. It plays out like a stage production: a leader quietly kills the permits for a necessary bridge in the dead of winter, then shows up in the spring demanding that city planners “prioritize river crossings.” The crowd applauds the vision, while the bridge itself stays stalled.The Quiet February FreezeTo understand what’s actually happening, you have to look at what the administration did when they assumed […]

We all like to delude ourselves into believing that if a blatant injustice happened right in front of us, we’d be the one to stand up and say something. But history — and human psychology — tells a different story. Authoritarian drift rarely starts with tanks in the streets. It starts when everyday people decide to look the other way.Before reading further, watch this short classroom experiment.Pay close attention.https://medium.com/media/e47a8ffb6ebf70edbd02d985c3e71487/hrefWhy We Stay QuietThat dead silence in the video is exactly how authoritarianism takes root:The ‘Thank God It’s Not Me’ Reflex: The silence in that room is raw self-preservation. When authority singles someone out unfairly, the group’s immediate, quiet […]

A winter snowshoe, two loyal dogs, and a reminder that comfort slowly shrinks a lifeI found myself on my stomach clawing my way up a small but significant wall of ice, grabbing tree trunks to pull myself upward.On March 6, 2026, about two hours into the climb up Mount Cardigan, this was not how I expected the snowshoe to be going.Above me, the two dogs were waiting.I thought it was too high for Rocket to make it, so I heaved her onto the snow-covered ledge. Groot scrambled up behind her. Then, while I was still trying to get my own ass up the ice, […]

What we’re feeding our inner lives, and why it’s leaving us anxious, numb, and unfulfilledEmpty calories don’t just exist in foodIt’s all over the news: processed foods are bad for you.We’re told to watch the ingredients list, avoid empty calories, cut back on sugar, and pay attention to what we’re putting into our bodies. The message is consistent and familiar. What we consume shapes how we feel, how we function, and how well we hold up over time.“Make America Healthy Again” becomes a rallying cry, and for good reason.But there’s a blind spot hiding in plain sight.While we scrutinize our physical diet, we give remarkably […]

Authoritarian Drift in the United StatesWhy I Wrote This Series, and When Watching Is No Longer EnoughSeeing the whole often requires stepping back.I didn’t write this because I feel settled. I wrote it because I don’t.I’m anxious. I’m concerned. I feel the pull of anger almost every day, and just as often I feel how hard it is to stay in contact with it. Fear blunts it. Powerlessness flattens it. And if I’m honest, meditation can sometimes put a balm over all of that that looks like wisdom but feels dangerously close to inaction.That scares me. It really scares me.I live in the United States, […]

Authoritarian Drift in the United StatesPatterns become visible when attention slows down.One of the most destabilizing experiences right now is noticing patterns you were taught never to name.The challenge here is not naming a villain, but learning how to recognize patterns without turning it into prophecy.Power consolidates quietly with exceptional measures becoming routine, legal workarounds, and rhetoric that expands the definition of threat while institutions adjust around it. Each move is defended on its own terms. Together, they form a shape that is hard to ignore and even harder to talk about.Many people feel that recognition and immediately pull back.They worry that noticing patterns means […]

Authoritarian Drift in the United StatesA quiet institutional space that no longer feels the same.If you’re feeling panicked, you’re not alone.Many people in the United States right now are afraid the country is sliding toward something dangerous—a dictatorship, a breakdown that could lead to widespread violence, a future where citizens are shot during enforcement actions and power keeps concentrating while rules stop meaning what they used to.For many, that fear centers on Trump. The rhetoric. The disregard for limits. The way institutions are ignored, renamed, bullied, or bypassed. The sense that norms are eroding faster than anyone can respond. For others, it’s the historical […]