Spravato: Now Just Another Toy for the Chronically Online

It was always going to happen. For the chronically online, a meal, a mood, or a medical treatment is perfect content.

It's instilled in them. It's almost primal to perform. Even a Spravato session is a great opportunity for them to document the next stage in their journey. It seems to be about the music now too.

On TikTok you can see clinic recliners as people in their twenties play loud metal music or rave music like they're about to enter the festival. They are clearly under the influence of a controlled substance with a blown pupil and bobbing their head like they are about to go to a warehouse party. It seems that some of them feel the need to describe the situation as if to justify their actions by captioning their post with "Spravato + Techno = healing."

Spravato is used to treat situations of extreme depression, where a person is close to drowning. A person should not be in the position of having to resort to using music with a 160 BPM kick as a method of relieving their anxiety. It seems that more users are relying on music with double kick drums and screaming, as this has been described a complimentary pair to their Spravato. This is not therapy, it is content, it is a performance, it is pure distraction while they are potentially in a critical situation.

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People who have been through everything. People who have learned the hard way about everything, and yet still drag that weight of anxiety and depression on them like a pill around their neck at the crack of dawn. It's not a prop. It's not a playlist. It's not a mood board.

But this generation with the audacity to think that healing is an aesthetic — it's as if they are void of any semblance of presence and reflection. They have no idea how grave their ignorance is, but they've probably never even stopped for a moment to process what they are doing. They've pretty much turned something that is literally a lifeline into a metal show, a rave, a meme.

The truth is, they are wasting it — wasting the moment, wasting the opportunity, wasting the chance to actually feel, to sense something real instead of performing said feelings for an audience.

Why would they stop? Something isn't worth looking for if it isn't going to sell.

Spravato was supposed to help people crawl out of despair, and while the world is more exhausted than it already is, it's been used by people to broadcast their lives. Be it metal, be it a rave, be it a meme, it's pretty much become a stage for people to be themselves, but only for the span of ten minutes.