How QAnon Became Obsessed with Adrenochrome, An Imaginary Drug Hollywood is Harvesting from Kids

Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/ishonest

Followers of the pro-Trump conspiracy theory QAnon believe Hollywood and Democratic elites take a psychedelic drug called Adrenochrome harvested from the fear of children.

Tarpley Hitt

Reporter

The track, which first appeared on a seven-inch in 1982, isnt one of the Leeds- area bands better-known songs. Its an abrasive, theatrically dark tune, with early drum machine percussion and low, campy vocals. The lyrics are typical goth stuff, as is the black album artwork, which features the bands logo: a medical scalp illustration overlaid on a pentacle. But its the title the commenters were drawn to: Adrenochrome.

Adrenochrome is an easy-to-come-by chemical compound, usually found as a light pink solution, that forms by the oxidation of adrenaline, the stress hormone. It is not approved for medical use by the Food and Drug Administrationthough researchers can buy 25 milligrams of it for just $55but doctors in other countries prescribe a version of it to treat blood clotting.

For conspiracy theorists, adrenochrome represents a mystical psychedelic favored by the global elites for drug-crazed satanic rites, derived from torturing children to harvest their oxidized hormonal feara kind of real-life staging of the Pixar movie Monsters, Inc. QAnon also likes to say that Monsters, Inc. is Hollywood telling on itself, says QAnon researcher Mike Rains, because the plot of scaring kids to get energy is what they really do.

The highest-profile adrenochrome incident took place in 2018, when Google CEO Sundar Pichai was questioned by the House Judiciary Committee about a conspiracy called Frazzledrip. (Heard of Frazzledrip? reads one comment on The Sisters of Mercy song.) The crackpot theory involved a mythical video, supposedly squirreled away on Anthony Weiners laptop, that if leaked, would show Hillary Clinton and her one-time aide Huma Abedin performing a satanic sacrifice in which they slurped a childs blood while wearing masks carved from the skin of her face.

The use of Adrenochrome is Prevalent in our Society and it Time we had a Mass Awakening to these Fact's and Started become Educated in the Reasons, the groups description reads. WHY , HOW , WHEN , WHO , WHERE and WHY we should be more Open Eye'd to our Society from the TOP DOWN ......................... [sic].

Scientific interest in adrenochrome dates back to the 1950s, when Canadian researchers Humphry Osmond and Abram Hoffer developed what they called the Adrenochrome Hypothesis. After a series of small studies between 1952 and 1954, the two concluded that excess adrenochrome could trigger symptoms of schizophrenia. Save for some failed studies of treatments, the theory went largely unexplored for several decades (Hoffer wrote a 1981 paper revisiting the proposal, concluding that it accounts for the syndrome schizophrenia more accurately than do any of the competing hypotheses.)

The hypothesis nevertheless impacted adrenochromes public perception, putting it in conversation with psychedelics like LSD or mescaline. Aldous Huxley described it in his 1954 book The Doors of Perception; Anthony Burgess nicknamed it drenchrom in the argot of A Clockwork Orange. Frank Herbert described a character in Destination: Void as so high he looked like someone who had just eaten a handful of pineal glands and washed them down with a pint of adrenochrome. But most famously, gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson got offered a tiny taste from his unhinged lawyer in a scene from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

That stuff makes pure mescaline seem like ginger beer, the lawyer said. Youll go completely crazy if you take too much.

Theres only one source for this stuff, Thompson responded, the adrenaline glands from a living human body. Its no good if you get it out of a corpse.

Another user, in a review titled Worst Headache Imaginable described a racing heartbeat, profuse sweating, and a headache that could have brought down an elephant. The incapacitating pain allegedly subsided after two hours, but recurred periodically for the next seven days. I had absolutely no hallucinations, he concluded, unless I was hallucinating the headaches.

Theres an aspect of QAnon obsession that resembles demented literary criticism: every current event encoded with hidden meanings, global criminals desperate to signal their crimes through symbols, millions of messages waiting for the right close reader to unpack them. That Qs adherents would seize upon a drug drummed up by a semi-fictional memoir makes sense. In that way, theyre not unlike The Sisters of Mercy, whose single, which describes schoolkids harvested by nuns, is a clear Thompson nod. (The catholic girls now / stark in their dark and white / Dread in monochrome / The sisters of mercy /.../ Panic in their eyes / Rise / Dead on adrenochrome.) The band just did a better job with the source material. Conspiracists missed some important subtext: the jokes.

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