When Daphne Gordon first tried MDMA, everything changed. She had grown up steeped in the "just say no" messaging of the '90s, which taught that any amount of illegal drug use was a gamble with your life. But she was also a big raver. Consuming MDMA — also known as molly, ecstasy, or, back in the '90s, E — with people she trusted helped her experience music more deeply and connect with friends and loved ones on a whole new level. When she and her husband became parents in 2009, their drug use didn't stop.

Sixteen years later, the couple, who are in their early 50s and live in Toronto, remain embedded in what Gordon describes as "a drug-positive social culture." Their friend group, which grew out of the electronic dance music fan community, is now made up of middle-age, established professionals with families. Many of them continue to attend parties and DJ events and use drugs on a fairly regular basis. In some ways, Gordon said, drugs are part of the identity of her social life. Having this outlet, and the community that surrounds it, helps her be a more present parent, she said.

But navigating drug use while raising kids isn't always easy.

"Everybody's a parent now, and everybody's coming to the parties, and sometimes people even rent an Airbnb for the kids to stay at and hire a babysitter who is capable of handling five kids," Gordon told me. "People are developing their lives around the drug-positive culture, but then it's like we have to cover our kids' ears when we go back home. It's kind of weird."

Hers isn't the only friend group dancing between nightlife and parenting. A 2022 Department of Health and Human Services report said that between 2015 and 2019, more than 21 million US children lived with a parent who used illicit substances, which the report distinguished from parents who had a substance use disorder. As drug use has become more common in recent years, more adults are regularly partaking of both licit and illicit substances. The Global Drug Survey, a nonscientific survey that has grown into the world's largest annual survey of recreational drug use trends, found that self-reported use of drugs such as cannabis, LSD, and "magic" mushrooms was growing in the US. In 2022, the last year with available data, one-third of 30- to 39-year-olds and nearly one-quarter of 40- to 49-year-olds said they'd taken cocaine in the past 12 months. The same shares reported using MDMA in the past year. In a 2023 study of 226 American parents, 13% said they had used marijuana in the past six months.

In an age when Burning Man is the unofficial wellness retreat for aging tech bros, none of this should come as breaking news. Business leaders have gone on the record in recent years to sing the praises of mind-altering substances such as LSD and MDMA, with some even insisting that "tripping" had made them better at their jobs. At the same time, researchers are discovering therapeutic benefits for psychedelic drugs such as ketamine, MDMA, and psilocybin (found in magic mushrooms). As the health risks of alcohol become clearer, drugs are increasingly stepping in as the preferred indulgences for a good time.

For a growing number of white-collar parents, getting high has become a critical avenue for staying sane amid the demands of parenthood. And they're hoping to send their kids a better message than "just say no."

This past spring, Katie, 37, rented a cabin with a friend in upstate New York and spent the weekend tripping on magic mushrooms. It wasn't a weekend to get loose with party drugs but a quiet getaway to embark on "a little trip together for more intellectual purposes," she said. While she was exploring the outer edges of her consciousness, her 8-year-old son was home with his dad.

Recreational drug use is a common feature of weekend get-togethers among Katie's New York City circle — a constellation of academics, creatives, and white-collar professionals who are mostly in their 30s and 40s. It's not unusual for her friends to pass around baggies of MDMA or cocaine to fuel hours of dancing at a club or to consume mushrooms for a cozy night of soul-searching. Drugs are a conduit for shaking off the pressures of everyday life, for living in the moment with friends, and for Katie — getting back in touch with herself.

Katie, who asked that I keep her identity private, splits custody of her son with her ex-husband, an arrangement that has allowed her to reengage with nightlife. Before they separated nearly two years ago, late-night parties and drug use were off the table — not because it interfered with being a mother, she said, but because of the societal expectations modeled by her ex and the other parents around her. "The way I am as a parent is maybe different — lighter and easier and freer — because I don't feel like my life is limited in that way," she told me.

Her parents grew up in the Soviet Union, where it was typical to start families in your early 20s while continuing to enjoy late weekend nights of well-lubricated merriment, with friends taking turns staying in to watch everyone's kids. But Katie has found that things are different in the US — American culture doesn't prioritize having a robust social life while raising a family. For parents like her, there's a double taboo: the lingering stigmas surrounding recreational drug use combined with a widespread wariness of parents, especially moms, who manage to lead full, fun lives outside the confines of home. A mother who routinely nurses half a bottle of wine in her kitchen at the end of a long day will likely be judged less harshly than one who takes a psychedelic with friends on the occasional Saturday night.

"Using drugs doesn't necessarily feel at odds with parenting," Katie said. "In many ways, it feels complementary or helpful."

Though her son is a constant presence in her plans, during conversations, and at the dinners she hosts for friends, the majority of her inner circle is child-free. Other parents she's encountered don't seem to have a blueprint for the kind of community she has — one that isn't centered on the kids.

Drug taboos get tricky to navigate when other people's children may be involved. "It becomes this thing you don't talk about because kids can't really be explaining to their friends on the schoolyard what Mommy and Daddy said last night about drugs," Gordon said. "It's such a socially enforced taboo. Any kind of conversation about anything good about drugs is seen as encouraging experimentation — like, 'Can't wait until you get to do some!'"

The taboos are a major reason many parents keep their drug use confined to a close-knit group of friends. Joyce, a 44-year-old mom of three in Melbourne, Australia, said it's not unusual in her high-income neighborhood to gather at someone's house, open up a nice bottle of wine, and discreetly visit the master bathroom for a line of communal cocaine. She and her neighborhood friends have been doing it for years.

"These are the same people who are taking vacations two, three, four times a year," Joyce told me. "They drive nice cars. They live in beautiful homes. You walk down a street in the nicest suburbs, and you would never even think that the people behind the gates would be having themselves a little '70s disco party in the kitchen. It's totally seen and not heard, but everybody does it." All the while, everyone's kids are squirreled away somewhere else in the house, preoccupied by movies and snacks, happily oblivious.

Despite the live-and-let-live attitudes in her immediate friend group, Joyce — who asked that we keep her identity private — is well aware of the legal and reputational risks that come with using drugs. Getting found out might not affect her as severely as it would if she were not a well-off white mom, for instance, but it wouldn't be trivial, either. The penalty for cocaine possession in Australia carries a fine of 2,000 Australian dollars, or about $1,240, and/or up to two years in prison. The social ramifications could be higher if the wrong person caught on. Joyce said she knows that her occasional sharing of "a little plate of something" with friends would be seen as irresponsible, or even flat-out reckless, by many others in her extended community. For these reasons, Joyce and her friends are stringent about concealing their recreational drug use from their children — even those who are now adults. Making sure the kids know nothing is the absolute rule.

There have been some close calls. "Once I had my best friend over, and I said to her, 'Can you watch in the hallway just in case little footsteps come running while I prepare something?' And, well, she was not fast enough," Joyce said, chuckling. "One of my kids slammed on in. But the beauty of hiding is that you're sort of always ready." By a stroke of luck, her secret escaped notice.

"It's kind of like a naughty little secret that I guess keeps everybody feeling attached to their youth — the good fun days," Joyce said.

Most of the parents I spoke with hadn't let their kids in on their drug secret, saying they would maybe disclose details on a need-to-know basis. But Gordon and her husband are working to establish a more open dialogue about drugs with their teenage son. Before going out, they've begun talking through their substance-use game plans for the evening in front of him: "Like, 'How are we going to drink tonight? You know, let's not because I'm going to bring a joint,'" she said. He might not chime in, but they know he's listening. Mainly, they're focusing on the harms that could come from the substances he's likely to encounter within his friend groups — cannabis, vapes, and, especially, the tobacco pouches whose bright, round canisters poke out from the trash bins of his hockey rink. Gordon has also self-published a zine to help guide other families' conversations about conscious substance use, informed in part by new research that suggests the cognitive dissonance between antidrug messaging and the way substances are presented by peers and on social media makes scare tactics ineffective.

Rhana Hashemi, a coauthor of the drug education study, is the founder and executive director of Know Drugs, a nonprofit aimed at replacing the D.A.R.E. model of antidrug education in US schools with a harm-reduction curriculum that speaks frankly and nonjudgmentally about the role of mind-altering substances in people's lives — legal and illegal, good and bad.

"There's a difference between normalizing drug use that's healthy and normalizing drug use that's problematic," Hashemi told me. As she sees it, that distinction depends on the role that a particular substance is playing in a person's life at any given time. A healthy adult life revolves around competing priorities: romantic relationships, social relationships, a career, and physical and mental health. Healthy drug use happens in harmony with the bigger picture. It's the pinch of a certain something that helps make memories with friends without becoming the crux of the relationship, or that washes away the residues of a tough week at work without becoming a contingency plan for getting through the next one. It's the ability to be honest and step away if and when drugs begin disrupting the balance between everything else — turning into a need instead of an occasion.

Hashemi said it's also critical to emphasize that different substances carry far greater potential for harm to the still developing brain of a person in their teens or early 20s: "There's a difference between a parent using cannabis on a regular basis — or psychedelics or MDMA — and a child. These are all nuances that should be very explicit."

The drug talk is still a few years away for Katie, the single mom in New York City. But when the time comes, she plans to be forthright about her experience using drugs. She wants her son to know how careful she is about what she takes, the amounts she ingests, and where she gets her product. She wants her son to have the information he needs to make smart decisions. "I'll tell him how it's an important part of my life," she said, "and I'll explain to him why."

Kelli María Korducki is a journalist whose work focuses on work, tech, and culture. She's based in New York City.