The long history of underground drug use abounds with secret societies—colorful cliques of like-minded individuals surreptitiously experimenting with newfangled compounds in an effort to understand their mysteries.

Mid-19th-century France saw artists and intellectuals like Baudelaire and Dumas gathered at the Club of the Hash Eaters to partake of the powerful sticky cannabis concentrate. In the latter half of the 20th century, Dow chemist Alexander Shulgin, famous for popularizing MDMA and a range of other potent psychedelic analogues, held gatherings at his home, sampling his latest creations with a group of like-minded fellow travelers. And earlier this year, when 48-year-old Jake Terry wanted to test the effects of retatrutide, a new but not-yet-approved compound developed by the phar

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