The Pure Gifts of the Gods: Connor Murphy’s Death Is a Warning about Psychedelics

Perhaps, like me, you’ve been following the Connor Murphy saga with the same mixture of horror and fascination. He died this week from drowning, in murky circumstances.

Murphy emerged as a fitness influencer in the early 2010s, when YouTube was really hitting its stride and before TikTok cornered short-form video content. He amassed 2.3 million followers by dispensing advice like how to achieve a spectacular “natural” transformation—despite being a steroid user—but he was probably best known for his stunts, which almost always involved removing his shirt in public, in front of women, and recording their stunned reactions. He would also do this in gyms next to short, unfortunate men and their girlfriends, to demonstrate his sexual superiority—a practice known as “mogging.”

In many ways, Murphy was one of the early progenitors of the “looksmaxxing” phenomenon that has been gaining so much attention thanks to Braden Eric Peters, a.k.a. “Clavicular.” All the elements of the current trend were in place when Murphy first came on the scene—the obsession with appearance, the preoccupation with anatomical terms and measurements, the experimentation with substances and surgery, the cutthroat philosophy of mogg or be mogged—but it wasn’t quite so codified, and it also had a much freer and easier and dare I say it less anxious vibe than it does now in the hands of young Clavicular.

Some of this may be because Clav—as he’s affectionately known—is autistic, or so he claims, but it also has as much to do with the increasingly intrusive, aggressive nature of being a star of social media today. Attention is now an arms race, and Clav is hurtling towards mutually assured self-destruction at quite a speed.  His latest rhinoplasty is widely agreed to have made him uglier; although, according to the strict mathematical rules of looksmaxxing it should have made him more handsome. He also wants jaw surgery, titanium cheekbone implants, more nosejobs, to have his shins broken and re-set so he’s taller—a process that takes years to heal from—and of course to have his penis enlarged. He’s overdosed live on stream, run over a pedestrian live on stream, shot an alligator live on stream and now he’s being sued by an ex-girlfriend for injecting her face with fat-dissolving peptides and methamphetamine—live on stream—when she was still a minor. She also alleges he drugged and raped her.

Anyway, enough about Clavicular. Far too much ink is spilled about him as it is.

Further details of Murphy’s demise have emerged over the last couple of days. They paint a sorry and sordid picture of the end of his life, far from home, in southern Thailand.

“Texas looksmaxxing influencer Connor Murphy’s luxury Thai home, which he rented with his girlfriend, was found in a state of squalor,” The New York Post reported on Friday.

A gray and yellowish paint-like substance had been smeared on the walls and ceiling of the once pristine lakeside home in Samut Prakan, which had been previously valued around $658,000 (22 million baht), the Bangkok Post reported.

Video obtained by Viral Press showed the kitchen in a horrendous state as a black tar-like substance appeared splashed across the tiles and dishes.

At least two boxes of the prescription-strength antidepressant medication, Stablon, known as tianeptine, were near the sink.

The Food and Drug Administration has not approved the drug for medical use, and it’s not known if Murphy was taking it.

There were also several packets of Falim—a Turkish sugar-free gum used to strengthen the masseter muscle and enhance jaw appearance—that lined the sink.

The kitchen worktop was strewn with pots, tools and bowls—and ornaments proudly displayed on shelves had been covered in residue. 

A kettle, blender, scales, and other electrical equipment were covered in the black substance. A trash can was overflowing with garbage – and there were another two full trash bags on the floor. There was also a cardboard box stuffed with bottles, cans and other pieces of garbage.

Syringes with orange tops were found in his car, and white pills were discovered in his bag. 

Various theories have been circulating about the cause of Murphy’s death—proximate and ultimate.

His friend “Androgenic,” one of the latest crop of looksmaxxers, said Murphy developed a fixation with gold, believing its esoteric properties were being “gatekept” from the general public by a secretive elite. Over a period of months, he began injecting gold into his body, which caused discoloration of his skin and, eventually, some kind of psychotic break that saw him chased by police into a lake near his home, where he drowned.

“He ended up covered in his own blood, running around his neighborhood, screaming,” Androgenic said in a video posted to social media.

“And then the police were called, and then the police chased him down, he ran into the lake, tried to escape, and we know what happened.”

In a later post, Androgenic said rather than buying medical-grade colloidal gold—a type of gold that is actually being studied for its health benefits—Murphy was melting down jewellery and injecting it, which “may have introduced harmful impurities.”

Yeah, no shit.

At present, authorities haven’t commented on Murphy’s death or confirmed the circumstances described by Androgenic.

Ultimately, though, it wasn’t love of gold that killed Connor Murphy. He’d been on course for disaster for some time. If you followed his content, you’ll know his mental state was in decline for years, at least five maybe six years, since the start of the pandemic. That’s when his videos suddenly became more esoteric but also more erratic, emotional—unhinged.

Some have suggested Murphy hit a turning-point when he began losing his hair. This is about the worst thing in the world that can happen to a looksmaxxer, apart from being under 5’ tall or being born somewhere within the historical borders of British India. Murphy used finasteride, a popular hairloss drug that can have very severe side effects. These range from erectile dysfunction and reduced libido, to psychological symptoms: depression, anxiety and panic attacks, emotional blunting, impaired thinking, and suicidal ideation and behaviour. These symptoms can persist for months or even years after cessation of the drug, a condition known as “post-finasteride syndrome.” Most users never have this explained to them before they start.

A more likely theory, in my opinion, is psychedelic use. Murphy turned to drugs like ayahuasca and psilocybin (magic mushrooms) in about 2020. After his first dose of ayahuasca, he posted a long video titled, “I’m Having a Mental Breakdown and I Need Help (Confession)”. In obvious distress, sometimes crying, he described the “dissolution” of his own ego.

“The self, the idea of Connor Murphy, the ego, it’s a mental construct in the brain, that’s it,” he said.

“And it’s breaking down. Oh, it’s breaking down hardcore.”

Murphy continued experimenting with ever larger doses of psychedelics, and as he did so, his content became more extreme. He undertook brutally long fasts, drank his piss, ate raw fish heads and even consumed a “divine protein shake” containing his semen and that of a friend. “You gotta swallow to get swole,” he said.

No thanks.

In his last video, posted on YouTube six days before his death, Murphy claimed to be “absorbing the spirit of Elon.” Ominously, the video’s description said, “Obituary Pending. This is purely a satirical acting performance.”

I’m sure there’s probably more than one moral to this story, but for me at least it has to be one of Carl Jung’s most famous warnings: Beware unearned knowledge. Jung believed the great risk of psychedelics was that the user would be unprepared for the vast amounts of material, including repressed memories and emotions, unlocked from the deeper levels of the unconscious. Psychedelics could be seen as a “shortcut” to enlightenment and personal integration, when what is really needed to achieve those things is patient work upon the self over time. Above all, an individual needs to confront his “shadow,” those aspects of the personality the conscious ego denies—repressed instincts, impulses, desires, traits like aggression, envy, greed and prejudice.

Jung’s cautions are in line with those of all previous cultures that have used mind-altering drugs. Although psychedelics are an important part of traditional religion and spirituality—and therefore of the human experience conceived more broadly—their use has always been circumscribed and protected with safeguards. Amazonian tribesmen and Siberian reindeer-herders were not “microdosing” psilocybin for productivity or regularly visiting the “machine elves” to talk about who built the pyramids. The use of mushrooms, ayahuasca, peyote cactus and other substances took place according to schedules determined by ritual and astrological conditions, and was usually guided by specially trained practitioners known as shamen, who were believed to act as mediators between the land of the living and the world beyond. Preparation and setting were vital elements of psychedelic use. People were not inducted into the psychedelics willy-nilly, unlike today thanks to the blithe assurances of podcasters, musicians, influencers and tech bros.

In a letter from 1954, Jung wrote about LSD: “It has indeed very curious effects—of which I know far too little… I only know there is no point in wishing to know more of the collective unconscious than one gets through dreams and intuition. The more you know of it, the greater and heavier becomes our moral burden, because the unconscious contents transform themselves into your individual tasks and duties as soon as they begin to become conscious. Do you want to increase loneliness and misunderstanding? Do you want to find more and more complications and increasing responsibilities?”

Jung added that he was “profoundly mistrustful of the pure gifts of the gods.”

“You pay very dearly for them.”

Just how dearly, Connor Murphy found out.