Earlier this month, the prominent and highly controversial looksmaxxing influencer Clavicular appeared to overdose during a livestream. According to news reports, the 20-year-old (real name Braden Peters) was rushed to hospital shortly after he collapsed and the Miami stream went dark. He was admitted overnight, but the next day he was already back in the public eye as he hosted the opening of a new Miami club. There was one big difference, however – this time, he was apparently sober. 

In the past, Clavicular has reported taking a daily “stack” of drugs and supplements including Adderall and other amphetamines. And he’s not alone. Fellow looksmaxxer Androgenic – who was seen offering Clavicular an “addy” as he slurred words and lost consciousness in the Miami club where he overdosed – reportedly takes a “pentastack” featuring Adderall, ketamine, and Pregabalin. Besides contributing to their unconventional (and often dangerous) beauty routines, these drugs are tailored to the long hours and social pressures of IRL streaming, where influencers document chaotic public interactions in real time.

Clavicular has said in previous streams, including a conversation with Andrew Tate, that he’d struggle to socialise without taking substances. Following his suspected overdose, he doubled down on this argument as he announced his plans to give drugs a rest. “I ain’t gonna be doing any more substances for a little while, hopefully forever,” he explained. “But that means I can’t really IRL stream any more... I think I have to figure something else out. Fuck. I have to figure out a new method, either practice mogging sober, or just find a new form of content.”

Of course, Clavicular is an extreme case – not many of us have hundreds of thousands of eyes glued to our every move – but leaning on substances for help in a social setting is by no means unique to the streamer. Mia*, who’s in her 20s and based in London, reports taking MDMA, cocaine, and ketamine as “social lubricants”, especially when she was at university. “Anything that could take me out of my self-conscious headspace was a plus,” she says. And often, the drugs did help.

MDMA was particularly effective, Mia says. “Not to sound like a drug evangelist, but it made me feel more connected to people. Even after the high wore off, I carried with me this sense of interconnectedness. It gave me a lot of clarity... like, ‘Oh, everybody [has] their own worries and anxieties. Everybody does weird stuff.’ And that stayed with me.” Since graduating, she doesn’t take drugs as much as she used to. (“I don’t have the time,” she jokes.) But she does still use cocaine in a social setting. “I have quite low self-confidence,” she explains. “And it just gives me a boost.”

H, 26, says she uses a similar list of substances, including ketamine, weed, alcohol and occasionally MDMA. Working in contemporary art helped normalise this, she suggests, since the industry is “typically understood to have a very loose approach” to substance use. Mia says something similar: “In my social circle, a lot of 20-something, left-leaning, progressive people in a major city like London, it’s pretty normalised to do drugs recreationally and drink.”

“I have quite low self-confidence, and coke just gives me a boost.”

Unsurprisingly, alcohol is a recurring theme when it comes to using substances as a social lubricant. Joseph*, also in his 20s and based in the north of England, no longer uses any substances in a social setting, but used to drink regularly, alongside using other substances, to help deal with social anxiety. “I found that they allowed me to socialise with people I didn’t know well, without the anxiety of saying the wrong thing,” he explains. Sarah* agrees that drinking helped lower her inhibitions and overcome anxieties about speaking to new people, adding that ketamine and cannabis became an option when hangovers started to creep in and she had to work the next day.

Joseph no longer feels that he needs substances to help smooth over social interactions, because he no longer feels the same anxiety he did when he was younger. But what about people who had to give up substances for other reasons, and now find themselves needing to “mog sober” while dealing with the same issues as before? At the age of 20, H discovered that she was “extremely allergic” to alcohol, and her relationship with drinking became more complicated. “Alcohol has always been helpful for me, in that it gives me a reason to be somewhere,” she says, “but unhelpful in the sense that I end up pretty debilitated.” Other drugs have remained helpful when it comes to loosening up, she adds, but leaning less on alcohol also led to another realisation: “I genuinely think nothing beats having good energy with people to begin with.”

After doing “loads of drugs” at university, 27-year-old Nathan* primarily stuck to weed up until last year, when he quit. “I don’t regret doing it,” he says, adding that it helped him form a sense of his identity when he was younger, and find a social scene. “I also kind of taught myself that it minimised anxiety,” he adds. “I had multiple, scattered voices in my head and smoking weed helped me focus. I still think there’s some truth to that.” Gradually, though, smoking began to make the anxiety worse, not better. As a result, he began to transition away from weed by smoking CBD, which he continues to do now. “It does absolutely fuck all,” he says. “But I use it as a ritual to relax, and when I see friends.”

Whether people are taking ketamine, cocaine, or drinking to help them socialise, there’s a theme that keeps cropping up again and again: not feeling neurotypical. This is something that Clavicular himself referenced in the wake of his suspected overdose, writing on X: “All of the substances are just a cope trying to feel neurotypical while being in public, but obviously that isn’t a real solution.” Despite no formal autism diagnosis, Clavicular refers to himself as an “autist”, including in a February New York Times interview. Nathan also suggests that his substance use is linked to undiagnosed neurodivergence, and points to the fact that self-medicating with weed has become very common among neurodivergent people in the UK.

Mia adds: “I’ve not been diagnosed with anything, but I really relate a lot to autistic people when they talk about masking. When I’m out in public or around people I don’t know well, in like 70 per cent of social situations, I feel like I’m performing, trying to be ‘normal.’” This can leave her feeling “drained and exhausted” and, as she explains: “Drugs and alcohol are a way of dulling all that noise in my mind.” Echoing Clavicular’s post, though, she acknowledges that these are “synthetic feelings” and “using drugs isn’t going to address the real issues”. Plus, she adds that getting “blackout drunk” or taking coke came with its own anxieties, like waking up with a sense of paranoia about what happened the night before. In a 2025 post (above), one TikTok user takes this conversation further, noting that the pressure for autistic women to use alcohol to mask “autistic traits” and “appear more neurotypical” can often lead to dependency or addiction.

For Nathan, dealing with anxieties and obsessive behaviours has become “less about trying to run from those feelings and smother them” and more about “trying to listen to them and work with your body”. Just as Clavicular is taking hammers to his face to try and alter his bone structure, he notes, he’s also trying to “brute force biology” when he relies on substances to overcome anxieties about performing in public. In the long term, this isn’t sustainable, as the looksmaxxer’s Miami stream made all too clear.

* Names have been changed.