crystals
Explanation
This comic subverts the "healing crystals" concept popular in New Age and alternative wellness culture.
A vendor at what appears to be a crystal shop tells a customer about their products: "This one is for focus. This one is for empathy. This one is for dreams. This one helps with the SAD." The customer is impressed and asks, "Wow, and what are they?" The vendor replies: "Methamphetamine, MDMA, PCP, and Ketamine."
The caption at the bottom reads: "I wish those 'healing crystal' stores were run by chemists."
The joke operates by setting up what appears to be a typical New Age crystal shop pitch -- each crystal having a specific emotional or psychological benefit -- and then revealing that the "crystals" are actually crystalline drugs whose pharmacological effects genuinely match the described benefits. Methamphetamine genuinely enhances focus (it's closely related to ADHD medication), MDMA (ecstasy) produces intense feelings of empathy and emotional connection, PCP (angel dust) can cause vivid hallucinations and dissociative dream-like states, and ketamine is actually used as a clinical treatment for Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and depression. The humor lies in the fact that a chemist running a crystal shop would actually deliver on the promises that New Age crystal healing cannot -- albeit through illegal and dangerous means. It's a pointed commentary on pseudoscience: the "crystals" that actually do what healing crystals claim to do are controlled substances.