You don’t need to read a Farmer’s Almanac to know that animal behavior has long been a societal barometer to measure, well, vibes. Is it about to rain? See if you can hear any loudly croaking frogs. Or look to your nearest pasture of cows, who apparently start lying down in the event of a coming storm. Weather proverbs like “Squirrels gathering nuts in a flurry will cause snow to gather in a hurry” aren’t exactly scientifically accurate, but they do speak to the way humans look to wildlife to get a sense of what’s happening in the world or coming down the pike. We even made it an annual, late-winter ritual to ask a rodent if they think it’ll warm up soon.
That’s all to say, whether it’s scientifically viable or not, we’re a bit hardwired as a society to hold up animal behavior as a mirror to understand where things are. And you know what? The animals are comporting themselves even more strangely than usual right now. The squirrels are vaping. The sharks are tweaked on cocaine. Birds are outfitting their nests with cigarette butts. Last fall, a drunk raccoon nearly broke the internet when pictures went viral of the masked bandit collapsed on the floor of a liquor-store bathroom after going “on a full-blown rampage, drinking everything.” In short, the animals are completely crashing out, which begs the question: Under normal circumstances, humans read animals to get a better sense of their environment. But now, could it be that the animals are reading us?
It would be the understatement of the decade to say that humans aren’t doing so great right now under late-stage capitalism. Thanks to social media, this term gets thrown around a lot, perhaps to the point of meaninglessness, but let’s break it down anyway: Primarily characterized by extreme wealth inequality, late-stage capitalism (according to The Balance) is “the sense that monopolies, and the oligarchs that run them, have rigged the system in their favor. They hire well-paid lobbyists to influence politicians. They win Supreme Court cases, such as Citizens United v. FEC (2010), which gives corporations the same rights as people.”
Late-stage capitalism in daily action looks like commercial airlines adding more premium seating and investing less in economy, because said coach travelers just aren’t traveling as much. It’s major corporations consolidating to the point of monopoly (looking at you, Ellison family). It’s big tech mining personal data for targeted advertising and, at worst, user surveillance. It’s the average citizen needing to make a GoFundMe to pay for catastrophic health care (even with health insurance). And it’s most workers having to juggle a series of gigs without benefits just to pay for the basic necessities, and then paying for those necessities with credit cards. It’s so many families living on the brink that they rally behind populist leaders who campaign on matters of affordability. (Whether they have concrete, workable plans to achieve their goals is a whole other matter.)
By now you might be thinking, “She got late-stage capitalism from a series of animals getting drunk, high, and nibbling on fruit-flavored e-cigs?” Yes, I did, but that’s only because actual substance use among humans has been ticking up in recent years, as have instances of loneliness and isolation. In short, we’re all stressed out of our minds. According to the American Psychological Association’s 2025 “Stress in America” survey, a majority of Americans say their stress levels have increased over the past five years, and this sustained upward trend is fueled by economic uncertainty, political polarization, public-health challenges, and financial anxiety.
So it only stands to reason that an increase in stress is connected to an uptick in substance abuse, which is bound to trickle down to our animal friends. And when it does, some very online humans bring things full circle by posting about how much they personally relate to a face-planted drunk bathroom raccoon.
Data from a 2024 survey conducted by the National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics indicated an upward trend in illicit drug use (up 0.3 percent year-over-year in 2023). Overdose deaths have increased in the 2020s. Substance abuse is low among teenagers, but rates are rising fastest among adults over 40 — you know, the population most saddled with responsibility. There’s a similar trend with alcohol; Gen Z is drinking less than ever, but drinking in older adults is actually on the rise, with the annual number of alcohol-related deaths from 2020 through 2021 exceeding 178,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2024, the New York Times asked, “Why Are Older Adults Drinking So Much?,” with experts attributing increased alcohol consumption in boomers to post-pandemic stressors and the sheer fact that boomers are “a substance-using generation.”
Speaking of boomer-era party favors, maybe you’ve been reading about the recent cocaine “comeback”? According to Pura Vida Recovery, cocaine is currently the fastest-growing illicit drug market in the world, which could explain why two Caribbean sharks recently tested positive for the substance, which Brazilian scientists attributed to drug packets falling into open water near tourist attractions.
Back on the Gen Z front, younger adults may not be drinking, but they absolutely are smoking more cigarettes, which Newsweek recently said are enjoying a “cultural renaissance.” In 2024, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published data finding that nearly one in 20 adults in the U.S. between 18 and 24 used cigarettes in 2022 (and the numbers were nearly three times higher for those aged 25 to 44). Anecdotally, smoking is all over our screens: Think Sarah Pidgeon puffing away as the ultra-chic Carolyn Bessette Kennedy in the Nineties-set FX series Love Story, or the strivers — and partiers — of I Love LA. Charli XCX has also helped the resurgence, often posing with cigs as part of her “Brat” aesthetic.
Regarding vaping, nicotine’s slightly less harmful cousin, overall e-cigarette use is down among U.S. middle and high school students, but the CDC reports that 23 percent of the younger population that does indulge does so every day, making it that much more likely for squirrels to run off with a fruit-flavored device.
All this being said, animals finding their way into substances is hardly a new phenomenon. In 2013, The Guardian reported on a feral pig in Australia that stole three six-packs of beer before getting into “an altercation” with a cow. Don’t forget New York City’s cigarette-toting cockroach in 2019, or the brown bear cub that was found to have consumed the mildly hallucinogenic “mad honey” in Turkey in 2022. As long as mind- and body-altering substances have existed, it only makes sense that animals would accidentally partake in them. It’s not without humor — who doesn’t stop to giggle at a headline about an intoxicated bear or a coked-out predatory fish? But as the headlines pile up like white powder packets in the Caribbean, maybe the animals are trying to tell us something.
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