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InvisibleveggieM

Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,538
Denver psychedelics conference attracts thousands
    #28369122 - 06/21/23 05:37 PM (10 months, 22 days ago)

From veterans to mushroom growers, Denver psychedelics conference attracts thousands
June 21, 2023 - KUNC

Thousands of conference-goers are gathering in downtown Denver this week to learn about the future of psychedelics like magic mushrooms and MDMA. The five-day Psychedelic Science 2023 event covers a wide variety of subjects from the business of psychedelics to therapeutic uses for these substances.

“We are facing very difficult challenges in mental and behavioral health and we're very excited about the opportunities that psychedelics offer to break cycles of addictions for opioids, to deal with severe depression and anxiety,” said Gov. Jared Polis during his opening address on Wednesday.

Hosted by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), a non-profit with operations in Boulder, over 11,000 people have registered for the event which the organization describes as “the largest psychedelic conference in history.” This conference is the fourth of its kind—the last gathering took place in 2017 in Oakland, California.

Events include sessions for veterans struggling with PTSD and scientists discussing emerging research. High-profile speakers like musician Melissa Etheridge and football player Aaron Rodgers are talking publicly about their experiences with psychedelics.

“It's really exciting to see just how lively the showing is here in Denver for the Psychedelic Science conference,” Ramzy Abueita of Decriminalize Nature Boulder County said. “The fact that…we are freely walking around in the city being ourselves shows just how much the zeitgeist has shifted and how much psychedelic culture has become normalized and de-stigmatized in our society.”

The conference represents increasing cultural awareness and acceptance of plant medicine, following recent efforts to bring psychedelics into the mainstream.

In 2019, Denver residents voted to decriminalize mushrooms that contain psilocybin, a naturally occurring psychedelic compound. The following year Oregon became the first state in the nation to allow psilocybin-assisted therapy. Last fall, Colorado voters approved Proposition 122, which decriminalizes growing and possessing some natural psychedelics. The measure also creates a framework for these substances to be used in therapeutic settings.

Immediately following the passage of Proposition 122, Zach Dorsett founded Wonderbags, a Colorado Springs-based company that sells mushroom starter kits so that customers can grow them at home.

During the conference, Dorsett answered questions at Wonderbag’s booth, flanked by humid bags of white and blue mushrooms.

“So it's basically ready to grow. The bag itself doesn't contain any psilocybin, which allows us to sell it,” Dorsett said. “You know where your mushrooms are coming from, you know how they're grown. You put that energy into them.”

Dorsett said psychedelics have helped him with depression and motivation.

“When the industry started to evolve and we had Prop 122 passed, we were just looking for ways to, like, add value to the community and help others have some of these life changing experiences,” Dorsett said.

Many of these substances are illegal at the federal level. After widespread use in the 1960s, the federal government classified some psychedelics, including psilocybin, as Schedule 1 drugs, meaning they lack an accepted medical use and have a high potential for abuse.

Eventually, researchers began requesting licenses from the federal government to study some psychedelics. After encouraging results, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has allowed some of this work to move ahead more quickly by granting “breakthrough therapy” status to MDMA and psilocybin-assisted therapies.

Joe Moore, the Breckenridge-based co-founder of Psychedelics Today, an educational organization that produces a twice-weekly podcast, pointed out that this big, visible conference might feel risky for some given the legal issues around these substances.

“A lot of people are really spooked, you know, for all sorts of reasons,” Moore said.

He points to medical professionals who could risk their licenses by attending the conference, as well as to those who are part of the underground movement already providing services like psychedelic-assisted therapy, for example.

“This conference to me is a sort of coming out moment for this movement. Saying, 'We're here, we're not afraid of you anymore. We're going to be doing our thing and we're doing it in a lot of different ways… And we're all brave enough to be here together,'” Moore said.

* See also: Psychedelic Science 2023

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InvisibleBarnaby
Interesting lifetime
Male

Registered: 12/13/17
Posts: 9,217
Re: Denver psychedelics conference attracts thousands [Re: veggie] * 1
    #28369647 - 06/22/23 04:14 AM (10 months, 22 days ago)

They figure it out first there in the States.  God put up a store with shrooms in bright headlights and "try a new experience" and cops don't care that is saying something.

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InvisibleveggieM

Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,538
Re: Denver psychedelics conference attracts thousands [Re: veggie]
    #28370343 - 06/22/23 03:36 PM (10 months, 21 days ago)

Related ...

Aaron Rodgers talks about taking ayahuasca at a psychedelics conference
June 22, 2023 - CBS News

DENVER -- An eclectic crowd of thousands — podcasters, vendors, startups, seekers — swarmed a psychedelics conference in Denver this week to experience everything from a dimly lit hall packed with kaleidoscope art and a wide-ranging lineup of speakers from a former Republican governor to Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers.

The conference, put on by a psychedelic advocacy group, took place months after Colorado's voters decided to join Oregon in decriminalizing psychedelic mushrooms. While it's a sign of growing cultural acceptance for substances that proponents say may offer benefits for things like post-traumatic stress disorder and alcoholism, medical experts caution that more research is needed on the drugs' efficacy and the extent of the risks of psychedelics, which can cause hallucinations.

Rodgers spoke Wednesday night with podcaster Aubrey Marcus. Rodgers described taking ayahuasca with his teammates as "radically life-changing," and claimed many other pro athletes have reached out to him.

"I found a deeper self love," said Rodgers of his ayahuasca experience. "It unlocked that whole world of what I'm really here to do is to connect, to connect with those guys, and to make those bonds and to inspire people."

The organization hosting the conference, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, is the largest U.S. advocacy group. It has strategized to reach the full political spectrum, said Nicolas Langlitz, a historian of science who's researched the boom and bust of psychedelic movements.

"At the time when any topic gets politically polarized, ironically, these super-polarizing substances now get bipartisan support," Langlitz said. Still, he added, the conference is "purely designed to promote the hype."

"Any kind of overselling is not good for science because science should be accurate rather than pushing things," he said. "It's a tradeoff. (The conference) generates interest, it generates ultimately more research, even though the research might be skewed toward positive results."

Psychedelics are illegal at the federal level, though acceptance and interest in studying their potential benefits has grown. For example, some researchers believe psilocybin, the compound in psychedelic mushrooms, changes the way the brain organizes itself and can help users overcome things like depression and alcoholism.

The drugs themselves — and the interest in them — are not new. Mid-last century, Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey helped spur the use of psychedelics during the counterculture movement, and optimism brimmed among some psychologists over the drugs' potential.

But the Nixon administration criminalized psychedelics, pushing them underground.

"In both cases you have this upwelling of exuberance that may or may not be irrational," said author Michael Pollan, who wrote a book on psychedelics and will be speaking at the conference. "But I think a big difference (now) is that the enthusiasm for the potential of psychedelics cuts across a much more representative slice of the population — it's not about a counterculture."

Republican strongholds, including Utah and Missouri, have or are considering commissioning studies into the drugs, partly inspired by veterans' stories. Former Texas Republican Gov. Rick Perry spoke Wednesday about helping get a bill passed in the Texas legislature in 2021 to fund a study of psilocybin for veterans, though he doesn't support recreational use. In Congress, similar veteran-focused proposals brought progressive Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from New York and far-right Rep. Matt Gaetz from Florida into an unlikely alignment.

Public interest also appears to be growing. Just six years ago in Oakland, California, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies held a conference with roughly 3,000 attendees and a smattering of lesser-known speakers and die-hard proponents.

This time, organizers estimate at least 10,000 attendees. Other famous speakers will include former NHL player Daniel Carcillo, who owns a company specializing in psychedelic therapies; Olympic silver-medal figure skater Sasha Cohen; rapper and actor Jaden Smith; comedians Reggie Watts and Eric Andre, top-10 podcaster Andrew Huberman; and Carl Hart, the chair of Columbia University's psychology department.

Recruiting that celebrity support for psychedelics is part of MAPS' public relations strategy, founder Rick Doblin said. When asked whether platforming a non-expert like Rodgers could mislead the public, Doblin demurred, adding it would be "dangerous" for anyone to claim that there are no risks to taking psychedelics.

Doblin said taking MDMA should happen "only under the direct supervision of a therapist, it's never a take-home medicine." He also emphasized what many speakers echoed during the first day about psychedelics being paired with mental health professional: "The treatment is not the drug, it's the therapy that the drug makes more effective."

That was a more tempered approach than his introductory speech, when, to an overflowing theater, Doblin espoused grandiose goals such as "net-zero" trauma by 2070 through the use of psychedelics.

The American Psychiatric Association has not endorsed the use of psychedelics in treatment, noting the Food and Drug Administration has yet to offer a final determination. The FDA did designate psilocybin as a "breakthrough therapy" in 2018, a label that's designed to speed the development and review of drugs to treat a serious condition. MDMA, often called ecstasy, also has that designation for PTSD treatment.

Both Pollan and Langlitz believe further research is key — especially as the nation faces an unprecedented mental health crisis and people struggle to find adequate treatment. But, Langlitz said, it's important to let research shape the narrative.

"I would just try to keep my mind open to the possibility that in retrospect we will tell a very different story from the one that the protagonists of psychedelic therapies are currently predicting," he said.

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InvisibleveggieM

Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,538
Re: Denver psychedelics conference attracts thousands [Re: veggie]
    #28372604 - 06/24/23 11:25 AM (10 months, 19 days ago)

MAPS conference in Denver interrupted by Indigenous activists on final night
June 24, 2023 - Drugism by Vincent Rado

A few hours ago, during a closing talk by Rick Doblin on the final night of the Psychedelic Science 2023 conference hosted in Denver by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, a group of Indigenous activists interrupted Doblin’s speech to draw the crowd’s attention to some serious problems with the current boom in psychedelic research and advocacy.

Raw footage of the event was shared on Twitter, where it quickly racked up thousands of views:

https://nitter.snopyta.org/annaesilman/status/1672407819310759936

The first advocate who spoke during this incident said,

“Listen!
There are a lot of people who have been harmed by this movement, and I understand you all want to hear what Rick has to say. But we have been marginalized and kept out. I am using my light-skinned privileges—woman over there who wants to question my indigeneity, ok—your indigeneity isn’t just your DNA and your brown skin, it’s also your witness to community.
So please, sit down and be quiet. You don’t know what a revolution is.”

She directly addressed Rick and called him out for failing to be more responsive to various Indigenous communities and the concerns that numerous native elders have expressed about the rapidly unfolding commercialization of these drugs, itself built on the backs of ancient Indigenous traditions.

Many in the crowd cheered loudly. Some booed. See it for yourself in the videos shared in the Twitter thread linked above.

She added, “If you don’t like this, then maybe—maybe—you should go look back at your roots and find out where colonization happened, that created this wound, where you don’t want to hear people who—” at which Doblin jumped in redirect the conversation.

I have been told that the activists in the videos belong to an advocacy group known as the Native Coalition Against Colorado Mushroom Bill. I am in touch with multiple people at the conference and will add more info as I gather and clarify facts and context about all of this.

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Invisibledurian_2008
Cornucopian Eating an Elephant
 User Gallery


Registered: 04/02/08
Posts: 18,037
Loc: Raccoon City
Re: Denver psychedelics conference attracts thousands [Re: veggie]
    #28373511 - 06/24/23 11:18 PM (10 months, 19 days ago)

Commercialization. There's a word for it. I believe it's true. I'm past it, now.  :shrug:

From the point of view of the indigenous, how did the very first person, in the very first story, find it.

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