Welcome back to The Drop In, DoubleBlind’s newsletter serving up news, culture, and independent journalism about psychedelics straight to your inbox.

Today’s lead story, co-authored with Monica Cadena, explores Spirituality and Beyond, a plant medicine and spirituality gathering in the Bay happening over Easter weekend. If you’re ready to trade an hour in Sunday Mass for a different kind of spiritual conversation, Oakland might be calling. You’ll find a preview of the event below!

If you keep scrolling, you’ll find other stories about healing with the land, an interview with Shane Mauss, a profile on Robin Carhart-Harris, and so much more.

Stay funky 🪩 🍄,
Mary Carreón
Editor-in-Chief

Psychedelics have re-entered mainstream conversation, but figuring out how, where, and whether to explore them can quickly become overwhelming.

There are retreats, clinics, microdosing, clinical trials, or underground guides. The options are growing fast, yet very few resources clearly explain what you should actually consider before making such an important decision.

After guiding thousands of psilocybin therapy sessions, the founders of MycoMeditations, Justin Townsend and Mike Ljubsa, created the most comprehensive guide to psychedelic healing available online.

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Of course, they’d love for you to learn more about MycoMeditations. 

But more importantly, they wanted to build a resource that helps everyone understand their options and find the path that truly fits their needs.

If you’re looking for a psychedelic experience, then this guide was made for you.

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A three-day gathering in Oakland brings together artists, organizers, and thinkers for conversations on psychedelics, spirituality, and community.

Oakland is a town known for its ingenuity. Even when major religious holidays roll around, the people of Oakland find fresh ways to celebrate outside of traditional dogma and doctrine. And this Easter is no different. 

From April 3 to 5, Spirituality and Beyond returns for its sixth year, bringing together a range of artists, organizers, healers, and thinkers from the community for three days of talks, ceremony, music, and conversation. Hosted at Humanist Hall in Oakland, CA, the weekend will consist of structured talks and leave space for open conversation, allowing attendees to engage directly with speakers and each other, reflecting the city’s strong culture of community.

The gathering, organized by the Church of Ambrosia, sits at the intersection of spirituality, psychedelic culture, and community care. Across the weekend, conversations will range from harm reduction and potency to Indigenous knowledge, ceremony, and the evolving role of psychedelics in contemporary spiritual life. Panels like “God Sitters” and “Temple of Harm Reduction” explore what it means to hold space, both practically and ethically, while other conversations address larger questions of meaning, integration, and collective responsibility. 

The event will feature comedian and science communicator Shane Mauss, who will be in conversation with Dave Hoges as the headliner on Saturday. He will also perform “TRIPS: Third Dose,” the third installment in his latest stand-up series. Reggie Watts, brilliant psychedelic artist known for his improvisational performances that blur the lines between music, comedy, and something else entirely undefinable, is also scheduled to speak. He will be in conversation with Monica Cadena about creativity, culture, and consciousness. The event will also feature speakers such as the legendary Mama Ayana, Oakland-based rapper Mistah F.A.B, and the founder of Hyphae Labs, Reggie Harris.

The event is hosted by Dave Hodges, founder of the Church of Ambrosia, one of the country’s largest psychedelic churches. Over the past six years, Spirituality and Beyond has grown into a container where ideas aren’t just presented, but lived, challenged, and carried forward.

Tickets for the weekend, as well as single-day passes, are available here, with discounted access offered using the code DBFAM.

As psychedelic reform inches forward, a movement that doesn’t defend home grow of entheogenic plants, especially psilocybin mushrooms, risks losing its roots.

In this week’s lead feature, writer Patrick Maravelias makes the case that true reform means more than clinical access or state-wide decriminalization. It means protecting the right to cultivate plant medicines at home. From psilocybin mushrooms to San Pedro to coca and opium poppies, he argues that sidelining home grow and excluding certain plants from legislation reveals deeper contradictions within the movement, as corporate interests and cautious policymaking reshape what “legalization” really looks like.

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If you're actively looking for a psychedelic experience, this guide will almost certainly help you make a better decision. 

It might even change the direction of your search entirely.

The Complete Guide to Healing with Psychedelics was developed by the longest-running psilocybin retreat in the world after years of fielding thousands of calls from people navigating these exact choices.

Download the guide here to start exploring it, and see what you could be overlooking when making this big decision.