TOGETHER WITH

Welcome, everyone. It’s so nice to be here today, again.

Look around. Take a moment and see who is sitting next to you.

Someone traveled from another country to be in that seat. Someone navigated a visa application, an airport screening, or a border agent who looked at them a little too long. Someone is here for the first time and has no idea what to expect. Someone else has been coming for years and keeps coming back because they haven’t found anywhere else quite like this.

And I want to start right there. With that fact. With this room.

Because this room — this particular gathering, right now — is not something we can take for granted. Not in 2026. Not when the borders are tightening. Not when the surveillance is deepening. Not when the question of who gets to move freely, who gets to speak, who gets to be present in a conversation that is about them, is more charged than ever.

Gathering across borders, across differences, across languages and generations and ways of knowing is already an act [of resistance].

Don’t underestimate it.

Around 35 years ago, I tried mushrooms in Huatla de Jimenez, Mexico; 30 years ago, I took my first glass of ayahuasca in Brazil; and 10 years ago, I co-founded Chacruna in Mexico. 

10 years ago, Chacruna was a stubborn idea born into a field that wasn’t sure it needed us.

We said: Culture is not secondary to science. We said: Indigenous knowledge is not a footnote. We said: The question of who benefits must be clarified. We said: Complexity is not the enemy of progress — it is the precondition for it.

10 years later, I’m still standing here saying the same things.

And you know what? I’m not embarrassed about that.

I used to feel pressure — every year — to come up with something new. A new angle. A new argument. A new way of framing the conversation so it feels cutting-edge and fresh.

But I’ve made peace with something: We don’t repeat these conversations over and over again because we lack imagination; we repeat these things because the work isn’t finished. Change is uneven. It moves in spirals, not straight lines. And the communities who keep showing up — who refuse to let the important questions get simplified, packaged, or quietly dropped — are not holding up progress. They are the ones keeping the field honest.

Here is the paradox we are living in.

On one hand: a so-called “renaissance.” Magazine covers. Bipartisan legislation. Pharmaceutical pipelines. Silicon Valley money. Celebrity endorsements. Every week, a new headline about the healing power of psychedelics.

On the other hand, people are still being arrested. Indigenous communities are still fighting for the right to work with plants their ancestors have held and worked with for thousands of years. Researchers from the Global South — the people who hold some of the most essential knowledge in this field — often can’t obtain visas to attend the conferences where that knowledge is discussed.

I want to reiterate that because I want it to land.

The people and communities who hold the knowledge cannot always enter the rooms where their knowledge is being used.

That is not a footnote. That is how the mainstream psychedelic field operates.

And, in the middle of all this, a complex field is forming, fast. Hierarchies are arising. New authorities are emerging — certifications, protocols, licensed facilitators, and self-appointed shamans. New experts and new gatekeepers, both of whom have new languages of legitimacy.

And once a field forms and those structures calcify, they are very, very hard to undo.

The decisions being made right now — this year — will shape the psychedelic movement for a generation. That is not an exaggeration. That is why we are here.

And the speed of it matters.

Psychedelics are moving very fast into the mainstream. But the conversation is not moving at the same speed. There is a growing gap between what is being regulated and what is actually happening on the ground — in communities, in ceremonies, and in informal spaces that most policy frameworks simply cannot reach.

Most of the world does not experience these plants through clinical models. But clinical models are becoming the ones that define legitimacy. So, the question is not only about access. It is about balance — between access, conservation, ethics, and commercialization. It is about asking: which uses are being recognized? And which are being left out?

The commercialization of psychedelics is happening whether we engage with it or not. The real question is whether the people in this room — the researchers, the activists, the healers, the communities who have held this knowledge for generations — will take part in shaping that process, or be pushed to the sidelines and complain about it after the fact.

As both community and religious uses advance — amid global popularization and increasing regulation, the ethical tensions only deepen. Who benefits? Who is protected? Who gets left behind? These are not abstract questions. It’s the urgency behind everything we do.

I also want to talk about a word: “psychedelic.” I want to revisit its origins.

Where did it come from? Most people in this room know the clinical history: the trials, the protocols, the FDA breakthrough designations. But here is what usually gets left out of this mainstream narrative.

Some of the original scientists who built the foundations of psychedelic science — Humphry Osmond, Abram Hoffer — did not arrive at their ideas in a laboratory or in clinical settings only. They arrived at their ideas sitting in tipis with Native Americans, witnessing ceremonies of the Native American Church, watching how a community used ceremony, prayer, song, and plant medicine to treat medical and spiritual ailments.

Those encounters shaped their inspiration for research and their thinking. Those ceremonies shaped their hypotheses. And the very word “psychedelic” — a word that now names an entire industry, a cultural moment, a social movement — carries within it the legacy of those tipis, those ceremonies, that Indigenous presence, knowledge, and wisdom.

Humphry Osmond and Abram Hoffer also persisted against colonial authorities who prohibited the spread of the Native American Church, a chapter of history explored by our esteemed former Chacruna board member, historian Dr. Erika Dyck. So again, it’s important to rescue nuance and critical thinking, and avoid reductionist binaries. Using our historian hats, it’s clear that the dialogues between Western science and Indigenous knowledge are not foreign to the psychedelic field.

I am also thrilled that Kelly Daniels, Reanna Daniels, and Dr. Erika Dyck will be present with us this weekend offering perspectives from the Native American Church in Canada. Kelly's grandparents were actually present at the ceremony with Osmond! (Unfortunately, Native Americans in Canada were advised against international travel to the U.S. at this point, and so we are having virtual speakers present for the first time.) Come ask your questions.

So let me ask a question that deserves to be asked out loud:

If ceremony is the origin of psychedelia — if Indigenous practice is not an exotic supplement but a founding condition — then how did we arrive at a moment where a clinical trial is more legitimate than a ceremony? Where a licensed therapist in the U.S. has more institutional authority than a curandero who has worked with these plants for 40 years?

What happened? And can we name it?

I think we can. I think we have to. Part of our work here — together — is to reclaim that origin. To remember that the word “psychedelic” was never only meant to refer to these substances as mere molecules with psychoactive properties. It also had a spiritual, ceremonial, and relational sensitivity to it. And we do not have to choose between those things.

Inclusion is one of the most popular words in this field right now.

These days, every organization has a statement. Every panel has been diversified — at least visually. And I want to say something that might sting a little:

Inclusion, done badly, is extraction with better branding.

When Indigenous wisdom is “included” in a clinical model that was built without Indigenous people and Indigenous leadership, one that profits without sharing those profits, that cites the tradition without respecting the sovereignty — that is not inclusion. That is a different chapter of the same old story.

And when Black communities carry a disproportionate burden of trauma and incarceration, while remaining underrepresented in the research, the leadership, and the economic benefits of this boom, we have to ask: revolutionary for whom, exactly?

This is why I am so proud that Chacruna’s own Dr. Monnica Williams — our former Chair of the Board, and someone deeply influential in my own trajectory and in the birth of Chacruna — will deliver a keynote on plant medicines and racial trauma. Racial justice is not a subcategory of the psychedelic conversation. It is the spine of it. And we celebrate all our Black friends and allies from the Bay Area and beyond who are present here today.

We also celebrate our queer resistance. I celebrate love, and my wife, Clancy, who co-founded Chacruna with me. I celebrate this city, where I had the courage to come out, as so many queer refugees have before me. And we continue to stand against patriarchy and sexual abuse.

Now. Let’s talk about what we actually are.

Because I want to be honest about this, even after 10 years.

Chacruna is hard to categorize. We are not a clinical research organization. We are not a policy lobby. We are not a certification body, a retreat center, or a facilitator training program.

We are something harder to explain at dinner parties and in conversations about “impact” with donors — and perhaps more necessary exactly because of it.

Think of us as bakers. We make bread — and we give it away. We nourish. We feed. We show up every day, in the sunshine or the rain, to make something that people need, and we put it on the table for anyone who is hungry.

We believe culture is the starting point, not a complement to science, not a warm-up act for the data: the starting point. As an organization led by anthropologists and social scientists, we are here to remember the context within which everything else acquires meaning.

We don’t idealize or glorify Indigenous peoples as saviors or messiahs — and we don’t demonize Western science, or even the commercial market. We are not interested in binaries. We are interested in the complex, contentious, alive space between positions — where the real questions live. We don’t need to decide quickly. We can sit with the tension. That is not weakness, that is honesty.

This year, we are refining Chacruna’s work. Keeping our key commitments to Indigenous reciprocity, psychedelic justice, and protection of sacred plants and cultural traditions, we are now refining and moving our mission into four main programs: honoring culture and tradition, education, fostering community, and incubating leadership. And that last one matters enormously to me. Because in this room, right now, are people who will shape this field for the next 20 years. Some of them are established. Some of them are here for the first time. Some of them don’t yet know what they are going to build.

The formal call for speakers we launched this year was designed for exactly that reason — to open the curatorial process, to diversify participation, to create intergenerational dialogue, to find the voices that will populate this field and challenge all of us, including Chacruna.

We are not interested in building an institution that protects its own authority. We are interested in building a field that can outgrow us.

And then there is knowledge — the kind that travels.

Here is the story I want to tell. Chacruna is a champion in education. Every course, every conference, every workshop, every book, every article we publish; these are not just outputs. They are seeds. They reach researchers who will design better studies. Therapists who will sit with more humility. Students who will ask harder questions. Entrepreneurs and retreat owners who will make different choices. Community leaders who will fight for justice.

We are training a generation. Not in a classroom. But through the slow, patient accumulation of ideas — in three languages, across 195 countries, for anyone who wants to listen.

This conference is part of that. Part of a narrative that is constantly being built and rebuilt, that expands what the field can see, who it listens to, and what it considers possible.

And in 10 years, here is what that looks like in numbers: 14 conferences. More than 11,000 people reached. Over 2,300 scholarships granted. 1,075 articles published — with more than 1.7 million readers. And since 2021, our Indigenous Reciprocity Initiative has raised nearly $300,000 to support grassroots, community-led projects designed by Indigenous communities themselves.

We have published 17 books in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. And I am especially proud to announce our newest release: Psychedelic Plant Medicines of the Americas, officially launching May 26th with North Atlantic Books. And through Biblioteca Psicodélica (Psychedelic Library) — our partnership with Editora Mercado de Letras — we will publish 10 open access publications in Portuguese in Brazil, with three more forthcoming.

 10 years. Three languages. Many continents. That is not a slide in a marketing deck. Chacruna is a strong pillar of the psychedelic movement. And you are here with us, part of it.

And then there is the question of art.

This year, for the first time at this scale, art is a truly integral part of the program. Music, dance, film, performance, embodied practice — these are not the fun parts between the serious “content” and panels. They are central. They are part of the program because they are part of the argument.

Here is the argument:

Science is, in a profound sense, the newcomer to this conversation. For communities of color, these plants have never lived inside a clinical model. They have always lived inside song. Inside ceremony. Inside the body. Inside relationships between humans, plants, ancestors, and the cosmos — expressed through art, not through abstracts.

And the early psychedelic counterculture understood something similar. The movement that made psychedelics a cultural force was not primarily a scientific movement. It was an aesthetic and cultural one. It was about perception, beauty, and transformation — about the conviction that how you experience reality shapes what you believe is possible — and that altering consciousness was a form of political and spiritual act.

We lost some of that. In the race to legitimacy, in the translation into clinical language, something got left behind.

We are reaching back for it. Not to romanticize the past. But because the body knows things the brain cannot always articulate. Because ceremony transmits things that data cannot fully capture. Because art does something — in a room, in a person, in a community — that a peer-reviewed paper simply cannot do.

And because if we want to really talk about transformation, we have to be willing to be transformed. Not just informed.

We are here during Bicycle Day weekend.

April 19th, 1943. Albert Hofmann on a bicycle, somewhere between the laboratory and home, riding through Basel, Switzerland, that has become completely, terrifyingly, magnificently strange.

Every year, I come back to that image. A scientist on a bicycle. No protocol. No IRB approval. No treatment manual. Just a human being, moving through the world, suddenly perceiving it differently — and trying to hold on.

We are all, in some sense, on that bicycle right now. Moving fast. Not entirely sure of the destination. Trying to hold on to what matters — the ethics, the relationships, the roots, the complexity — while the field accelerates around us.  

So here is what I want to ask of you this weekend.

Not agreement. Not consensus. Not the performance of unity.

I want to ask for your discomfort. Your willingness to sit with questions that don’t resolve. Your willingness to be challenged — by a speaker, by a conversation, by a piece of music or a film or a dance that moves something in you didn’t expect.

I want to ask you to stay in the tension. Between celebration and critique. Between what this movement has accomplished and what it still has not done. Between the world we want to build and the world we are actually building.

And I want to ask you to look around again — the way I asked you to at the beginning.

This room is not inevitable. The fact that we are all here, together, is not a given. It is the result of three decades of consideration since my first encounter with those magical beings in the Mexican mountains and of 10 years of work, the blood, sweat, and tears of the Chacruna team, comprised of Mexicans, Brazilians, American Gen Zs, and allies — and of the work of communities and traditions that go back much further than all of this.

Don’t take it for granted. Because urgency, in this moment, is not about speed. It is about responsibility.

It is about love for this work — and honesty about its contradictions.

And it is about showing up — again and again — until the questions make their way fully into our intellects, body, spirit and communities.

Welcome to Psychedelic Culture 2026! 

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