F  L  A  U  N  T

 _Photographed by_ Selena Seay-Reynolds “We are always undergoing the dissolution of the world.” -------------------------------------------------------- — [Erik Davis](https://techgnosis.com/)  Miami is a last-minute trip. Have you ever tripped when, just a few minutes prior, you had no intention of doing so? This trip dropped in my lap, summoning me the way they say Ayahuasca does. Ancient spirits pull me string-like far away from my familiar environment to download me with vital info. This is all hindsight from my future self, or at least, I think. I’m not sure who is speaking—the me now, or the me retelling this to you. Like Henry Miller said, _I am no longer living on clock-time or daylight-saving time or cyclical time or even sidereal time._ In other words when the ego abandons and spacetime drops the act, it’s all very trippy.  An email had materialized about **Wonderland: Miami**, presented by [Microdose](https://microdose.buzz/). The slick mega conference touted as a triumph for psychedelic business and its emerging legitimacy “from fringe to frontier” in the fields of medicine, finance, and tech.   Mike Tyson With all the lucidity of a fever dream, I follow the string and the path simply reveals itself. I shudder to make white rabbit references but Grace Slick’s howling voice shuffling in my headphones midflight is beyond coincidence. I was supposed to be in Vegas this week, but the Fates have something else in mind. Synchronistic pieces fall into place one-by-one. I’m supposed to go to Miami and write about what I find there, with little more to go by other than marquee names in vague waters. **Mike Tyson**…**Lamar Odom**…and the intersection of psychedelic healing—a new frontier yet to be mapped within the Western mind.  Zappy Zapolin Funny enough, I received a call a few days ago from [**Zappy Zapolin**](https://zappyzapolin.com), filmmaker, futurist, and self-described psychedelic concierge to the stars. He and Lamar Odom were in Vegas for a similar conference. Zappy’s new documentary, [_Lamar Odom: Reborn_](https://lamarodomreborn.com/), closely follows Odom on his psychedelic intervention and subsequent awakening, using Zappy’s prescribed treatment to kick a lifelong struggle with trauma, anxiety, and drug addiction.  As if we had known each other for years, Zappy wasted no time rapping about the urgency of this moment in human history, and plant medicine’s ability to cure our countless crises. “Society is about to go over a cliff. And the only thing that could possibly make us take a veered left is psychedelics. I’m just excited in this moment, as daunting as everything seems.”  Zappy Zapolin and Michelle Weiner His two organizations, [KetaMD](https://ketamd.com/) and [The Ketamine Fund](https://ketaminefund.org/), involve providing in-home treatments and raising money for free access for veterans. “I want the information to come out so that people can, in this crisis, tap into this ketamine opportunity and see how safe and effective it is through Lamar … just sort of embrace celebrity culture since a lot of times people care more about a celebrity than a 100-page research study from Johns Hopkins. Give them what they want and sugar the pill.” I land near midnight in the swampy paradise of Miami (just in time for our clocks to “fall back”) and it still hasn’t hit me I’m here. Nothing is as it seems. It’s always supposed to be balmy and humid, but the Cuban Uber driver goes on in broken English about it being unusually cold. Like L.A., Miami is one of those cities that lives in the mind—the mythic image projected by Hollywood of beautiful people and fast cars soaked in acrylic and neon. It’s not that exactly, but from the jump I get the impression of skyscrapers-of-tomorrow jutting out into the dark Atlantic Ocean beyond. A playful yet dire provocation.  My photographer and confidante, Selena, and I get to our refurbished art deco hotel room in a part of town called Edgewater, not far from the Wynwood arts district, and my jet-lagged vision focuses on the glowing pink neon sign on the wall in retro-futuristic font that reads: “It Was All a Dream.”  The next night, we attend the VIP party on one of the private, gated Sunset Islands not far from Miami Beach. Every house is worth a small fortune and separated by long driveways, expansive yards, and obscured behind lush greenery, white walls, and every kind of palm tree known to man. The house we enter is Spanish-style straight out of the hills of Bel-Air, very retro compared to the modern glass-and-steel goliaths flaunted across the street. It was hard to gauge the crowd, but it was a mixed bunch: cutting edge filmmakers; man-bun venture capitalists; laidback CEOs of this and girlboss COOs of that; and the local, perma-tanned Don Johnson types hoping to score acid and disappointed only to find free samples of [Psychedelic Water](https://psychedelicwater.com/)—which I swig in spades. I want to lay off the booze and keep my wits and apparently carbonated kava is just the ticket. But no matter your social standing, everyone is neutralized in the violet event lighting splashing the house, trees, and manicured lawn that rolls down to the private dock floating motionless on the waters of Biscayne Bay. The Miami skyline glows in the distance.  While I tail event staff, jonesing for more [Psychedelic Water](https://psychedelicwater.com/), I strike up a conversation with a woman who goes by the name **Kimberly Juroviesky**. Not only is she a retired USAF captain, but she tells me she’s the president of the [Ketamine Taskforce](https://www.ketaminetaskforce.com/). I wasn’t aware of any such taskforce, but it fills me with an unexpected sense of fervor. The thought of psychedelic soldiers out there fighting for recognition of something so real and curative, yet so mystical—a contradiction not easily held in the Western mind.  The goal of this taskforce is to get insurance companies to cover ketamine treatments for both mental and physical ailments. I later found out that she knows firsthand about ketamine’s effectiveness, as she was injured on active duty and developed Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. She wouldn’t be here (as in, alive) if it weren’t for these treatments. Of course, she’s the kind of stoic, no-nonsense type that would never divulge this information to a friendly stranger. But she does explain some of the steps she’s taken just to get insurers to look at ketamine. The fact that it’s long been an FDA-approved anesthetic has not swayed the industry from labeling it “experimental.” The steps she describes makes my eyes glaze, no fault of hers, it’s all just over my head. The sobering reality of psychedelic legitimacy hits me. The Kafkaesque bureaucracy and the American middlemen healthcare shysters. If it’s an uphill battle just to make insulin cheap and available, imagine the red tape they’d wrap around ketamine.  I gaze into the indigo light of the pool, its placid surface reflecting the string of white lights wrapped around the base of twin palm trees that sway overhead. Not long into our conversation, I get another email from the ether. Wonderland organizers tell me my interview with Mike Tyson has been approved—an interview I don’t remember requesting. \*\*\*  Mike Tyson, Amanda Siebert, and Daniel Carcillo I barely make it in time for the 9 am registration cut off. The reason being my ego was fiending for coffee and bagels—resisting the flow and needing that caffeine fix—so we stopped along the way, but the café took an ungodly amount of time and we had to ditch the bagels and play catch up. From the look of the line that wound around the building, I wasn’t the only one. But the minute I surrendered (with a sublime “oh fuck it”), resigning myself to a long wait in the Miami sun, a clerk inexplicably checked Selena in. She simply approached the table, smiled, and he gave us both our press passes. It had all the satisfaction of cutting the line at a Vegas nightclub. A subtle lesson in the ongoing Art of Letting Go. “Let go or be dragged,” as the old Zen proverb goes.  Wonderland is held in the Adrienne Arsht Center. Impressive in its colossal sci-fi visage, it straddles Biscayne Boulevard with a pedestrian bridge, like some fragment of a futuristic city. But then again, Miami isn’t far off, blurring the line between dys/utopia, with a glittering skyline and emerald spires that match the surrounding waters, seemingly indifferent to its sinking coastline.  Inside, the place is naturally lit like a cathedral. Cartoony, red-capped mushrooms and white rabbit sculptures litter the lobby floor with vendors flaunting 3D psychedelic art, sleekly packaged mushroom powder, and a VR experience that simulates an acid trip. The energy was building in anticipation for the arrival of Mike Tyson. In recent years, he’s attested to the positive effects psychedelics had on his recent personal transformation. Tyson’s a changed man, and he’s spreading the gospel.  Daniel Carcillo The schedule was already thrown out the window. Tyson was supposed to show up at 10 am for press interviews but ended up getting to the venue two hours late for his appearance on the fireside chat about “Using Psychedelics to Recover and Enhance Neurological Health and Wellness.” It included former NHL pro and two-time Stanley Cup winner, **Daniel Carcillo**, who founded [Wesana Health](https://www.wesanahealth.com/), an integrated life science company Tyson invested in, which is revolutionizing how we treat neurological conditions (like TBI) with psilocybin-based medicine. Carcillo himself talked about the symptoms he suffered from brain trauma, including depression and suicidal tendencies, and how this treatment brought him back from the brink and made him excited to be with his family again.  “It showed me exactly what I needed to see. I’m the creator of my own world, and the creator of my own heaven and hell.” Not only did his psychological symptoms of TBI dissipate just days after treatment, but his physical symptoms too, such as light sensitivity. Even his qEEG and blood work reflected no more abnormalities. The answers are here. Though it’s early in the conference, hearing these two former athletes talk is a breath of fresh air, given the 2,400-seat opera house is already feeling stuffy with the air of legal and corporate jargon. The audience loosens up with a laugh when Tyson rattles off a cavalier anecdote about the first time he tripped on “toad.” It was the first episode of his podcast (_Hotboxin’ With Mike Tyson_), and the guest, Dr. Gerry, was speaking to the benefits of _bufo alvarius_ medicine, better known as the Sonoran Desert toad. It secretes the powerful compound [5-MeO-DMT](https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/newsroom/news-releases/fast-acting-psychedelic-associated-with-improvements-in-depressionanxiety) as its venom, a pure and powerful compound that Ralph Metzner referred to as “jaguar,” more commonly called “toad.” Tyson was admittedly hitting the bottle and doing a lot of cocaine in the years prior. When Dr. Gerry told him toad was a better drug than coke, Tyson responded simply, “Get the fuck out of here…” and did toad with the good doctor right then and there. Suffice to say, the average tripper is probably a little less hot to trot. Then again, what else should we expect from the Champ? They stopped the podcast and then returned 30 minutes, only to see Tyson basking in the wake of a mystical experience that we trippers know all too well. It was a turning point for Tyson. Since then, he’s been outspoken about his experiences and how what helped him can help countless more people. “You die for a moment…in this dimension you’re in \[after taking toad\] …and it’s beautiful, it’s okay.” More applause from the crowd.  Mike Tyson Between his off-the-cuff riffing and giddy proclamations (which may or may not be out of the ordinary for the Champ), I began to wonder—is Mike Tyson on toad right now? I hear the acute effects of vaping toad can linger up to two hours. Not that it would make a lick of difference. Once you’re past the event horizon, your lens is altered, toad or no toad. Though, personally, I’m happy not to be tripping right now. The talk is over, and I’m crammed in the mania of a collapsed conference schedule between a gaggle of journalists from _Forbes_ and _The Guardian_ waiting to get a word with the Champ. I didn’t have long, and I could see by the look he was giving his publicist that he was burnt-out on interviews. But he lights up once I mention shrooms. “My whole life changed—360,” he says in the buzzing press lounge. “Anybody that knew me four years ago, they would see the difference, it speaks for itself.”  Tyson’s a hard man to quote, he’s all body language and spits words peek-a-boo style. Though his beard may be grey, and though he may be coolly dressed in a baby blue collared shirt with white slacks, he’s still built like a marauding NFL running back in his prime.  “Has shrooms changed your perspective on fighting at all?” I ask. “Yeah,” he says, “I fight on shrooms.” “You fight—_on shrooms_?” I echo, wide-eyed. “Like, microdosing?” “Nah…all out!” “What’s that even like?” “It’s beautiful…the way you move…” he says, shadowboxing for me what it’s like on shrooms. I take a moment to absorb what’s happening in front of me—and imagine any poor soul facing Mike Tyson in the ring as he’s peaking on a heroic dose. I ask if it deepened his lifelong relationship to his pigeons. He paused, and then said with total self-possession, “It deepened my relationship with myself.”  Panel with Sandor Iron Rope and K’uychi “Rainbow” Florez After Mike and his team leaves, the whirlwind dies down. My photographer Selena wants to track down Peruvian healer **K’uychi “Rainbow” Florez**, one of only two Indigenous speakers at the conference.  It’s obvious that Wonderland is heavy on the business, light on the spirituality. Even Daniel Carcillo spoke to this when he and I got a chance to talk. He’s confident [Wesana](https://www.wesanahealth.com/) will not only deliver care but integrate the transcendent. “We will hold true to that spiritual aspect of this medicine. Because, if you don’t, it will not be as efficacious. Not the way it has been for me or for Mike.”  Even still, it’s vital we connect with those still connected to the old ways. Those who understand these plant medicines are a technology in of themselves, and that we as Westerners aren’t “discovering” anything. We manage to find Rainbow outside on his way to lunch, his long dark hair and white poncho draped over his frame. We’re sorry to bother him but he looks at us like he’s known us for years. “It’s alright,” he says with a smile, “it is meant to be done.” Not only is he a healer but has his master’s degree in science and is working toward a PhD. “My main mission is that I’ve been healing a lot of people in the jungle with the DMT from Ayahuasca.” I don’t even have to ask any questions. He speaks as if anticipating my queries.  “This is the gift from nature. A lot of people are suffering from psychological disorders and need to regain harmony—regain our natural happiness and joy. We are losing these things because we are too mental. In my tribe, we believe the mind is representative of the serpent. Your serpent must be small, but since we are a worried people, we have an anaconda, and our weak bodies cannot stand. This lack of equilibrium is everywhere because the heart is closed.” We always think of psychedelics as “expanding your mind.” This makes sense considering we’re so often mental people, operating from the intellect and our overthinking minds. We rarely think of the heart as the seat of consciousness. The ancient Egyptians believed it was the seat of feeling _and_ intellect and played a major role in their belief of the afterlife. The god Anubis would weigh your heart in the underworld to determine whether you’d get into paradise. This is reflected more modernly with the discovery of what scientists call the intrinsic cardiac nervous system—the “heart brain”—composed of nearly 40,000 neurons. Eerily enough, heart disease has long reigned as the #1 killer in America.  Thinking of psychedelics as an expanding substance takes on a whole new dimension when you consider the heart. “The heart is the bridge between the body and the spirit. So Ayahuasca gives you the possibility to expand your heart, and then the healing of your mind and your brain is going to happen. What else are you expecting from life? You need the Mother Plant. This is what we call the ‘rope of death,’ and we need to link ourselves up because the fear of death is killing humanity. When you have this fear, you don’t have hope. But this plant gives you the experience of dying. You die for a moment…” This echoes exactly what Mike Tyson said in the packed opera house less than an hour ago. “Ayahuasca takes you there, gives you the sensation of dying, and you come back to this world with less ego. You come back with power, but the power of humility. You incorporate this experience into your consciousness—into your matrix of life. Everyone thinks consciousness is in the brain. False. Consciousness is in every cell, in every neuron, in every breath you take.” We said our goodbyes. Rainbow’s words left me dazed. If the last 2 years has taught us anything, it’s that we are wildly not in control of our own health—mental, physical (and yes, spiritual). What I took away from today is a sense of empowerment. It’s true that psychedelic trips house their own subjective truths for each of us, but they are subjective truths rooted in an objective reality. We can all connect to each other while connecting to ourselves. And beyond that, we can wrest control of our own lives away from that of social, political, and technocratic powers. These are the possibilities for the 21st Century. \*\*\*  Zappy Zapolin Day 2 proves much tamer. If yesterday had all the anticipated fervor of a rising acid trip, today is a post-peak plateau, where you can settle in and decode your hallucinations. I sit in a quiet press lounge, sipping the endless stream of free [Psychedelic Water](https://psychedelicwater.com/) when [**Zappy Zapolin**](https://zappyzapolin.com/) shows up, smiling, bald, diminutive in stature, donning a white goatee, white go-go shades, and a pale oyster sportscoat. We shake hands and chat, pleased to finally meet IRL. He strikes me as not unlike one of Terence McKenna’s “self-transforming machine elves” oftentimes reported in the DMT realm.  With the cadence and seraphic musing of a California surfer, he beams with a new optimism. You can see why high-profile personalities entrust him with the most delicate chasms of their inner psyche.  He took the journey down this rabbit hole as most people do, when they hit a midlife crisis… existential crisis…spiritual crisis, call it what you will: being disillusioned with all the things our society says are supposed to make us happy. He felt the lingering specter of unfulfillment. “I had heard about people taking ayahuasca and I thought maybe I’ve got to go into the jungle, sit with a shaman, and get back to who I was—who I am—before everybody put all this shit on me.”  He wound up connecting with actor Michelle Rodriguez who accompanied him to Peru. It was originally going to be a personal journey, but when he mentioned his plan to go and film it, “She literally pulled out her passport and said, ‘when are we leaving?’”  The rest is history and documented in his first film, [The Reality of Truth](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glNJHVJgI2Y). He followed Rodriguez over the course of a few years to see how she “integrated” her experience (how one incorporates revelations during the trip into their everyday life.)  “After her friend Paul Walker died, she expressed how if she hadn’t done ayahuasca, she might’ve lost it. She sensed that he was still with her and didn’t have to totally feel that loss.”  Since then, the “psychedelic concierge to the stars” tag stuck, something he prides himself on. “That moniker is appropriate because when you go to a hotel and you ask the concierge where you should go for dinner, he asks things like, ‘What kind of food do you like? Do you like wine? What kind of music? Do you want indoor, outdoor?’ They get a lay of the land. Then they make a recommendation. So, for me, I sit down with Lamar \[Odom\], and ask, ‘What’s your intent for doing this? What kind of traumas do you have?’” As featured in his new documentary, [_Lamar Odom: Reborn_](https://lamarodomreborn.com/), Zappy gives Odom a regimen of “Ketamine + Plant Medicine + Daily Practice = Conscious Transformation.”  Odom was always wary of tripping. Zappy relayed Odom’s concerns, “In the Black community, if you have a bad experience and flip out, you could be shot by police, you could be put in a mental institution. He told me it’s different for a Black person.” Though eventually, Odom grew comfortable with the idea of doing it in a doctor’s office.  [KetaMD](https://ketamd.com/), Zappy’s company, is bringing this therapy to the comfort of our own homes; a near-future where we’ll be able to take a ketamine lozenge while on a Zoom call with our assigned registered nurse. Zappy explains they work with a nationwide network of doctors who understand and prescribe this medicine and are trained in ketamine protocols. In other words, [KetaMD](https://ketamd.com/) is bridging the gap between the downhome psychedelic experience and the modern medical system. Ketamine itself has come a long way in terms of recognition. Before now, so many of us have been fumbling in the dark, to which I can personally attest. The mid-2000s was a dark age for all things psychedelic (especially after the arrest of William Leonard Pickard—also slated to speak at Wonderland—who up until 2000 was manufacturing 90% of the world’s LSD out of a renovated missile silo in Kansas). No ancient knowledge, no methodology or wisdom other than [erowid.org](https://erowid.org/), we were mere monkeys in helmets shooting ourselves into space. My drug dealer one day asked if I wanted a hit of “Special K.” He couldn’t tell me too much about it other than it was horse tranquilizer (or was it cat tranquilizer?) Being in the habit of not saying “no” to much in those days, I snorted a big line. Suffice to say, the drive home that day was more than interesting.  To think that ketamine not only unlocks an array of inner healing but could soon be prescribed for in-home treatment seems to me a quantum leap. Zappy hopes to soon create a program of psychedelic concierges. “People have so many different and specific needs. And once we can get people trained and they have the experience themselves, they can really guide. If you are properly guided and you have integration support, you can really maximize this stuff.”  And we keep quantum leaping, with the evolution of psychedelics in our culture seemingly keeping up with the acceleration of our technology. Zappy briefly muses on the “technological singularity” proposed by futurist Ray Kurtzweil, the theoretical moment when the growth of AI surpasses that of human intellect.  “When we hit 2040, and we’re connected to the internet with AI, the average person will be one billion times more intelligent than they are today. So that means any one of us would have the ability to destroy the world, build a nuclear device, whatever. And if you think about an angry teenager or somebody with underlying issues, if we don’t address those as soon as possible, we’re going to get there and be destroyed. We’ve got to raise consciousness.” Whatever may or may not happen beyond that event horizon, it’s obvious we need to go within if we ever hope to reach the stars. Though with most remedies, it takes a combination of elements to tackle what’s deep-rooted. Plant medicine isn’t just a compound, there’s an uncanny consciousness to it. It’s alive. Ibogaine was what Zappy recommended for Lamar Odom, and the documentary gives us an inside glimpse into his trip; the good, the bad, and the ugly. It’s a stirring experience that reality TV may one day catch up to—people sharing what psychonauts call their “trip reports.” Odom recalled visitations from his deceased mother and baby son, Jaden, who died at 6 months. Since his treatments, he’s reconnected with his other two kids, as well as with himself. Iboga is a rainforest shrub root native to West Africa and traditionally used in initiation ceremonies. It’s often associated with ancestor spirits, something Odom was interested in exploring. The fact that you could connect with loved ones at the soul level, something Indigenous people have understood for centuries.  “The medicine wants to come out,” Zappy says. “It knows it has to come out to Western society, it knows humans are hurting.” I think about Mike Tyson embracing death… I think about Rainbow’s poetic words about how fearing death is what’s killing us… I think about Michelle Rodriguez grappling gracefully with Paul Walker’s death… _I see that the dead are still with us,_ Henry Miller whispers to me from the ether, _ready and willing to be summoned from the grave any time…_ I think about how reality is not what we have constructed it to be. Compared to cultures past, ours seems to be the most out of touch with something as fundamental as death, and it seems to be tied to the perpetual distance we keep from these plants. Before we consider “investing the shamanic way” (an actual conference topic) may we consider—excuse the pun—the roots. Graham Hancock’s _America Before: The Key to Earth’s Lost Civilization_ discusses the phenomenon of recently discovered geoglyphs, or “earth works”—massive ancient geometric structures, some exactly aligned to cardinal directions and in reference to star constellations. He discusses paintings by Tukano shamans (inspired by their ayahuasca trips) that depict the entrance to the afterlife realm as geometric shapes, closely resembling these earth works. Hancock’s theory is these structures are connected to a system of ideas about death and the afterlife found all over the world—places like the Amazon, Egypt, and the cryptic earth mounds of the Mississippi Valley that still baffle modern Americans.  Jemie Sae Koo **Jemie Sae Koo**, founder and CEO of [Psychable](https://psychable.com/) made the only respectful mention during a panel at Wonderland about the local Native tribe, the Tequesta. It struck me that there might be one of these earth works right here in Miami. A 2,000-year-old prehistoric (and mindboggling) landmark called the [Miami Circle](https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/miami-circle)—a perfect circle 38 feet in diameter at the mouth of the Miami River—is smack dab in the middle of downtown. It was discovered during a luxury development project, and though its purpose remains a mystery, it’s believed to have been a large structure used for ceremonial purposes. I can’t help but think of Hancock’s ancient earth works, and all these seemingly disparate cultures around the world erecting working monuments in some common language that speaks to traversing the Land of the Dead. A land, perhaps, not so far away from our own. For the meantime, money continues being as sacred to our culture as any pantheon or journey to the underworld. Mainstream psychedelia is coming, for good or ill. Like a vast network of underground highways, the infrastructure for psych distribution is being quietly built. When these compounds are finally legalized, clinics and headshops will be there, appearing out of thin air. Ketamine clinics are already waiting. Franchised psych.   Klee Irwin This becomes all the more real as I speak with **Klee Irwin**, founder, CEO, and chairman of [Irwin Naturals](https://irwinnaturals.com/), a supplement and vitamin powerhouse (you’ve seen the bottles at Costco, Walmart, Walgreens, etc.) that has its sights set on becoming the 7-11 of psychedelic health clinics.  “I’m worried…” he tells me, seated outside the Arsht Center in the shade of the late afternoon sun, “about how poor people in this country, impacted communities having a higher percentage of trauma-induced mental health problems, can afford $700 for just one ketamine session, not to mention six after that. They can’t. Insurance isn’t paying for it. So, I feel we need to set up a chain of clinics and push down the price without pushing the quality down.” Irwin is a kind soul, calm and collected. Beyond that he seems sincere. “Maybe part of the craziness that’s going on in this country is a side effect of years of spiritual malnourishment. It might mean that the materialistic paradigm for mental health has been not scientifically representative of what reality really is. If that’s true, then we’re about to embark on a new adventure, because this Psychedelic Renaissance is not going away.” If big psych business were to have a face, there could certainly be worse. He was successful in moving square investors toward CBD. Now he wants Irwin to be a household name for trip treatment, snatching up the 600+ mom and pop ketamine shops the way Blockbuster rolled up indie video stores from coast to coast back in the day. I dig this idea of healing the masses from the bottom up. Normalizing this kind of treatment and cutting out the middleman. How else to tear into the heart of the opioid crisis? How else to reach out to hurting communities?   Sandor Iron Rope I can’t help but think of the exchange I had earlier this morning with **Sandor Iron Rope** of the Lakota tribe. So brief and spontaneous I almost forgot about it, until now. As the president of the Native American Church of South Dakota and board member of the [Indigenous Peyote Conservative Initiative](https://www.ipci.life/), he takes very seriously the matter of preserving peyote use for the purpose of fortifying Indigenous identity and healing ongoing colonial trauma.  “People want healing, but if they don’t respect indigenous perspectives, you’re going to hurt more people than heal more people, and that’s the bottom line. You’re moving too fast without understanding the implications of it, just for profit.” And now that modernity is grappling with legitimizing altered states and connection to spirit (under the auspices of a desperate mental health industry) for the first time, the ironic albeit grim prospect of Natives being robbed and left out in the cold yet again is felt.  I cut to the chase. “What are you doing to include Indigenous communities?”  I hope that didn’t come off curt, but at this point in the conference, I’m tired and drowning in buzzwords, soundbites, and rehearsed mission statements.  “We’re really anxious to get our hands on using plant medicine. 1 of 10 people, we estimate, will be able to afford to go down and work with shamans and indigenous people. For the population on the east coast, we’ll flow them down to our clinic that will be opening in Jamaica—a seven-day deep experience led by shamanistic, tribal leaders. And we’ll give back to their communities through tying them into the income stream. And then on the west coast, we’ll flow those folks down to our retreat center in Costa Rica.” A solid model, but I find myself rambling, and I don’t know where it’s coming from. I circle back, getting more specific.  “What are you doing to include _Native_ communities? Any members of any tribe in any of our states? It seems like these communities are here, next door, and none of their knowledge is being utilized. They’re still so invisible. I know we’re hurting, but they’ve been hurting longer. I think plant medicines should be legalized across the board _solely_ on reservations, so that we must go to them if we want access. It could give everyone involved new purpose, a way forward.” “You’re right,” he tells me. “They’re the ones who have the hidden wisdom, though it’s hanging on by a thread because of the abuse and trauma. Hey…” he says, a spark in his eye. “You know what you could do, or what _we_ could do,” he chuckles (clearly he’s the one with the capital), “I know I’m setting up in Jamaica and Costa Rica, but I could do plant medicine within a couple hours’ drive from most population centers in the U.S. by teaming up with a reservation, and saying, ‘look, you guys, under the auspices of religious freedom, are allowed to use peyote. And you’re also allowed to bring us outsiders people in. And we’ll pay you. That’s a great idea. I hadn’t really thought about that. Actually. That’s a great loophole for us. It’s a win-win for them. Yeah. Smart. Are you a journalist or a business consultant?” Whether I’m responsible for any shift in Irwin’s future business model, or whether he was just humoring a rundown writer, I was nonetheless turned on by the idea of psychedelics transforming relationships. A medium through which we can be there for each other, regardless of who we are and where we come from. This is always an idealistic, gooey sentiment, a platitude echoed by politicians and ad campaigns—but psychedelics give this sentiment a _reality_.    Hanifa Nayo Washington Sometimes, that reality may be all too heavy for even the casual psychonauts, let alone for those who haven’t touched the stuff. Sacred activist [**Hanifa Nayo Washington**](https://www.handsofhanifa.com/) is the last soul I have the pleasure speaking with at Wonderland, and I’m touched by her conviction to reach out, lend a hand.  She cofounded [Fireside Project](https://firesideproject.org/), a volunteer-operated support line for anyone in the throes of a trip or needing integration support after the fact. A simple dial (or text) to 623-FIRESIDE takes you to a trained “affinity cohort” (there’s also an app). Fireside can even pair you up with a cohort of a shared identity, be it Black, Indigenous, trans, a veteran, or anyone traditionally underrepresented in the psychedelic space. On the other side of the line, marginalized folks can volunteer with Fireside, and when they put in 200 hours of service can access the equity fund and receive resources to further their education within the psychedelic field, be it in therapy, research, facilitation, etc. Again, evidence of totally unprecedented infrastructure in the psychedelic space.  “We really see ourselves as the safety net. No one’s alone during a psychedelic experience if they don’t want to be. And everybody has support after they’ve had an experience.” If I were aware of a support line as a budding psychonaut in my 20s, it would have given a shape and language to my experiences not rooted in the shame or stigma that came with underground exploration of not just my own mind, but Mind at Large. Camaraderie was rare then, though precious when I found it.  We all need this. Guides and guidance. Whether in the form of a personal concierge, tribal ceremony, or the proverbial 1-800 hotline. As Irwin put it, a psychedelic renaissance is here, and people are cashing in, for good or ill. Erik Davis once meditated on the tools needed to grapple with these data-dense End Times, “Like that giddy flash of anxiety that hits the moment the blotter melts on your tongue, it’s too late. Here it comes.” There’s big, reinvigorated talk about space exploration these days, but I’m leery of the mindset we’re bringing with us. It’s a vast frontier to be sure, but the Mind will always be the final frontier. There’s still opportunity not only to revise our healthcare framework, but our spiritual framework. Where can you escape to when you’re careening over the edge? Maybe into the digital world, the illusory halls of social media, and soon the proposed Metaverse. But wherever our escape pods may lead, we will never escape ourselves. Our shadows, our unresolved traumas—from our personal lives to the labyrinthine corridors of ancestral history—will always find us.