The psychedelic conference circuit has produced some of the most extraordinary and bizarre occurrences imaginable in the years since these gatherings became a thing. The collision course between capitalism, consumer culture and mind-bending molecules that predate clinical protocol and venture capital has yielded many unique scenarios, and I’ve been on hand to witness them. I went to my first corporate psychedelic conference in the Fall of 2021 and quickly discovered a burgeoning scene with unbridled enthusiasm, larger than life characters, and endless troves of designer drugs with few guardrails.
In the years since that first fateful conference, I’ve come to emcee and give keynotes at dozens of international psychedelic conferences ranging from highly respected academic research colloquiums to festivals in the global south to underground events that functioned like trap houses. The following incidents are all real, even if they require the suspension of disbelief to properly appreciate. As the psychedelic movement ostensibly matures into something more mainstream and regulated, let us never forget the hilarities and growing pains that these early days of the psychedelic industry have afforded us.
1. An attendee ate too many free samples and started spewing vomit and going into a fugue state
I’m surprised this one hasn’t happened more often to be honest. In the back row of an auditorium while a panel about the bright and brilliant future of psychedelic medicine was in full swing, an older gentleman began spewing projectile vomit worthy of a full ayahuasca ceremony purge before drifting into a fugue state of sorts. If you’ve been around someone tripping too hard, especially at an event that has free product samples, it’s pretty straightforward to tell that this type of scenario is more of a ‘that wasn’t a microdose’ state and less of a serious medical emergency. Event staff were split between calling an ambulance and handling it in house, and ultimately all it took was a helping hand to the bathroom to splash some cold water on the guy's face and help bring him around.
2. A freak hail storm broke out over a line hundreds of people deep while they were waiting to get into an afterparty
A well-promoted afterparty for a major psychedelic conference will surely attract a crowd, and sometimes venue logistics aren’t prepared to adequately accommodate the turnout. Throw-in a once in a century hail storm that even managed to induce a state of emergency and mass hospitalizations at a concert happening simultaneously at the nearby Red Rocks Amphitheatre, and you’ve got a perfect storm (pun intended). The commitment of aspiring attendees to weather out the ice storm while being pelted by golf ball sized hail was rather impressive, but I managed to play my old trusty line hack to great effect by walking up to venue security at the front and flashing a lanyard from the conference before telling them that I’m part of Paul Stamets’ crew. In this particular instance it was true, but the granularities and specifics of the play have never stopped me before.
3. Military veterans set off on a multi-day trek to raise money for a campaign but the gate out of the conference facility was locked and they had to climb a giant fence with their bags to get out
File this one under ‘inspiring but half-baked’, which accurately sums up much of the veteran industrial complex lobbying for psychedelic access. A heart-felt ceremony preceded a send off for a multi-day hike totaling hundreds of miles that was meant to raise money and awareness for a psychedelic military veteran non-profit, but within 30 seconds of setting off on their pilgrimage to a standing ovation, the locked gates and perimeter fence around the conference property halted any forward progress. A flurry of walkie-talkie chatter from event staff didn’t produce any openings for the troupe while the momentum of the escapade was dwindling by the minute, and so a few veterans at the front of the pack took it upon themselves to scale the 8 foot tall chain link fence. Not everyone in the group was able to do this effectively; one guy even got stuck on top of the fence for a bit, and so there was an awkward scene where half the group waited on the other side of the fence while organizers found the keys to the gate and opened it a little while later. This moment felt like a particularly palpable metaphor for the barriers to access that veterans face in regards to psychedelics.
4. A mock ayahuasca ceremony staged for investors
I wasn’t actually at this conference but was invited to emcee it so I saw the pitch deck and schedule. One event stood out in a way that perfectly illustrates the extraordinary zeitgeist of psychedelics colliding with capitalist values: A mock ayahuasca ceremony staged for prospective retreat participants to watch from the tradeshow floor. I wonder if the people on stage also did performative purges to really sell the package?
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5. A facilitator conducted a live 5-meo-dmt ceremony with a first time voyager
In a convention center hall with over a hundred people sitting in as a live audience, I watched a guy smoke 5-MeO-DMT with a facilitator on hand and enter a convulsing, ecstatic state marked by profane exclamations, crying, and a cryptic declaration that ‘There’s another dimension’!
He was in the peak state for no more than 3 or 4 minutes before he started trying to communicate what he had experienced, which he was not particularly well equipped linguistically to do. What followed was an integration session of sorts followed by a live Q & A with the audience, in which he kept circling back to his main takeaway from the experience, which was ‘Holy shit!!’
6. A guy smoked 5-meo-dmt in front of a large audience while a scientist analyzed his brain wave changes
I’ve witnessed live 5-meo-dmt sessions in front of sizable audiences at two different conferences. This particular occasion featured an eeg machine hooked up to the psychonaut, with a scientist on hand to translate the perturbations and changes in brain waves for the audience of 200 people or so. The audience was asked not to record the experiment to keep it low-profile, but that didn’t stop a reporter for a mainstream international publication calling me the next day and asking me if I thought it’d be okay to profile what happened in writing for the outlet — I passed along the contact info for the event organizers and referred to them for comment.
7. A religious leader blessed a homeless man with an impromptu DMT ceremony on the sidewalk where he lived
Some people are fully confident in their ability to bless others with the power of psychedelics held within a ritual container that they outline. Psychedelic evangelism is stretched to the extreme, even if that means dapping up a homeless guy with a fat rip of your DMT vape in the middle of his makeshift residence in the Brickell district of Miami and calling it a ‘ceremony’. There’s ‘crazy’, and then there’s ‘batshit crazy’ – you decide which category this one belongs under.
8. Ibogaine CPG products started popping up
As goes demand, so goes the supply – and with a rise in cultural interest and scientific study of Ibogaine has come a sharp uptick in public interest. It was only a matter of time before someone tried to capture this lightning in a bottle, or in this case, Iboga bark in a luxury wellness branded and packaged format, but we’ve officially entered the era of the Iboga CPG market. I didn’t buy any, but if I had any reservations about doing so, no need to worry since I’ve seen the same product and others pop up in different cities across the U.S. as well as circulating online.
9. A CEO and Founder linked up and went on to build a $90 million company
This one is wild in a really good way. I was emceeing Cannadelic Miami in 2023 and between panels spontaneously decided to bring up people from the audience to share why they’d come and what they were working on. Aaron Nosbisch came up to talk about an idea he had for a new hemp beverage, and immediately after another attendee named Travis Duncan walked up to Aaron to tell him about the new beverage bottling line equipment he’d invested in alongside some novel ingredients and extraction processes he was working with. Within 3 months, the pair had launched BRĒZ together, and today the brand has surpassed $90 million in profitable revenue and landed on shelves nationwide in Target, Sprouts and more.
10. Afroman played a raucous pool party that went several hours past the noise curfew at a major Miami hotel
At the time Afroman was the marquee musical guest for a major psychedelic conference, he was still living off his viral ‘Because I Got High Fame’ and hadn’t yet crossed the line into Defender of the Constitution and free speech iconography that is currently defining the surprise second act of his career. What he did manage to do at the afterparty is turn up louder, longer, and higher than any performer at the Miami Airport Convention Center ever has before despite repeated pleas from the venue to cut the show.
Listen, I’m not here to pass judgement on anyone for how they go about their business. But I am here to ritualistically mock them and craft ‘fact is stranger than fiction’ accounts that preserve the integrity of this unique moment in history that has been unceremoniously dubbed the ‘Psychedelic Renaissance’. I’ve been here for a lot of it with a pulpit level vantage point. If things feel like they’re getting stranger and weirder, it’s because they’ve already been that way for a while and people are finally starting to notice. Psychedelics haven’t dissolved capitalism, but rather absorbed it and metastasized into something far stranger than the sum of its parts. The only thing left to do is develop a sense of humor about it all.