Aaron Rodgers speaking at psychedelics conference

DENVER –

Months after Colorado voters decided to join Oregon in decriminalizing psychedelic mushrooms, Denver is hosting a conference this week hosted by a psychedelic advocacy group that brings together an unlikely cohort of speakers, including an NFL star, a former Republican governor and a rapper.

The conference and the thousands expected to attend is indicative of the creep, or perhaps leap, of cultural acceptance for psychedelics that proponents say may offer benefits for things like post-traumatic stress disorder and alcoholism. Still, medical experts caution that more research is needed on the effectiveness of the drugs and the magnitude of the risks associated with psychedelics, which can cause hallucinations.

NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who will soon be debuting with the New York Jets after years with the Green Bay Packers, will speak to a podcaster on Wednesday about his ayahuasca experience and how he believes it has helped his game. Rapper and actor Jaden Smith, Will Smith’s son who has publicly shared the “ego dissolution” he felt when using psychedelics, will also be speaking, as will former Texas Republican Governor Rick Perry, who is an advocate for research to the potential of psychedelics. benefits for veterans experiencing PTSD.

The receiving organization, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, is the largest advocacy group in the US. It has developed a strategy to reach the full political spectrum, said Nicolas Langlitz, a historian of science who has researched the rise and fall of psychedelic movements.

“Overall, this strategy has been hugely successful,” he said. “The moment a topic becomes politically polarized, ironically these superpolarizing substances now gain bipartisan support.”

Still, Langlitz said, this conference is “purely designed to promote the hype,” which may exaggerate the potential benefits but also encourage further funding.

“Any kind of overselling is not good for science because science has to be accurate rather than push things,” he said. “It’s a trade-off. (The conference) generates interest. It ultimately generates more research, even though the research may lead to positive outcomes.”

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

The drugs themselves – and the interest in them – are not new. In the mid-century, Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary, and Ken Kesey helped spur the use of psychedelics during the counterculture movement, and some psychologists were optimistic about the drugs’ potential to enhance the human psyche.

But the Nixon administration punished psychedelics and pushed them underground.

“In both cases, you have a surge of exuberance that may or may not be irrational,” said author Michael Pollan, who wrote a book on psychedelics and will speak at the conference. “But I think a big difference (now) is that the enthusiasm for the potential of psychedelics is reaching a much more representative segment of the population — it’s not about a counterculture.”

Republican strongholds including Utah and Missouri have or are considering commissioning studies on the drugs, inspired in part by harrowing veterans’ accounts. That’s why, even though he stops promoting recreational use, Perry has become an unlikely standard-bearer and helped get a bill passed in the Texas Legislature in 2021 to authorize a study of psilocybin for the treatment of PTSD to fund.

In Congress, successful proposals to fund psychedelic research on PTSD in veterans brought Progressive Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and far-right Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida on an improbable line.

Public interest also seems to be increasing. Just six years ago, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies in Oakland, California, held a conference with about 3,000 attendees and a few lesser-known speakers and die-hard advocates.

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

Rick Doblin, founder of the advocacy group, kicked off the conference Wednesday to a packed theater that embraced grand causes, such as “net-zero” trauma in 2070 through the use of psychedelics.

The American Psychiatric Association has not approved the use of psychedelics in treatment, noting that the Food and Drug Administration has not yet made a final decision. The FDA designated psilocybin as a “breakthrough therapy” in 2018, a label designed to accelerate the development and evaluation of drugs to treat a serious condition. MDMA, often referred to as ecstasy, also has that designation for PTSD treatment.

Both Pollan and Langlitz believe further research is critical, especially as the country faces an unprecedented mental health crisis and people struggle to find adequate treatment. But, Langlitz said, it’s important to let research shape the story.

“I would just try to keep my mind open to the possibility that we will tell a very different story afterwards than the one currently predicted by the protagonists of psychedelic therapies,” he said.

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Bedayn serves on the Corps for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a non-profit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercover issues.