Sensi Magazine Florida- January 2021

HIGH PROFILE

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LET IT GLOW

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S PA R K F LO R I DA JANUARY 2021

RECLAIMING RECOVERY The barrier for BIPOC embracing psychedelic healing

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Want a sample of our work? You’re reading it.

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We build brands we believe in—the brand you believe in can be next. emagency.com

SPARK SENSI MAGAZINE JANUARY 2021

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FEATURES

24

The Road to Reclaiming Recovery

Psychedelic therapy could help ease the constant wounds of racial trauma, but stigma still stands in the way.

DEPARTMENTS

11 EDITOR’S NOTE 16 THE LIFE Contributing to your health and happiness 12 THE BUZZ JUST GLOW WITH IT The News, tips, and tidbits to keep you in the loop FLYING HIGH Pennsylvania lieutenant governor John Fetterman wants his state to legalize now.

CARBON-NEUTRAL COOKING New cookbook

offers hemp recipes.

SENSIBILITIES Editor in Chief Stephanie Wilson shares what’s on her mind this month.

PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT

32 THE SCENE Hot happenings and hip

hangouts around town SAFE SPACE Jess Jackson welcomes you to her new bud and breakfast.

ON THE COVER

38 THE END When a psychedelic experience goes wrong? There’s a hotline for that.

PHOTO BY BEN SCOTT, UNSPLASH MODEL: KUEI ALOR MAKEUP: CHARLOTTE RAVET PHOTO EDITS: RHEYA TANNER

PHOTO BY OLIVE J. MEDIA

Truelieve is Florida’s major source for newly legalized edibles.

newest indie skin care brand is devised and powered by women.

2021 VIBES What the new year has in store

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CONNECT WITH YOURSELF AND OTHERS IN CITIES AROUND THE GLOBE

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Ron Kolb Founder + CEO ron@sensimag.com Mike Mansbridge President Fran Heitkamp Chief Operating Officer Lou Ferris VP of Global Revenue Chris Foltz VP of Global Reach Jade Kolb Director of Project Management BRAND DEVELOPMENT

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$15K

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EDITOR’S NOTE

Magazine published monthly

by Sensi Media Group LLC.

© 2021 Sensi Media Group. All rights reserved.

Welcome to Sensi

Spark, a new extension

FIND US ON SOCIAL MEDIA

FAC E B O O K Like Sensi Media Group to infuse your newsfeed with more of our great cannabis lifestyle content.

TWITTER Follow @sensimag for need-to-know news and views from Sensi headquarters.

I N S TAG R A M Pretty things, pretty places, pretty awesome people: find it all on @sensimagazine

of the cannabis lifestyle media brand that first launched in Denver, Colorado, in the spring of 2016—five years ago. At that time, I was new to both cannabis and Denver, having moved there from Miami the summer before. The stuff I smoked in high school and college was definitely just weed. Dirt weed, brick weed, seeds-and-stemsgalore weed. The weed we smoked was the weed our dealer sold, and he sold one kind of weed: weed. Typically a sad shade of brown. But we took what we could get, which wasn’t much, and we liked it because it was all we knew.

Luckily, people older and wiser than us on the other side of the country were working to make California the first state to legalize medical marijuana. When the Compassionate Care Act of 1996 passed, it sparked the beginning of the end for cannabis prohibition in the US. That spark smoldered for a few years before igniting a flame in 2012 when Colorado became the first state to say, “Hey, if you’re an adult who wants to get high, go for it.” And lots of adults sparked right up.

You could say that sparked a trend that’s fueled a booming industry so strong even COVID-19 couldn’t slow it down. Quite the opposite, in fact. While the country shut down last spring, cannabis was still wearing its old and tattered “gateway drug” label, surrounded by the stench of decades-old stigma. And in less time than it took for stores to sell out of Charmin, cannabis underwent an extreme makeover, wearing a shiny new “essential business” crown while setting new sales records month after month.

It’s happening in red states and blue states, in the North and the South. It’s happening in Oklahoma more than anyone predicted: in the two years since the medical marijuana program began in the state, more than eight percent of the population has registered for an MMJ card. Florida’s stats are noteworthy as well: despite being a medical-only market, the Sunshine State emerged as the nation’s fourth-largest cannabis market in 2020. And if cannabis news site Leafly’s prediction is correct, Florida will become the second-largest cannabis stronghold in the nation this year.

This country’s emerging cannabis markets are hot—each one another spark feeding the fire that’s burning the remaining vestiges of prohibition to the ground—and Sensi Spark is here to cover it. I invite you to bookmark sensimag.com, the digital hub where we focus on the intersection where cannabis meets culture in the mainstream.

In less time than it took for the store to sell out of Charmin, cannabis underwent one extreme makeover, wearing a shiny new “essential business” crown while setting new sales records month after month.

Yours in the new normal,

Stephanie Wilson @stephwilll

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Move over, Andrew Cuomo. Pennsylvania has a rock star lieutenant governor, and he wants his state to legalize now.

Bald, tattooed, nearly seven feet tall, and a gun-owning fan of Carhartts, Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor John Fetterman took on national cult status last year when he stood up to former President Trump’s attempts to overturn Pennsylvania’s election results during a series of hilarious cable news appearances. Adored by the mainstream media, he’s been touted as the future of the electable left and “America’s

secret political hope” (according to Slate). He and his wife, Gisele Barreto Fetterman (a former undocumented immigrant from Brazil who, on Instagram, calls herself SLOP for Second Lady of Pennsylvania), have become social media stars.

Pennsylvania’s cannabis advocates were well aware of Fetterman’s charms long before he hit the national stage. Last year, Fetterman sparked the ire of

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PHOTOS (FROM TOP): COLLAGE BY RHEYA TANNER, ORIGINAL IMAGES VIA ADOBE STOCK; COURTESY OF WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Flying High

Republicans in Harrisburg when he flew gay pride and cannabis legalization flags from his office’s balcony—prime real estate that can be seen from all over Harrisburg—and they retaliated by passing a provision prohibiting any flag except the American flag, Pennsylvania state flag, or a flag honoring missing American soldiers from flying on Capitol grounds.

Fetterman was protesting Republicans’ refusal to legalize cannabis and approve human rights protections for LGBTQ citizens— but he has plenty to say about his own party’s inaction as well.

“It must be said: Democrats’ historical and current platform on weed is cowardly and on the

CONTRIBUTOR

Robyn Griggs Lawrence

PHOTO COURTESY OF HEMP CAN CHANGE THE WORLD

wrong side of history,” Fetterman wrote in a Washington Post opinion piece. “We have known for decades that Black and brown communities are disproportionately prosecuted and harmed, but the federal government and many states haven’t done anything to stop it.”

When Fetterman was mayor of Braddock, a former steel town where he worked as a community organizer, he saw firsthand how simple possession charges could derail people’s lives. “There are people who can’t even chaperone their kids’ field trips because they got a simple, nonviolent marijuana conviction 30 years ago, when they were 18. I know this because I’ve helped many get pardons.”

Fetterman’s efforts are backed by Governor Tom Wolf, and the two have jointly called for the Pennsylvania General Assembly to send them legislation legalizing cannabis for adult use. “We need the economic growth, we need the revenue, and we need the restorative justice that the legalization of adult-use cannabis will provide,” Fetterman says. When New Jersey began allowing legal cannabis sales in December, he tweeted, “Forty percent of our population lives a 30-minute drive or less from the Candyland of legal weed.

Why are we dawdling?”

“THEY’VE LITERALLY DONE WHAT NO OTHER STATE HAS DONE: FREEENTERPRISE SYSTEM, OPEN MARKET, WILD WILD WEST. IT’S SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST.” —Tom Spanier, owner of Oklahoma City dispensary Tegridy Market Source: Politico

BY THE NUMBERS

5-0

Marion County School Board vote to fire high school dean Mike Hickman, a US Marine Corps veteran, for using medical marijuana prescribed for him by a doctor

$1.1 BILLION Florida medical marijuana industry’s projected annual revenue in 2022 Source: Arcview Market Research

10% Percentage of Oklahoma residents who carry a medical cannabis license

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Number of Pennsylvania businesses and nonprofit organizations Keystone Canna Remedies helped with grants for rent, payroll, and other expenses through the KCR COVID-19 Relief Fund

CARBONNEUTRAL COOKING

IN THE FORECAST MJBizDaily predicts these states will legalize cannabis for adult use Learn to make hemp-based in 2021: goodies in a healthy new Connecticut cookbook.

Maryland Designed as a 100 percent carbon neutral project, New Mexico chef and hemp farmer Shadi Ramey’s new book, New York Pennsylvania

Hemp Can Change the World, is the world’s first cookbook printed on hemp paper—and one of the first printed on hemp in over 100 years.

This self-published guide is packed with vegan recipes incorporating hemp, including hempbased drinks, hemp tabbouleh, and a strawberry rhubarb crumble.

The recipes combine Ramey’s love of Ayurveda, herbalism, and ethnobotany to create healthy, healing consumables even paleo and keto dieters will love. Plus, one dollar per book sold goes to the Last Prisoner Project, an organization seeking to rectify damage done by cannabis incarceration and prohibition. One percent of sales goes to 1% for the Planet.

Hemp Can Change the World / hempcanchangetheworld.com

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THE BUZZ

BILITIES

BY STEPHANIE WILSON, EDITOR IN CHIEF

1 NEW YEAR, SAME YOU, FRESH PURPOSE: The arrival of 2021 is a chance to make a change. The year in our rearview torpedoed everything we thought of as “normal,” and there’s no going back. Not that we want to—the old normal and even the new normal isn’t good enough. We all were grinding away, but we weren’t making progress. And we’re all about progression.

2 MOVING ONWARD: It’s the only direction into the auspicious year of 2021, known as the Year 5 in numerology. According to Astrofame’s summary of Year 5, “We often feel freer and more able to make changes that we have been thinking about for a long time. We will pursue new initiatives and could even feel like we are growing wings. Curiosity and desire for freedom will be present, as will the desire to go beyond our limits.”

3 BORN AGAIN: According to Pinterest Predicts, an annual notyet-trending report, in 2021, we can expect “routines to be remixed.

Expect regular to be reinvented.” Pinterest says 2021 will be a rebirth, not a reset. “After the plague came the Renaissance.”

4 PLANT POWER TO THE PEOPLE: We’re at the beginning of a

PRODUCT PHOTO COURTESY OF TRULIEVE CANNABIS CORP.

new Renaissance—a modern period of cultural, artistic, political, and scientific rebirth. At Sensi, we spent the past year undergoing a transformation to better serve our founding purpose: to break cannabis out of the chains of stigma, to be the bridge that connects cannabis with the mainstream, to tell the stories of the plant and of the people impacted by the plant, to stir people’s curiosity and their desire for freedom to use the plant—and inspire demands for the freedom of people suffering in prison because of cannabis prohibition.

PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT

Feeding Floridians Trulieve is moving into the newly legal edibles market with a bhang.

Tallahassee-based Trulieve Cannabis Corp. sold the first medical cannabis to a Florida patient in 2016 and three years later sold the first smokable flower at its Tallahassee store. Last fall, that store was the first to sell edibles, and now Trulieve is in big.

“There has been strong demand for medication in this format for over three years now,” says Trulieve CEO Kim Rivers.

The company is pumping out gummies and chocolates at a 10,000-square-foot kitchen in Quincy and sealing licensing partnerships with brands including Bhang, Binske, District Edibles, and Love’s Oven to distribute its edibles across the state.

WORD OF THE MONTH

EN·THE·O·GEN (n) A psychoactive substance, typically derived from plants, that is ingested to produce a non-ordinary state of consciousness for religious purposes or spiritual enlightenment. (See “The Road to Reclaiming Recovery,” p. 24.)

5 MUSIC MAKERS: This modern Renaissance will provide relief … releaf … ReLeaf. As in, Sensi Presents ReLeaf, the Compilation Album Volume 1, a Benefit for Last Prisoner Project is the next bold step in Sensi’s journey, part of our rebirth. It’s the first release from Sensi’s new record label, and we are so excited and honored to introduce it to you. In the coming months, we’ll have ongoing coverage of the album and the artists who lent their talents to the project, and we’ll also shine a light on the important accomplishments of the Last Prisoner Project—both in the magazine and on the newly rebirthed sensimag.com.

“Turns out rednecks love to smoke weed.”

—Oklahoma cannabis grower Chip Baker on the success of his state’s medical marijuana industry Source: Politico

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CAN’T GET ENOUGH?

Read the unabridged version of this story at sensimag.com

Get Glowing

PHOTO COURTESY OF EOSSI BEAUTY

A new indie beauty brand in Denver is powered by cannabis connections. TEXT STEPHANIE WILSON

Whether you’re scrolling your digital feed or strolling into an analog convenience store (or into a department store, grocery store, beauty store—almost any store these days), you’re likely to see the three-letter combo denoting the “It” cannabinoid with staying power: C-B-D. Everybody knows about it, everybody’s heard about all the things it can do, everybody wants a taste. And once they get one, they tell their friends, who get with their friends, and suddenly all the friends are doing it every weekend—and weekdays too.

Hey, it’s not like it gets you high. It just does your body good. But … in what way? And how? How much does it take to do good things? How often do you need to take it to do said body the aforementioned good? How much CBD is in a product you’re trying, how much

in the recommended dose? Is that enough? Too much? What else is in it?

Does it come from hemp, is it locally grown, did the growers use pesticides?

Where was it made? How was it made? Has it been tested by a third-party lab? Do those tests look for the presence of heavy metals and pesticides or just CBD potency? Are the test results available for review?

“These are important questions but people don’t know to ask them,” says Shannon Kaygi, a CU Boulder alum who radiates all sorts of good energy. She’s a hemp and CBD entrepreneur who knows a thing or two about how, why, and where to go for high-quality info and higher-quality hemp-derived CBD—and she wants to share that with the world.

“I see new CBD brands coming to market every day. I stare at their bot-

tles and their websites, and it’s not always clear to me what amount of CBD is in the products,” Kaygi tells me during a recent video interview for this article. “But even if it is clear, the bigger question is do you as a consumer know or understand what it means?”

In the other corner of my screen, Kaygi’s business partner, Rochonne Sanchez, is smiling and nodding her perfectly styled blond head in agreement. There’s a lot of vibes of love and support bouncing around my screen, which is fitting. Sanchez and Kaygi are the co-founders of the hot boutique CBD beauty brand Eossi— pronounced ee-oh-see, a made-up verb that means, according to the company’s website, “to release your inner goddess.” The site also says that “every day, our founders Sanchez and

SNAKE OIL: BUYER BEWARE Trying to make a buck on the CBD trail in the Green Rush, disingenuous brands tout CBD in their marketing—some even in the product names—when they don’t actually contain a single molecule of CBD. Many of them are made with hemp seed oil, which is a super common carrier oil ingredient that doesn’t contain any cannabinoids.

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THE LIFE

Kaygi are living the Eossi Beauty ethos: create your own dynamic energy, cultivate love, and let your beauty shine.”

“CBD is a thing of beauty,” Sanchez says.

“Beauty lovers deserve products that they can believe in, products they can trust. And despite CBD’s raging popularity, there was a need not just for luxury plant-based products that people can afford, but for information. People are hungry for education about CBD, and they demand transparency about the products they use.”

Sanchez and Kaygi are hoping those beautiful people will give Eossi’s signature line a try—and then they’ll be hooked.

Eossi dropped its first product in July, and the reviews for the new facial oil are … glowing, as are the co-founders’ dewy faces.

Maybe they’re born with it, or maybe it’s Eossi. The aptly named Facial Glow Oil #8 was created with an organic Moroccan argan oil base and paired with other skin-loving oils like grapeseed, vitamin E, rosehip, and CBD com-

“CBD is a thing of beauty.

Beauty lovers deserve products they can believe in, products they can trust.”

—Rochonne Sanchez, Chief Glow Officer, Eossi Beauty

mingled with frankincense, myrrh, and jasmine in a formula that absorbs into the skin without residue. That means the hydrating #8 won’t leave your forehead shining like a disco ball over an oil slick. The beneficial combo of natural ingredients, which includes a whopping 1,000mg of broad-spectrum CBD in each 50ml bottle, packs a potent beauty punch—and all for just $50 a bottle.

An affordable luxe product made from sustainably sourced and thoroughly vetted clean

PHOTO COURTESY OF EOSSI BEAUTY

LEFT: Shannon Kaygi (left) and Rochonne Sanchez of Eossi Beauty

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Fighting for freedom is Join the revolution at norml.org

PHOTO COURTESY OF EOSSI BEAUTY

THE LIFE

pure botanicals from a local company founded by two women? Check, check, and check go all the conscientious-consumer boxes. Along with the Facial Glow Oil, Eossi has a full line of plant-based products in the works, with Sanchez supporting the development as well as brand marketing initiatives and Kaygi playing a central role in it all.

A gregarious networker by nature, Kaygi is a lifelong Coloradan and a well-known and pretty universally adored figure in the state’s cannabis industry. She worked on the business development, cannabis compliance, and technology services side of things before founding a hemp wholesale network in 2018. In less than a year, she had turned it into a million-dollar business.

At Eossi, Kaygi’s wears the cheeky title of chief brilliance officer (Sanchez is her chief glow officer counterpart), guiding product development and overseeing the rollout (and coming expansion) of Eossi’s product line. Simultaneously laid-back yet totally focused and driven, she’s got a whole vibe that draws people in.

At least that’s how Sanchez sees it, and she should know: she’s got a

Glow About Your Day Each bottle of Eossi’s Facial Glow Oil #8 is packed with 1,000mg of CBD and goodfor-you ingredients like argan oil, rosehip oil, vitamin E, frankincense—pure, natural, and sustainably sourced powerhouses commingled to soothe your skin with a light-yet-effective dose of smoothing hydration suitable for all skin types. Visit sensimag.com to learn more.

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THE LIFE

MORE INFO

Eossi Facial Glow Oil #8 $50 for a 50ml bottle eossibeauty.com

vibe of her own—she’s a 10-step-sometimes-morebeauty-routine type of woman to Kaygi’s “sometimes I put on mascara if I’m feeling fancy,” a dressed-to-the-nines-atall-times type who feels her best when she looks her best to her co-founder fashionably casual style.

She’s polished. Like a badass banker, which she is. She brings more than a decade of experience in banking finance managing high-risk liquidity assets for the burgeoning hemp industry to her Eossi role—plus a lifetime of passion about all things related to health, wellness, EOSSI’S SEASONAL and beauty.

SKIN-CARE TIPS “When I went through To help you keep your my divorce four years skin glowing and healthy ago, I swore I would nevthis winter, Chief Glow er legally tie myself to Officer Rochonne Sananother person again,” chez (above) has simple advice: Sanchez says. “Then one • Use a gentle cleanser day I met this spunky • Get rid of any alcoblond with a black eye hol-based products from a pole in a hemp • Wear sunscreen every day facility she had walked • Drink water (please) into and strong opinions on all sorts of subjects.

[Kaygi] was—is—passionate about cannabis and the industry, and she wanted to share that passion with people. She told me a little about her dream of creating a cannabis lifestyle brand that would bring joy to people’s lives, that would educate people about how incredible cannabis is and how to bring it into their 22

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lives. To make luxury attainable through amazing products. As she spoke, I knew I had met someone special—someone who shared my same dreams.”

It took Sanchez a little while to work up the courage to ask Kaygi to be a part of the lifestyle brand she had in development, “to help her grow the dream, to stand

“We all deserve to feel as good as we look, naturally.”

—Shannon Kaygi, Chief Brilliance Officer, Eossi Beauty

beside her as we offered something that we created to the world, and to be her business partner.”

Kaygi proved to be more than receptive, and the duo joined forces driven by one purpose: to make life brighter—because, as they both said during our convo, “we all deserve to feel as good as we look, naturally.”

PHOTOS COURTESY OF EOSSI BEAUTY

LEFT: For Sanchez (left) and Kaygi, it’s always glow time.

THE LIFE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mona Van Joseph is a professionally licensed intuitive reader in Las Vegas since 2002.

Author, radio host, and columnist, she has created the Dice Wisdom app and is available for phone and in-person sessions. mona.vegas

PHOTO BY JOZEFMICIC, ADOBE STOCK

2021 Vibe

the government), which will make it attractive to wait until that month.

The numerals in 2021 This is the year that you get what you want. add up to a 5 in numeroloTEXT MONA VAN JOSEPH gy, resonating to fast-moving communication, the The year 2020 was a vised unless it’s presented planet Mercury, and the Foundation Year designed (in writing or contract) to Norse God, Loki. It is the to show us what’s most benefit you authentically.

Year of Media—the truth important. It was spiritual Patience with yourself and and the trickster. Both awareness to our growth, others right now will do the truth and the manipand in many ways, we you a world of good when ulation of the truth in any were forced to recognize the energy shifts. issue will be present. Make and honor our priorities.

Make your plan for your own conclusions Isolation, loss, and money forward movement when and decisions on what you worries were (and still are this energy shift begins in know to be your truth. for many) center stage.

May. This will allow you Make the first quarter There will (still) be to attend a baseball game personally productive. Reholding back energy on or concert in July, the member, this year is about gatherings until the end of power month this year. connections and commuMarch and awareness of It will enable you to get nication. Do your best to money issues until April. that promotion or launch connect with people who People will be deciding a new beginning. The best you’ll want in your wheelwhat they want to do with month to retire would also house moving forward. their careers or finding be in July. There will be Connect with everyone ways to fill up their days in offers made to those close you’ve met on LinkedIn, the first quarter. Action in to retirement age in July especially if one of your the first quarter is not ad- (either by an employer or goals has to do with a new

HOROSCOPE

career opportunity.

Remember that nature abhors a vacuum, and the practical cleaning out of things in your living space will allow new things to present themselves. Make it a goal to have one drawer, one shelf, and one cabinet in each room empty so you are setting up the energy to receive. Hang all of the hanger hooks in your closet backward to see what you’re actually wearing (and decide in six months what you’ll keep or donate).

Spending time with ourselves in 2020 was to show us what truly makes us happy and purposeful.

This will be an action year as soon as you decide what that looks like for you. It’s truly that simple. Speak aloud what you want, and do not speak aloud what you don’t want.

MULLIGAN For the coming year, Mona is offering a 9 Day Energy Reset.

To learn more or participate, visit 9dayer.com.

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Psychedelic therapy could help ease the deep, constant wounds of racial trauma, but stigma and the movement’s unbearable whiteness keep people away.

TEXT ROBYN GRIGGS LAWRENCE

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THE ROAD

ORIGINAL PHOTO BY BEN SCOTT, UNSPLASH

TO RECLAIMING RECOVERY

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n her vision, NiCole Buchanan is lying on a mat on a dirt floor, watching the woman sitting across from her morph into her ancestors through multiple generations, women she recognizes as legacies of her own history. They tell her they have survived brutal lifetimes as Black women so that she could be. They tell her she’s doing everything they’d hoped and dreamed.

In Jamilah George’s vision, she’s riding a lapa (an African skirt) like a magic carpet, looking down at her ancestors working the plantation fields. A face that looks like hers turns toward her and reaches out a hand, and George pulls her up to the lapa. As generations of her ancestors pass by below, she continues to reach down and pull them up until her lapa is full of beautiful Black women from her lineage, all holding hands. “I’ve never felt so much warmth and support in my life, ever,” she says.

Buchanan, an associate professor of psychology at Michigan State University and founder of Alliance Psychological Associates in East Lansing, Michigan, and George, a Detroit native who is studying the potential of psychedelic medicine to heal the psychological effects of racial trauma while pursuing a PhD in Clinical Psychology at the University of Connecticut, shared their psychedelic experiences during an emotional segment of “Black Lives Matter & Psychedelic Integration: Pathways to Radical Healing Amidst Ongoing Oppression.” The webinar, sponsored by the Chacruna Institute (a nonprofit that provides education about psychedelic plant medicines) in

November, is one of many such events that have come online recently to explore how entheogens (plants that inspire non-ordinary states of consciousness and spiritual enlightenment) may be able to uproot and heal deep, embedded scars from generations of systemic racial oppression.

Oyi Sun, an Atlanta-based martial arts master and coach who produced the 2020 Detroit Psychedelic Conference, explains it this way: “The white man has been selling trauma for generations, and here’s the terrible part—we’ve been programmed to receive it. And when you’re dealing with earthly trauma, entheogens are the best therapists in the world. There’s been a spiritual suppression going on for over 2,000 years, and now with the help of entheogens, there’s about to be a renewal of spiritual power.”

Sun stepped in to run the conference, with the theme “Entheogenics in Urban Environments: A Journey into the Mysteries,” after its founder, Baba Kilindi Iyi, died in April. Kilindi, one of the world’s foremost experts on psychedelic science and healing and the master of mushroom megadosing, was often the only Black presenter—if not the only Black person—at conferences and events on the psychedelic circuit, and he created the Detroit conference to bring the conversation home. “The faces that look like Kilindi—the brown faces—have not been represented in the entheogenic community,” Sun says.

The conference took place at the Bushnell Congregational Church, a prewar Colonial Revival building on four acres in Rosedale Park, over a long weekend in August. Diverse speakers from around the world J A N UA RY 2021

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shared their expertise on everything from subatomic particle research and hyperdimensional realms to psychedelic justice, culminating in a memorial for Kilindi that Sun describes as “four hours of emotions, laughter, speakers, heart pouring, drumming—and more drumming and more drumming and more dancing and martial arts exhibitions.” It was a template for future events, Sun says, and they’re already brewing in Oakland, Denver, and Portland, Oregon (where voters recently legalized psilocybin for therapeutic use and decriminalized possession of all drugs).

a scab keeps getting ripped off a wound, the wound can never heal.

“If someone is assaulted, for most of us, that happens once, then you have some time to heal,” says Undrea Wright, who co-founded The Sabina Project last year to provide Black-led psychedelic education, training, and harm reduction. “For people of color, we don’t have any time to heal because when we come out of ceremony, reality is still there.”

Psychedelic therapy, one of the hottest healing modalities to emerge in decades, shows a lot of promise in treating PTSD, and many see its potential for treating racial trauma

Ottawa, has found psychedelics to be highly effective at treating racial trauma. She is the clinical director of the Behavioral Wellness Clinic in Tolland, Connecticut, where she and her colleagues offer culturally informed ketamine-assisted psychotherapy as a means of treating racial trauma. They find that many Black people refuse to even consider it, because they can be “fearful of a psychedelic medicine and the vulnerability that comes with it,” Williams explained during a Chacruna Institute forum on diversity in psychedelic medicine in February 2020.

In 2018, Williams and three

The Pygmy tribes of Central Africa discovered the psychedelic properties of ibogaine, an indole alkaloid extracted from a rainforest shrub called Tabernanthe iboga, thousands of years ago and shared it with people who practice the Bwiti religion in West Africa. Still used as sacred medicine in Cameroon and Gabon, ibogaine opens doors to mystical experiences and communion with ancestors and spirits, often taking people on dreamlike journeys through their lives and offering transformative perspectives.

Ibogaine is being studied as a treatment for drug addiction (opioids in particular), and clinics offer ibogaine-assisted detoxification in Mexico, Canada, Costa Rica, the Netherlands, South Africa, and New Zealand. In the United States, ibogaine is a Schedule 1 narcotic.

PSYCHEDELICS AND RACIAL TRAUMA Racial trauma is a lot like PTSD— with symptoms like nightmares and hypervigilance—and it develops over a lifetime of injustices and abuses. But racial trauma is more insidious than PTSD because people of color continue to experience the same threats and humiliation that triggered them in the first place on an ongoing basis. When 28

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as well. “Right now, what’s taking up all the space for Indigenous and Black people is trauma, and the opposite of trauma is creative,” Sun says. “When entheogens come in and start clearing up that trauma, there’s going to be a void, and that void will be filled with creativity.”

Monnica T. Williams, PhD, an associate professor in the School of Psychology at the University of

colleagues published their findings from a methodological search of psychedelic studies from 1993 to 2017. In those studies, 82.3 percent of the participants were non-Hispanic white, 4.6 percent were Indigenous, 2.5 percent were African American, 2.1 percent were Latino, and 1.8 percent were Asian.

Selection bias is a factor in this, certainly, but just as importantly,

many people of color have little trust for medical trials (one word: Tuskegee) and illicit substances (two words: Drug War). They’ve been exploited and abused within the medical system and targeted in an immoral war that has decimated communities. Many don’t have the expendable time and money it takes to participate in clinical trials.

George was one of few Black participants in clinical trials for MDMA-assisted psychotherapy to treat PTSD that were sponsored by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), and it was anything but a healing experience for her. (MDMA is an acronym for the synthetic drug 3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine, more commonly known as Ecstasy and Molly.) After her session with two white therapists, she was sent home with a white night attendant, but she continued to feel alone and terrified. “I remember feeling so lost, so out of touch with my body, and psychologically, I didn’t have control of my thoughts,” she said during the webinar. “I was scared to call anyone. How do I tell any of my Black friends I just did an MDMA study?”

“THESE MEDICINES ARE PART OF OUR CULTURAL BIRTHRIGHT, AND I BELIEVE WE LOSE MORE WHEN WE STEP BACK AND CHOOSE NOT TO ENGAGE.” —Monnica T. Williams, PhD, University of Ottowa’s School of Psychology

RECLAIMING PSYCHEDELIC HEALING Beyond the clinic, underground psychedelic experiences like ayahuasca circles have become a thing in communities across North America—and every one of those circles is overwhelmingly white, says Wright. The few people of color who do participate, he says, find it uncomfortable because white people often (wittingly or unwittingly) gaslight them. “If I’m in a space that’s supposed to be safe and available to my story, and people are telling me my story is not real J A N UA RY 2021

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or valuable, that I just need to move past it, now I have an additional layer of trauma,” he says. “This is the story we kept hearing over and over.

People of color had the wherewithal and learned about the medicines, finally found the circle—which is cost-prohibitive for most of us— then they had to do this dance in the circle. It can be retraumatizing.”

Wright and Charlotte James co-founded The Sabina Project because they recognized “how healing it would be to be able to share our experiences and extend access to these medicines with our own communities, especially during these incredibly challenging and isolating times,” James says.

People have been flocking to their workshops, trainings, and virtual ceremonies throughout the lockdown, seeking both community and information as they confront the demons of isolation.

“WE JUST WANT TO GUARANTEE THERE IS SOME SAFE, JUDGMENTFREE SPACE TO PROCESS JOURNEYS.” —Undrea Wright, Co-founder of The Sabina Project

The Sabina Project’s ceremonies are open to everyone, but integration circles are only for people of color. “We just want to guarantee there is some safe, judgment-free space, free of the white gaze, to process journeys,” she says. Fearing a judicial system that’s stacked against them, Wright and James facilitate only ceremonies with substances that are legal in the United States. Citing an ACLU study in Maryland that found African American men 900 percent more likely to be arrested for simple possession than white men, Wright says, “The consequences for us to do anything illegal are severe.”

Those consequences are why many Black parents warn their children away from all drugs, psychedelics included. Buchanan said during the webinar that when she was growing up, everyone knew the story of her father’s best friend Lonnie, who tried acid after he returned from Vietnam and went crazy. “Every Black community has one of these stories,” she says.

“What’s crazy,” Wright says, “is that most of these [sacred earth medicine] practices come from people of color. They convinced us to denounce these very powerful tools and replace them with pharmaceutical drugs that are killing us.”

“These medicines are part of our cultural birthright,” Williams said in her lecture last February. “And I believe we lose more when we step back and choose not to engage.

It is true that it has not always been safe for us, but I hope we can come together as a people, create our own safe spaces, and become empowered to reclaim psychedelic healing for ourselves, our loved ones, and our community.”

DOING THE MOST GOOD Support The Sabina Project by checking out its new merch collection.

They’ll pay that support forward by giving 5 percent of all proceeds to the Mutual Ceremony Fund, which provides monetary assistance for BIPOC looking to explore psychedelic healing work through The Sabina Project’s workshops.

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Activist and entrepreneur Jess Jackson is destigmatizing cannabis and building a community where everyone is welcome at her Copper House Bud and Breakfast.

TEXT TRACY ROSS

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PHOTOS BY OLIVE J. MEDIA

Safe Space

LEFT: Copper House hosts Curvy Cannabis, which, according to Jess, “challenges anti-fat bias in cannabisfocused aesthetics and marketing.”

RIGHT: In the rooms, comfort is key.

caters to cannabis fans who love a good brunch in the morning. But Jackson does so much more to make Detroit a more inclusive place. Read on to see how she juggles advocacy work, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) training, education around fat bias in cannabis-focused marketing— all while following her purpose and dreams.

Jess Jackson wants the world to know her as a “community architect.”

“That means I build, develop, sustain, and enhance communities,” says the 33-year-old entrepreneur. “It’s not a known career, but

the name conveys that there’s a science behind building meaningful community. It takes intention and ties to the core of who I am.” Take Jackson’s ownership of Copper House Detroit, a “bud and breakfast” that

each other and community. I also experienced poverty around me and all the things that go along with it. I grew up in a single-parent household; my father battled addiction for most of his life. I did my undergrad at University of Michigan and eventually finished my MBA at the University of Delaware.

My wife and I came back just before the Michigan Tell us about your Regulation and Taxabackground. tion of Marihuana Act I grew up on Detroit’s (MRTMA) was passed, southwest side, comlegalizing adult-use monly known as Mexican marijuana. I’ve co-foundTown. It was mostly Lat- ed two businesses since inx and full of multilinthen—Copper House gual families that valued Detroit and LOUD. J A N UA RY 2021

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THE SCENE

Jess (at left) and Cara Jackson have created a welcoming vibe for all at Copper House.

You’ve called cannabis an equity issue. Why? On the legal side, it’s because of injustices that communities have faced due to criminalization.

How long have you used The other problem is cannabis? that cannabis is a plant First time I tried it, I was that’s been used by 18. But ironically, the communities of color for first time I bought a joint, thousands of years, yet I was 16 and I didn’t even these same communities smoke it. I hadn’t come are disproportionately out yet and was looking affected by criminalizafor a way to connect with tion and prohibition. I am a friend who was bisexu- a proponent of automatal. I ended up giving the ic expungement—the joint away and never had erasure of crime records. the desire to try again Let’s clear these Black until I was in college. and brown communities Then a combination of a who’ve been disproportaxing campus climate tionately targeted and and privileged normalcriminalized, and have ization made me think it lost access to jobs, educacould be a viable way for tion, housing—a full life. me to treat my anxiety.

Then, as we think about

PHOTO BY OLIVE J. MEDIA

Social, a content marketing agency specializing in community engagement, social media strategy, and visual design.

the industry, there’s so much regulation that businesses have to follow in order to be viable and legal. Just to apply for a micro-business license in Michigan costs $6,000.

Then there are so many other expenses to get up and running. My aim is to navigate this process in a way that’s equitable.

First, I’m going to go through the process of starting a small business and then I’m going to create a pathway for others to do it. It’s about honoring communities that are often overlooked.

Tell us a little more about Copper House.

It’s an intimate and cozy community-activated space. We host over-

night bookings, lifestyle photography shoots, intimate dinners, and parties with the cannabis community at heart.

How successful is it and how long did it take to get going?

We’ve been listed on Bud and Breakfast (budandbreakfast.com) since December of 2018, and we had our first guests on January 11, 2019. How did it go? At first, we were only doing a few things here and there but weren’t putting a lot of energy behind it. But in October, we started hosting CuriosiTea parties with Anqunette Sarfoh. She helped us build our market, and we were booked and sold J A N UA RY 2021

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THE SCENE

Jess Jackson, posing here for #CurvyCannabis, has learned to lead from her core values, creating a space that empowers others to find inner contentment.

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THE SCENE

PHOTO BY OLIVE J. MEDIA

out for months. I’d call us successful, because so far, we’ve been able to meet all our revenue goals, build community, and are currently working on a basement studio expansion. But this is just a prototype. One day, I want a larger bud and breakfast, in a historic building that represents Detroit culture.

COVID-19 hit us like everyone else, but we’ve learned [things]—like how to run a hospitality business in a pandemic.

We stopped business completely from March to June, but while we were empty, we built up our backyard, upscaling it into a garden oasis.

Our goal has been to break even and reinvest all profit into the house.

We’re not super lucrative yet, but I’ve been able to meet the people I need to meet in my dining room, and that is powerful.

Have you had significant pushback from anyone?

The most significant moment for me was when I faced professional loss because of my involvement with cannabis. I come from an educational background, and I’ve done a lot of work with nonprofits. I’ve also been affected by addiction, so I understand the concern with making a product that

you’ve learned to be a drug more accessible. There’s some hurt to restore, and I feel educated enough to challenge people’s beliefs.

There’s so much good cannabis can do. For someone addicted to opioids, it can help them heal. Our communities have been using it to heal for centuries. So, I think resistance can be alleviated by having very real conversations and developing collaborative solutions.

You do a million different things—how do you juggle them all and does it involve cannabis?

I started this journey as a means of community care—I said, ‘Our community needs a space that’s safe and welcoming, so let’s open our home.’ But what I’m learning is that I also need my own self-care and time. It’s a balancing act. I make sure I incur something for me every day, because when I don’t, I notice my reactions are very high. I pay attention to my moods, and then I do what I need to do to balance myself.

I love sleep; it’s the best gift for me. So, it might mean that on a Saturday, I sleep all day. And I don’t shame myself for being unproductive. I also like a smaller amount of selfcare practice daily. I try to do moments of breath

work. I like to dance in front of my mirror. I’m a dreamer, so ideating is a form of self-care for me. And I journal. My @ jesshuman [Instagram] platform is a lot of my own venting—I publish publicly because I’m community-centered, and I want to model that we are all human—our emotions exist. I’m vulnerable publicly to help others not feel alone.

How can we all tap into the meaningful thing that fuels us?

The best way is to know yourself. I think that

a lot of times people take external influences on who they are and don’t really know who they are. I use a lot of astrology, but I’m also in talent development. I understand how I work, what my assets are, and what I’m not great at. I also know my values and where I will draw the line. So, know yourself, be honest about what you value, and then look for opportunities to feed those values in your work. When you lead from your core values, you’ll feel purpose in everything you do.

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THE END

Trip Advisor When a psychedelic experience goes south and you need a friend? 833-FIRESIDE.

Psychedelic experiences can be enlightening, healing, hilarious, maybe even boring—but when one goes south, or even north to a dizzying degree, the last thing you want to be is alone.

Starting April 14, the Fireside Project will have your back. Its Psychedelic Peer Support Line, the first hotline of its kind, will provide “real-time support—for when time doesn’t seem real,” according to its website. Fireside Project exists to help people get the most from their psychedelic experiences, says founder and director Joshua White. “These are powerful tools that can help people live fuller, deeper, more connected lives, if they have the right kind of support.”

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If and when you need help processing a psychedelic experience, you can call or text 833-FIRESIDE, and volunteers from diverse backgrounds, who are trained to listen deeply and without judgment, will help you through.

These good people will even call or text you a week later to check in and help you make sense of and incorporate your trip’s lessons into your life. (Psychedelic therapists charge good money for this much-needed service.)

“A core part of our mission is to support a more inclusive psychedelic movement,” says Hanifa Washington, Fireside Project’s cultivator of beloved community. The group will do this through coalition building with other

groups dedicated to “liberatory practices within the movement,” listening to the “needs, curiosities, and stories” of people who have historically been disconnected from the psychedelic movement, and establishing the Fireside Equity Fund to cover the costs of psychedelic education, training, and access for volunteers who are impacted by oppression.

Hotline staff will undergo background checks and 36 hours of training and will be overseen by an on-call supervisor. The line will be open Wednesday to Sunday from 3 p.m. to 3 a.m. during an 18-month pilot program, then 24/7 after that. firesideproject.org

PHOTO BY AZIZ ACHARKI, UNSPLASH

TEXT ROBYN GRIGGS LAWRENCE

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