We are officially one month out from the Psychedelics in Recovery Convention!
After months of planning, the gathering we have been imagining is taking its final shape. This year’s convention will bring members of the PIR fellowship together for several days of recovery, connection, learning, reflection, and the chance to spend time with one another in person.
The program reflects the breadth of conversations long taking place throughout our fellowship. Psychedelics may be part of what brought many of us to PIR, but recovery remains at the center of why we come together. Throughout the weekend, we will be creating space to explore the Twelve Steps, the opportunities and challenges presented by psychedelic experiences, and the many ways people find healing, belonging, and sustained recovery.
Programming will include a Steps Workshop, giving participants an opportunity to engage more deeply with the Twelve Steps and consider how they continue to inform our individual and collective recovery. The workshop will coincide with the publication of The Twelve Steps for Psychedelics in Recovery, a major undertaking by PIR’s Book Committee that brings the fellowship’s collective experience and evolving understanding of Twelve Step recovery into a resource of its own. Having the book available in time for the convention makes this gathering an especially fitting opportunity to explore the Steps together, as a living framework that continues to take shape through the experience of our fellowship.
We will also explore the relational and somatic dimensions of this work through Embodiment: How to Meet Ourselves & Others, a presentation and discussion focused on what it means to show up more fully in relationship with ourselves and the people around us. An Art as Preparation & Integration Workshop will offer another approach, inviting participants to consider creative practice as a way of preparing for, processing, and making meaning from significant experiences.
Several sessions will take on larger questions facing both PIR and the psychedelic community. Indigenous Perspectives on Recovery & Community will create space for a panel and group discussion about traditions, community, and different understandings of healing and recovery. What Can Skillful Integration Achieve? will examine the possibilities—and limits—of integration when translating psychedelic experiences into meaningful change.
We also believe it is important to make room for the more difficult conversations.
The Shadow Side of Psychedelics will bring participants together for a panel and group discussion about the harms, complexities, blind spots, and unintended consequences that can accompany psychedelic use and psychedelic culture. Neurodiversity + Intersecting Identities will explore how different identities, lived experiences, and ways of processing the world can shape experiences of recovery and belonging.
A screening of Psychedelics and Addiction Recovery, followed by group discussion, will bring these questions to the screen through the lived realities of addiction, psychedelic experience, and the search for lasting recovery. The convention will also intersect with a growing media conversation around these same issues. Journalist and essayist Sophie Haigney, supported by the Ferriss-UC Berkeley Psychedelic Journalism Fellowship, is currently reporting a magazine story on psychedelics in recovery, with particular attention to the tensions that can emerge when psychedelic use intersects with traditional Twelve Step understandings of sobriety and abstinence. Sophie will be attending the convention on Saturday and is interested in hearing personal stories from people whose experiences have been successful, difficult, mixed, or otherwise complicated as they have navigated psychedelics within AA or other Twelve Step communities. Anonymity can be persevered for the piece. Anyone interested in speaking with her can reach out in advance at Sophie.haigney@gmail.com to connect before the convention or arrange a time to talk while she is there.
And throughout the convention, there will be something even more fundamental to PIR: PIR meetings themselves! Whatever else we learn, discuss, question, or experience during the weekend, the fellowship and the recovery practices that sustain it remain the foundation of the convention.
Beyond Panels and Presentations
The convention will also include yoga and breathwork, offering opportunities to bring movement and body attunement, and experience practices that many people find supportive of recovery and integration. And at the other end of the spectrum, we will have a Silent Disco to make sure to leave room to dance, be playful, and enjoy being together.
We are also offering a range of optional off-site activities for people who want to experience more of the surrounding community while spending time with other PIR members. Plans include opportunities for small-group day trips and local exploration, as well as visits intended to provide a closer look at aspects of Colorado’s emerging regulated psychedelic landscape. Some outings will focus on education and tours of healing centers and grow facilities, while others will offer opportunities to experience wellness, contemplative, and community-oriented spaces.
There will also be more purely social options: shared meals and dine-arounds, informal café gatherings, ecstatic dance, museum and art experiences, immersive visual experiences, and opportunities for relaxation and restoration.
For an organization that has grown across geographic distance, online meetings, message threads, service committees, and virtual fellowship, there is something uniquely valuable about simply being in the same place. Some of the most meaningful moments of a convention cannot be scheduled: the conversation after a meeting, the people who decide to get lunch together, the walk between events, the person you finally meet after knowing their voice from a screen.
One month from now, we will have the opportunity to explore some complicated and important questions together: What does psychedelic-informed recovery look like as our fellowship matures? How do we integrate extraordinary experiences into ordinary life? How do we remain open to different pathways while protecting what makes recovery communities work? How do we acknowledge both the promise and the shadow of psychedelics? And how do we continue building a fellowship in which people can find connection, service, accountability, and hope?
We are looking forward to exploring those questions together and seeing the PIR community gathered in one place.
One month to go!
