PSA's Sunday Sound-Off: May 10th, 2026

From our friends at The Chronicles Of Kykeon

May you walk forward knowing you do not walk alone. Behind you stand the shamans and curanderas, the medicine keepers of the Amazon and the Mazatec highlands, the Huichol who carried peyote prayers across deserts long before any of us had words for what they knew. Behind you stand the Eleusinian priests who held the kykeon cup for two thousand years, keeping the mystery alive when the world wanted only answers. Behind you stand the forgotten ones, the visionaries and the jailed, the discredited and the quietly grieving, who loved this medicine when loving it cost everything.

Behind you stands Albert Hofmann, riding his bicycle into eternity. Behind you stands María Sabina, singing in the dark. Behind you stands Terence McKenna, reckless and brilliant, calling from the forest floor. Behind you stand Stan Grof and Ram Dass and Alexander Shulgin in his garden laboratory, and a thousand unnamed healers in a thousand unnamed villages who never needed a clinical trial to know what was true.

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You stand on all these shoulders. Do not forget the height from which you see.

Go forward into the clinics and the conference rooms, into the journals and the legislation, into the ceremony circles and the community halls. Carry the data and carry the drum. Honor the molecule and honor the mystery. Understand that these two things are not opposites, they are the same river seen from different banks.

But as you go, one thing is asked above all others: Do no harm. Do not harm the people who come to you vulnerable and open, who have set down their armor and their certainty. Do not harm the cultures from whom this knowledge was borrowed, or taken, or stolen. Do not reduce sacred traditions to products. Do not let the market swallow the medicine whole. Do not let ambition dress itself as healing.

May you always ask: “Who benefits? Who decides? Who is left out?”

Act always in the greater good, not the good of your career, not the good of your study, not the good of your lineage or your company or your conviction. The greater good. The one that includes people who are not in the room. The one that includes the generations that come after even you.

The future is in your hands and your hands, like all hands, are capable of both great tenderness and great harm. Choose tenderness. Choose humility. Choose the kind of courage that listens before it speaks. These medicines did not come to us. We came to them. Remember that.

May your intentions be clean, your containers be strong, and your hearts remain soft even when the work is hard. And when you stumble, because you will stumble, may you have the grace to say so, the wisdom to learn, and the community to hold you until you find your footing again.

Go well, knowing the ancestors are watching, and they are rooting for you.

The D.C. Plant Medicine Freedom Forum is a policy-forward community gathering focused on the future of plant medicine, psychedelic reform, education, and responsible community building - right in the heart of nation’s capital at the newest (and largest) social consumption cannabis lounge on the east coast: Higher Ground Dispensary & Lounge

Presented by Psychedelic State(s) of America and The Psychedelic Writers Guild, and powered by Paradise Farmers Market, this gathering will bring together advocates, educators, organizers, media voices, wellness leaders, and community members for an evening of meaningful dialogue and movement-building in Washington, D.C.

Stay tuned for the official programming lineup announcement in the days ahead!

⏰: Friday May 15th, 2026

🎟️:RSVP today!

NOTE: A $1 Minimum donation is required to RSVP, and a Medical Cannabis Card is required to attend this event. If you do not have a Medical Cannabis Card, you can purchase a 3-Day Pass at the door for $10

Until next time,

The Psychedelic State(s) of America Team