What we’re about
Psychedelic Professionals Meet is a meetup-style group for professionals, healers, researchers, activists, and explorers on the leading edge of work with psychedelic medicines. Learn, share, network, and connect with the Colorado community of psychedelic professionals who are leading the way forward in transforming our relationships with drugs and medicines. Or, come as an interested community member to learn more about and discuss some really interesting topics!
Our community is based on values of openness and inclusivity, authentic empowerment, right relationship with medicines and drugs, and showing up for the people and causes important to our lives. Each meetup starts with an informative presentation on new or interesting happenings in psychedelic research, practice, or activism, with plenty of time for discussion and networking. Let's keep Colorado on the leading edge of psychedelic medicine work!
This meetup group is hosted by The Nowak Society -- a Colorado non-profit that aims to educate and support people in building safe, informed, and empowering relationships with self, others, and the drugs and medicines we interact with.
Relationship with self is the most important, primary relationship in our lives. We focus first and foremost on opening up to ourselves, finding our source of creative power, passion, inspiration, and enjoyment. In our experience, relationship to self is most supported when in community with others who are also desiring authenticity and connection. That's essentially what brought us together and what Nowak Society is about! From our work original work in festival harm reduction and in mental health, we found that so many people have confused and disempowered relationships with drugs and medicines --- from antidepressants, stimulants and other drugs taken under the umbrella of psychiatry, to alcohol, marijuana, MDMA, LSD, and other drugs taken under the umbrella of recreation. We aim to re-frame how and why we use drugs and medicines of all kinds, and support people and communities in re-claiming what "medicine" is for them. How can we relate to any of these substances in ways that open us up to expand and empower our relationship with self, rather than in ways that shut us down or represses pieces of ourselves?
Upcoming events (3)
See all- Psychedelic Professionals Social Hour: Fort CollinsPour Brothers Community Tavern, Fort Collins, CO
Psychedelic Professionals Social Hour, now happening monthly in Fort Collins. Join us on the second Monday of each month, 6pm, at Pour Brothers Community Tavern in Old Town. This is a casual, friendly space where we can network and meet other like-minded practitioners and activists in the psychedelic space. Come for appetizers, drinks, and socializing. We have no formal presentations planned for our Social Hour events. Just conversations, hugs, and connecting in community.
Please also be aware of our Community Guidelines for Nowak Society events. To protect the community, we ask that no one try to solicit illegal substances or services from anyone attending the event. Be kind, be respectful, and keep it legal.
If you have a flyer, brochure, business card or other material to announce or share with the community, please bring it! We just ask that anything shared or promoted is legal in the state of Colorado.
We can't WAIT to see you there, Fort Collins!
For more information and to RSVP, go to Events | Nowak Society | Colorado - Psychedelic Professionals Meet: DENVERNeeds location
Psychedelic Professionals Meetup Groups are in Boulder, Denver, and Fort Collins! Let's keep Colorado on the leading edge of psychedelic medicine work by coming together in community to learn, share, and grow. Each Psychedelic Professionals Meetup Group starts with an informative topic relevant to research, practice, policy, or activism around psychedelic medicines, followed by open discussion and an opportunity to connect with like-minded others.
For September, we are excited to feature a very special event series in Denver and Boulder on ibogaine! For Denver this month, join us at a special location for this talk, Diebolt Brewing Company.
From Protocols, Prognoses, and Pathologies to Play: Ibogaine, Harm Reduction, and the Future of Psychedelics
A public dialogue with Dimitri Mugianis, Kevin Franciotti, and Ross Ellenhorn
There is a movement in our midst that is increasingly guided by a decidedly anti-psychedelic ethos. It prizes normalcy over non-conformity, habit over novelty, the application of general labels to unique experience, functioning over playfulness, and sees human suffering as something to be solved by magic pharmaceutical bullets—not through human care and attentiveness.
That movement is the psychedelic movement.At the same time, Colorado is at the forefront of a new debate: should ibogaine, a powerful psychedelic with a long history of use in addiction treatment, be part of the state’s regulated natural medicine framework? With local policymakers and communities weighing risks, benefits, and access, these foundational conversations have never been more urgent.
In this event, Dimitri Mugianis, Kevin Franciotti, and Ross Ellenhorn guide participants into an improvisational dialogue, exploring how psychedelics are being pulled into the very systems they once challenged—and how we might shift course. Together, we’ll consider what it takes to return to their more radical, relational, and truly psychedelic potential.
We’ll ask: What happens when we reduce the unpredictable to protocol? When we elevate substances over relationships? When care becomes correction? When transformation becomes treatment? When healing is measured only in function?
And what would it mean to return—to practices that embrace spontaneity, nuance, and emergence? To relationships that hold rather than fix? To a space that values not the promise of more plastic brains—but the presence of more playful souls?
Let’s leave not with definitive conclusions, but with a boatload of living, evocative questions—questions that stir curiosity, invite connection, and make room for more dialogue: a spirit, in other words, that we can comfortable call psychedelic.
Dimitri Mugianis – A renowned sound ceremonialist, harm reduction pioneer, and cultural provocateur with over thirty years of experience facilitating transformative psychedelic ceremonies. Dimitri has been featured in major media outlets including The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Vice‑HBO, and This American Life for his groundbreaking underground ibogaine work and his fearless advocacy for people in extreme states of mind and marginalized communities. A former musician whose life bridges indigenous traditions, punk sensibility, and radical community care, Dimitri brings a rare depth of improvisation and artistry to every ceremony. His work dissolves the line between ritual and rebellion, creating containers that are both deeply compassionate and fiercely alive.
Ross Ellenhorn, PhD is a psychotherapist, sociologist, and author of three books and numerous articles. He is known for challenging protocol-driven approaches to mental health by championing relational, improvisational models of care. Ross created and now leads the most robust community integration programs in the United States—programs dedicated to helping individuals experiencing complex experiential and behavioral events live outside of institutional settings as they recover. A national voice in harm reduction and the dignity of risk, his current book, Purple Crayons, explores the healing role of play and imagination—ideas further developed in his Time Magazine article, “What Psychedelics Can Teach Us About Play.” Ross is also the co-founder, with Dimitri Mugianis, of Cardea, a psychedelic program that resists the clinical and procedural frameworks now dominating much of psychedelic care.
Kevin Franciotti – Licensed Addiction Counselor and advocate for a humanistic approach to recovery, whose curiosity in the personal narratives of those he works with seeks to co-create containers where shared insight, play, and emotional honesty can unfold. Kevin’s background in psychedelic harm reduction includes volunteering for organizations providing peer support services at live music events and festivals around the world. For over a decade, he’s provided leadership and service as co-founder and Board President for Psychedelics in Recovery, a mutual aid community supporting members’ right to define their own sobriety and integrate psychedelic experiences in their program of recovery. Kevin’s co-presentation with Nowak Society Board Member Lucia Terpak on Ibogaine & Addictions Treatment in March, 2023 provided an overview about ibogaine following the passage of the Natural Medicine Health Act.
Suggested donation of $10, payable at the door. Door fee goes toward paying for the rented venue and supporting the non-profit work of The Nowak Society. If you have ideas for topics or presentations for these meetup groups or would like to be more involved, please contact us!Finally, if you have a brochure, flyer or business card you want to display, please bring them! We kindly request that anything advertised is legal and aboveboard, but otherwise we're happy to make space for you to share your offerings with the larger community.
For more information and to RSVP, go to Events | Nowak Society | Colorado
- Psychedelic Professionals Meet: BOULDERJunkyard Social Club, Boulder, CO
Psychedelic Professionals Meetup Groups are in Boulder, Denver, and Fort Collins! Let's keep Colorado on the leading edge of psychedelic medicine work by coming together in community to learn, share, and grow. Each Psychedelic Professionals Meetup Group starts with an informative topic relevant to research, practice, policy, or activism around psychedelic medicines, followed by open discussion and an opportunity to connect with like-minded others.
For September, we are excited to feature a very special event series in Denver and Boulder on ibogaine!
From Protocols, Prognoses, and Pathologies to Play: Ibogaine, Harm Reduction, and the Future of Psychedelics
A public dialogue with Dimitri Mugianis, Kevin Franciotti, and Ross Ellenhorn
There is a movement in our midst that is increasingly guided by a decidedly anti-psychedelic ethos. It prizes normalcy over non-conformity, habit over novelty, the application of general labels to unique experience, functioning over playfulness, and sees human suffering as something to be solved by magic pharmaceutical bullets—not through human care and attentiveness.
That movement is the psychedelic movement.At the same time, Colorado is at the forefront of a new debate: should ibogaine, a powerful psychedelic with a long history of use in addiction treatment, be part of the state’s regulated natural medicine framework? With local policymakers and communities weighing risks, benefits, and access, these foundational conversations have never been more urgent.
In this event, Dimitri Mugianis, Kevin Franciotti, and Ross Ellenhorn guide participants into an improvisational dialogue, exploring how psychedelics are being pulled into the very systems they once challenged—and how we might shift course. Together, we’ll consider what it takes to return to their more radical, relational, and truly psychedelic potential.
We’ll ask: What happens when we reduce the unpredictable to protocol? When we elevate substances over relationships? When care becomes correction? When transformation becomes treatment? When healing is measured only in function?
And what would it mean to return—to practices that embrace spontaneity, nuance, and emergence? To relationships that hold rather than fix? To a space that values not the promise of more plastic brains—but the presence of more playful souls?
Let’s leave not with definitive conclusions, but with a boatload of living, evocative questions—questions that stir curiosity, invite connection, and make room for more dialogue: a spirit, in other words, that we can comfortable call psychedelic.
Dimitri Mugianis – A renowned sound ceremonialist, harm reduction pioneer, and cultural provocateur with over thirty years of experience facilitating transformative psychedelic ceremonies. Dimitri has been featured in major media outlets including The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Vice‑HBO, and This American Life for his groundbreaking underground ibogaine work and his fearless advocacy for people in extreme states of mind and marginalized communities. A former musician whose life bridges indigenous traditions, punk sensibility, and radical community care, Dimitri brings a rare depth of improvisation and artistry to every ceremony. His work dissolves the line between ritual and rebellion, creating containers that are both deeply compassionate and fiercely alive.
Ross Ellenhorn, PhD is a psychotherapist, sociologist, and author of three books and numerous articles. He is known for challenging protocol-driven approaches to mental health by championing relational, improvisational models of care. Ross created and now leads the most robust community integration programs in the United States—programs dedicated to helping individuals experiencing complex experiential and behavioral events live outside of institutional settings as they recover. A national voice in harm reduction and the dignity of risk, his current book, Purple Crayons, explores the healing role of play and imagination—ideas further developed in his Time Magazine article, “What Psychedelics Can Teach Us About Play.” Ross is also the co-founder, with Dimitri Mugianis, of Cardea, a psychedelic program that resists the clinical and procedural frameworks now dominating much of psychedelic care.
Kevin Franciotti – Licensed Addiction Counselor and advocate for a humanistic approach to recovery, whose curiosity in the personal narratives of those he works with seeks to co-create containers where shared insight, play, and emotional honesty can unfold. Kevin’s background in psychedelic harm reduction includes volunteering for organizations providing peer support services at live music events and festivals around the world. For over a decade, he’s provided leadership and service as co-founder and Board President for Psychedelics in Recovery, a mutual aid community supporting members’ right to define their own sobriety and integrate psychedelic experiences in their program of recovery. Kevin’s co-presentation with Nowak Society Board Member Lucia Terpak on Ibogaine & Addictions Treatment in March, 2023 provided an overview about ibogaine following the passage of the Natural Medicine Health Act.
Suggested donation of $10, payable at the door. Door fee goes toward paying for the rented venue and supporting the non-profit work of The Nowak Society. If you have ideas for topics or presentations for these meetup groups or would like to be more involved, please contact us!Finally, if you have a brochure, flyer or business card you want to display, please bring them! We kindly request that anything advertised is legal and aboveboard, but otherwise we're happy to make space for you to share your offerings with the larger community.
For more information and to RSVP, visit:
Events | Nowak Society | Colorado (thenowaksociety.org)
