"Personal Use" Community Workshop Series

Join us for a special community workshop series aimed to empower communities in safe and optimal personal use of natural medicines. Proposition 122 in Colorado decriminalized the personal use of psilocybin-containing mushrooms and other natural medicines, including growing for personal use, sharing, gifting, possessing, ingesting, and engaging supportive services around someone's personal use. As an educational non-profit, The Nowak Society believes in open-source and community-sourced education, meaning that we strive to make knowledge and skill-building accessible to all and held by community.

In service to this mission, we are honored to welcome a series of expert guests donating their time by offering deeply discounted workshops to the broader community of non-clinicians and non-psychedelic-experts. Each workshop is intended to unlock essential knowledge and skills from the professional domain to lay people seeking to optimize their personal use of natural medicines in safe and maximally beneficial ways.

You are invited to "pay what you can" to join each workshop. Attend one workshop or join us at all of them! Your generous support is appreciated and all proceeds are shared between The Nowak Society 501c3 and allied non-profit causes specified in each workshop description.

Note that some of these workshops are typically offered at $125+ by the professionals and clinical scientists leading them. We've set our "pay what you can" tickets to a minimum of $20 in order to make the knowledge and skills being offered accessible to as many people as possible. If you have the financial means available to you, we suggest setting your ticket price to $25-$75 per ticket, with full price up to $125. It's entirely up to you to "pay what you can" and please know that we appreciate your support at whatever level is available to you.

Space for each workshop is limited, so please purchase a ticket in advance. Each workshop is ticketed separately, so you must purchase a ticket for each workshop you want to attend (on this event registration page, click "select a different date" to purchase a ticket for a particular workshop). All workshops take place in person in Denver, Colorado during the evening (approximately 6-9pm) on the date listed.

May 11, 2023

Dr. Adele Lafrance

Theory and Skills for Psychedelic Guides

Join Adele Lafrance for an overview of theory and skills to support psychedelic guides, including those informed primarily by 1. a non-directive approach, 2. an inner-directed approach and 3. an approach guided by therapeutic theories and interventions. Relevant emotion-focused theory and interventions will be presented, including working with resistance. Clinicians and non-clinicians are welcome.

June 14, 2023

Dr. Adele Lafrance

Family Matters in Psychedelic Medicine

While significant attention has been paid to the intersection of mind-body-spirit in the context of medicine work, the impact of medicine work on relationships throughout the healing process has received insufficient attention. This workshop will introduce the ethical, brain-based and psychological rationales for attention paid to family matters in psychedelic medicine. Tools and techniques to maximize positive outcomes and minimize distress within the system will also be shared. Clinicians and non-clinicians are welcome.

August 9, 2023

Dori Lewis, MA, LPC-S and Dylan Rivard, LPC

Preparation and Integration for your Psiloycbin Journey

Learn the essential knowledge and skills for your self-guided mushroom journey. Explore what matters in terms of mindset, your own sense of readiness to build a relationship with psilocybin, the physical and energetic space for your journey, and useful tips to meet the mushroom with openness. We will also offer simple ways to think about integration and how you might engage that process in order to maximize the potential of your self-guided work with mushrooms to make positive impacts in your life.

Proceeds from this workshop are shared with The Trevor Project.

September 13, 2023

Reilly Capps and Travis Tyler Fluck

Micro Dosing Education and Access

Personal use of mushrooms is now legal in Colorado. Microdosing is a easy and low-risk way for people to take their first steps. Microdosing is taking 1/10th or 1/20th of a typical dose of mushrooms. Some research dismisses microdosing as a placebo effect. Yet many users report a range of benefits—from reduction in anxiety to better focus to a connection to nature. Who can benefit? Who should steer clear? We'll give folks competency with microdosing, give resources about integration, and we'll provide resources to actually get the mushrooms and make the microdoses. We believe humans are tribal. Community and nature are our birthright.

November 7, 2023

Laura Vetrano, LPC-S

Trauma-informed Psychedelic Care

This workshop will explore the potential of psychedelic medicine to heal trauma. We'll delve into how emotional and physical threats hijack the nervous system and decrease our quality of life. Our focus will be on understanding how psychedelic substances and plant medicines may heal the pathways of fear and anxiety in the brain. We'll also review the risks and benefits of choosing self-guided, recreational or psychedelic-assisted therapy. This workshop is open to both clinicians and non-clinicians.

Proceeds from this workshop are shared with The Nowak Society's new Indigenous Reciprocity Fund.