The Third in our Series: A "Member Only" Benefit

Athletes are asked to push through pain, pressure, and injury, often with little support for what that does to the mind. For many, the hardest part comes after the game.

Join PAC Board Member Corey Hirsch for an open Q&A on sports and psychedelics.

Corey is a former NHL goaltender, Olympic silver medalist, and longtime Canucks broadcaster who now speaks openly about mental health and healing.

Bring your questions on mental health, brain injury, PTSD, and what psychedelics might offer people in sport and beyond.

‍Wednesday, November 18 | 4 pm PT / 6 pm ET | Inside the PAC Community on Mighty Networks

This AMA is an exclusive PAC member benefit - free with your membership - creating a safe space for honest, open dialogue.

Not a member yet? Join today to take part.

Please Note the Start Time of 12:00PM PT/2:00PM ET

Long before Huachuma entered the international conversation as a healing medicine, it was something else entirely: the living heart of a culture.

Inseparable from the land, the ecology, the ancestors, the ceremonies, and the communities of North Peru, Huachuma has shaped Andean civilization for over 4,000 years. It has one of the most robust archaeological records of any visionary plant on Earth — and an equally extraordinary living cultural heritage. And yet, most of what circulates as common knowledge about this cactus in global circles has not come from the communities who have always held it.

As interest in Huachuma grows around the world, so does misinformation — about where it grows, who its traditional guardians are, and what a traditional ceremony actually looks like. Meanwhile, the communities of North Peru who carry these living traditions face poverty, aging knowledge holders, loss of cultural continuity, and the devastating depletion of wild Huachuma populations. The world’s growing appetite for this medicine risks irreversible harm to one of the most profound living botanical and cultural heritages on Earth.

In this Wisdom Keeper Series gathering, Laurel Sugden and Josip Orlovac del Rio join host Gillian Maxwell to speak honestly about all of this — and to offer a different way forward.

They’ll address the most common myths about Huachuma sustainability and ceremony, and share the story of the Huachuma Collective — now in its seventh year of community-led biocultural conservation work. This alliance of Maestros Curanderos of the Huachuma tradition is lifting up the voices of North Peruvian communities, directing resources into conservation projects, and protecting wild cactus populations whose diversity and fragility are rarely understood by those who seek them out.

They’ll also share news of a landmark gathering: the Second International Huachuma Conference in Peru this January, where community representatives from three countries will come together to shape the future of their medicine.

This is a conversation for anyone who has been touched by Huachuma — and who wants to understand what right relationship with this plant, and with its ancestral stewards, actually asks of us.

As always, this is not a lecture. Come with your questions and an open mind.

Integration is often described as the most important part of a psychedelic journey. It's also the most under-supported.

When the experience has ended — when the ceremony has closed, the session is complete — what comes next? How does something that profound settle into an ordinary life? And what does it actually need from us?

Duncan Grady and Jennifer Davis return to the Wisdom Keeper Series for a second conversation, this time turning their attention to exactly this. Drawing on the four directions of the Medicine Wheel, they'll offer a way of understanding integration that honours the whole person: spirit in the east, heart and emotion in the south, body in the west, and mind and thought in the north.

This isn't a technique or a protocol. It's a way of paying attention — of recognising that what we bring back from a psychedelic psychotherapeutic experience asks something different of each part of who we are, and that each of those parts deserves its own kind of care.

As always, this is a conversation, not a lecture. Duncan and Jennifer will share what this framework means in their own practice, and there will be space for questions, reflections, and genuine dialogue from everyone in the room.