My journey to the psychedelic space
In 2013 I tried my first psychedelic. It was a truly incredible, mind-expanding and heart-opening journey. Two years later and after many equally beautiful, intentional sessions with a number of compounds, I found myself in a place so scary that I grazed the surface of what it must be like to navigate split-personality disorder, panic attacks, manic psychosis, and suicidality all at once.
Heartbroken and alone, I had stumbled into what is called a 'challenging trip', though the understatement is potent. I had lost all sense of myself in existence, of the ground as horizontal... of horizontal as a concept.
On that treacherous night, I learned how dangerous psychedelics can be. I also learned about a nonprofit organization called Zendo, established to train people to help others through those kinds of challenging trips.
The following year I was trained and certified with Zendo and consequently have helped dozens of frightened, lost, and desperate people through their own journeys, to find growth and healing.
A challenging trip is not necessarily bad, but when the conditions or mindset are not cared for, the scale of possible harm is real. As a close friend and guide of mine expressed it:
When we’re deep in that place, it is as though we’re at the core of our world, stumbling. It is so easy to kick a pebble down there without knowing that on the surface we have caused an entire continent to shift.
Having been a technology entrepreneur my entire career I couldn't help but wonder why there wasn't more data to help us all understand how to set ourselves up for reliably safe and helpful psychedelic outcomes.
In 2014 it was inconceivable to start a psychedelic company, but as the cannabis industry was just emerging, I saw an opportunity to begin there, hoping the world would one-day de-stigmatize psychedelics and begin to understand their value, safely.
In the subsequent 4 years, together with my co-founders Joel and Roger, I built Baker Technologies -- the leading technology company in the cannabis sector -- to a $250MM valuation and a successful exit.
This brought us to 2018, and a time where public perceptions were shifting. I was invited to join the campaign team seeking to decriminalize psychoactive mushrooms in Denver. In just over 6 months and with a bootstrapped budget, we managed to make history by inviting 51% of Denver voters to pass the initiative. This was the first domino to fall, opening the doors for decrim initiatives to thrive across the country and for Colorado state to defelonize all Schedule 1 and Schedule 2 drugs in early 2020.
At the same time, I worked with co-founders Heather Jackson and Del Jolly to create a psychedelic research nonprofit, Unlimited Sciences. Together we formed a collaboration with Johns Hopkins University to design a worldwide psilocybin study, exploring the impacts of psychoactive mushroom use in the real world, ie. outside of the research lab. Our nonprofit now funds several studies in design and produces educational media to help make psychedelic education engaging for the general public.
In late 2019 I formed a new technology company called Maya.
Maya is a Colorado Public Benefit Corporation (PBC), which means our team members, advisors, investors & supporters are aligned towards purpose above profit. We are laying the foundations of a global environment for psychedelic compounds to be used safely & legitimately.
We see a future where everyone has the choice, information & access to safely use psychedelics for personal healing. And we believe the world of psychedelic medicine needs better data to surface best practices and help practitioners to offer safe and effective practices at scale. Our goal is to generate this insight while serving the psychedelic community & empowering its leaders.