Oakland Psychedelic Conference Features a ‘High Level Conversation’ with 19Keys

In 2019, Oakland became the second city in the U.S. to decriminalize psychedelic mushrooms. Since then, the town has become home to a magic mushroom church, weekly underground markets and music dedicated to the usage of plant medicine, like Brotha Peace’s 2024 track “Mush Love.”

This weekend, entheogenic plant advocates and psilocybin lovers will convene for an event dedicated to understanding, celebrating and creating community around psychedelic mushrooms and related medicinal plants. The Oakland Psychedelic Conference + Spirituality and Beyond Conference #5, a two-day event organized Oakland Hyphae and the Church of Ambrosia, comes to the Henry J. Kaiser Center for the Arts. The event, which overlaps with 4/20 and Easter, will feature an adults-only Easter egg hunt where people can pick-up vouchers for cannabis, mushrooms and DMT.

There’s also a long list of speakers and guests, including Mother Jaguar, Alphonso “Tucky” Blunt and Sizwe Andrews-Abakah, as well as Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris, director of UCSF’s Neuroscape Psychedelics Division, and well-known entrepreneurial rapper Mistah F.A.B.

Saturday night features a keynote conversation between a psychology professor and researcher at Columbia University, Dr. Carl L. Hart, and host of the High Level Conversations podcast, 19Keys.

A known advocate for Black liberation, financial literacy and spiritual evolution, Keys says his involvement in the event revolves around the urgent need for cognitive resilience, especially right now.

“We live in a time where people need to optimize the way they think,” says Keys, who was born in St. Louis and raised in Oakland.

The process of microdosing, or taking small amounts of psilocybin, has the potential to assist people with getting off of certain “feedback loops,” he says.

“Some people don’t know how to get out of these depressive states of anxiety,” Keys attests during a recent phone call. “And they don’t know how to understand the world that they’re living in.”

Using psychedelics as a ritual medicine comes from ancestral practices from around the world. As the magic mushroom industry grows, Keys believes that people who partake should understand its origins.

“I think it’s important to have a dialogue and an influence in this space,” says Keys.

“A lot of people can pick it up,” he says about the medicine, “but what is the responsible way to do it?”

Keys, who isn’t a regular user of psilocybin mushrooms, owns Super Mind Coffee, a business that uses adaptogenic mushrooms to make beverages to aid cognitive resilience.

In a world where people’s focus is fleeting, our memories are stored in machines and artificial intelligence is replacing human intellect, Keys says, “You’re gonna need to essentially become a super mind during this time.”

He consumes lion’s mane mushrooms to support brain health, noting that it allows him to think more clearly and have sustained energy. “It’s like consciousness in a cup,” he quips.

When asked about escaping the world of rapid technological advancement, predatory capitalism, overconsumption and other oppressive forces of the “matrix,” Keys admits that he doesn’t believe in escaping. Instead he says, “I believe in resting from the matrix.” 

He explains, “Rest is not leisure, it’s your rebellion against slavery.” Being in harmony with ourselves and nature so that we can consistently regenerate energy is a form of liberation, says Keys, adding that magic mushrooms taken in small doses, as well as other natural medicines, assist in the reclamation of energy.

“They want to make sure that they can maintain controllable populace,” says Keys, referring to the government. He notes how natural medicines have been historically banned or placed at a lower tier of respect in our society. “When we look at psychedelics,” he says, “there shouldn’t just be an outright shunning of it from people who just don’t believe in it.”

He argues that many of those who look down on natural medicine are the same people rely on prescribed pharmaceuticals and over-the-counter medications, as well as a diet rife with food made of “all sorts of mind-bending-and-altering chemicals.”

“The difference,” he says in reference to psilocybin mushrooms, “is this one is just upfront about what it’s going to do for you.”

Cautious that a lack of understanding can become a form of slavery, Keys sees cognitively sharp human beings who understand how to operate in an advanced world as a new form of liberation. And that’s what he’ll be discussing with Dr. Carl L. Hart during a live taping of his podcast at the conference in Oakland on Saturday. 

The Oakland Psychedelic Conference + Spirituality and Beyond Conference #5 takes place April 19–20 at Oakland’s Henry J. Kaiser Center for the Arts. Details and tickets here.