Charlotte nonprofit Cohoba is hosting a festival in uptown this weekend to educate the public about psychedelic-assisted therapy and connect people who are interested in using psychedelics as medicine. Psychedelic-assisted therapy involves taking mind-altering substances, like ketamine, psilocybin, or MDMA, to treat mental health conditions.
The nonprofit’s co-founder, Laura Camilo Apgar, said she wants to shift public perception of these drugs away from college dorm rooms and music festivals and toward their therapeutic uses.
“It's not underground, right? Like it's not at a rave, it's not at a festival,” Camilo Apgar said. “It's a county building.”
The federal government has also taken an interest in psychedelics. President Trump issued an April executive order to accelerate research and expedite drug approvals for “psychedelic drugs that could save lives and reverse the crisis of serious mental illness in America.”
The third CohobaFest will take place at Charlotte’s Visual and Performing Arts Center, above the community center where Camilo Apgar and her colleagues practice. The Charlotte-based nonprofit counsels clients seeking this type of treatment and advocates for expanded access. Daniel De La Cruz, the organization’s other co-founder, said the center will begin offering ketamine-assisted therapy in September.
De La Cruz and Camilo Apgar, who are both Dominican, named the nonprofit after a Caribbean plant with hallucinogenic properties used by the Indigenous Taínos. De La Cruz said they aim to make these treatments available to the people whose ancestors first discovered these plants’ medicinal applications.
“It's completely inaccessible to the people we work with and, honestly, inaccessible to the communities that these medicines are taken from: Central and South America,” De La Cruz said.
This Saturday, guest speakers will share their experiences with psychedelic-assisted therapy as attendees view art and listen to Afro-Caribbean music. CohobaFest begins at 1 p.m. Saturday at the Visual and Performing Arts Center.
