Argentina's Nacho Bottinelli On Psychedelics In Latin America: 'Brazil Opened A Giant Portal To Me'

Original story by Lara Goldstein for El Planteo.

Ignacio “Nacho” Bottinelli, co-founder of the nonprofit Psychedelic Association of Argentina told El Planteo how the association was conceived, his personal athletic journey as a competitive swimmer to technology and psychedelics. He shared his views about the psychedelics landscape in Argentina and the region as a whole.

"I truly believe in the power of networks, unity, and collaboration," he says. The conversation also touched on Expo Fungi, an event with the aim of connecting, teaching, and expanding awareness of everything related to the mycelium world.

Bottinelli majored in economics, and together with his best friend and systems engineer, they set up a successful ticketing model. The business turned toward electronic music parties, bringing him closer to the recreational world of psychedelics, and was eventually bought by Lollapalooza. 

Bottinelli then accepted a job with a Brazilian ticketing company and moved to the neighboring country where he says he began a "very good" period in his life.

"Brazil opened a giant portal, including expansion of consciousness, within nature," he told EP.

Bottinelli returned to Argentina post-pandemic during a sabbatical year. In deciding what to do, he says that one of the greatest triggers that got him to enter fully into psychedelics was that a close family member is a long-standing psychiatric patient, with refractory depression.

This is why he began during his Brazilian stay and in a non-scientific way to look into how psychedelics can help treat mental health conditions. Further, he says, the country’s religious context has allowed universities to begin researching psychedelics through naturalistic studies several years ago.

Particularly with ayahuasca: "Brazil is number one in DMT research. The crazy thing about Brazil is that lots of people do ayahuasca -middle-class, contemporary world people living within the system but attending their ceremonies at the Santo Daime church during the weekend."

So Bottinelli too, entered the psychedelic world first as a user, combining his local yoga instructor training with the expansion of consciousness and meditation. His first and mind-expanding experience was a Santo Daime ceremony in Belo Horizonte.

That’s when he felt he wanted to keep going on the road, although he didn't have a background in traditional native medicine nor working with the substances in a medical-clinical context.

Neo-Rituals & Intercontinental Connection

Bottinelli distinguishes three worlds of psychedelics: recreational, transformational and medical-therapeutic. Worlds that, he says, often intersect.

The recreational one is super interesting, he says, because it holds a strong transformational power. 

“In my view, it’s a neoritual. The return of the ancestral, of what the shaman was in the tribe, and what a modern DJ can be in front of his audience that takes a consciousness-altering substance toward connecting to a dimension that can either take you to a dark place or to a beautiful one. That's a ritual," he says.

A second, key intersection point between technology and psychedelia for Bottinelli was when an acquaintance of his first project’s investors, the former deputy and also investor Facundo Garretón, contacted him a year and a half ago.

Facundo had already been in contact with Spinoza (a 'human growth company' in the Netherlands founded by a politically recognized Argentine figure) previously, and that organization invited Bottinelli to Amsterdam’s Interdisciplinary Conference on Psychedelic Research (ICPR) in 2022. 

That’s when talks on bringing Spinoza to Latin America began. Mostly to Brazil, considering its more research-friendly regulations vis-a-vis Argentina, where these substances are virtually illegal.

In addition to Amsterdam, Bottinelli visited Barcelona and Portugal as well as Canada and its psilocybin mushroom dispensaries. After visiting a good number of places included in the global psychedelics route, he returned to Argentina with a brain overload and the idea of starting to grow the parts that are legal in the region.

The Association

One of the post-trip initiatives became the civil association. "There were none at that time, although there had been attempts here," he says.

He first got into amateur writing and, wondering "how to capitalize on what's in my head," in 2022 he created an IG account that reached 160k followers –blocked earlier this year– and another still thriving Twitter account.

He began a Sunday blog to report on the industry’s state of the art and Latin America’s ecosystem with references to the U.S. and Europe which, he says, boosted the generation of a community.

"In socials you could find all sorts of people, activities," says Nacho, who sees a certain parallel with cannabis. "When it wasn't legal, everyone was growing. Well, the same goes for mushrooms."

Through courses and workshops, he got together with people who were already in the field, from healthcare professionals to traditional native medicine practitioners.

The association also emerged, in Nov. 2022, through social media platforms. It’s composed of a varied group, including growers, health professionals (psychiatrists, doctors, psychologists), entrepreneurs and 14 people on the board of directors. 

This past May, advised by a cannabis law firm and using terminology such as "phytotherapy" or "holistic medicines," the team presented their application to the corresponding governmental agency (Spanish acronym IGJ).

The organization’s focus is threefold: Therapeutic accompaniment, harm reduction, and education. 

Mushrooms In Argentina

Bottinelli says that, just as Huachuma (San Pedro cacti) or ayahuasca holds a strong history of tradition, the case of mushrooms is a bit different -except for some specific regions. 

People who self-cultivate and prepare their own microdoses and therapeutic protocols, says Bottinelli are part of "the new ventures of the modern world." 

From the legal side, although there are almost no known cases of criminalization for cultivation or possession of psilocybin mushrooms, he does believe that there is a “normal” paranoia in those participating in the ecosystem.

"It gets to you, even when they block your social media account you get some paranoia, although those of us who do therapeutic accompaniment do not provide the substance and that is not illegal, nor is it that a psychologist or psychiatrist can accompany someone who takes drugs like cocaine who consumes and needs therapy and accompaniment," Bottinelli said, adding that he is unfamiliar with cases of people who have been raided for growing mushrooms.

"From the people I know and what I see, I don't feel it happens. In addition, there is so much ignorance, even from the police and investigators," he said.

Instead, he sees the phenomenon of self-cultivation increasing, noting that during the pandemic it exploded, "because making oyster mushrooms for a risotto takes the same as psilocybin mushrooms."

Photo courtesy of Nacho Bottinelli.