Bon Voyage: Oregon is training magic mushroom facilitators

Damascus, Ore. – In a wooded retreat center in Oregon, about 30 men and women sit or lie, masks over their eyes, and listen to quiet music.

They are among the first students trained to guide patients who stumble onto psilocybin as Oregon prepares to become one the first US state to offer controlled use of the psychedelic mushroom to the public.

The program, which is expected to open to the public in mid or late 2023, charts a possible course for other states. Oregon voters passed Voting Measure 109 on psilocybin in 2020 by an 11% majority.

In November, Colorado voter also passed a voting measure allowing the regulated use of “magic mushrooms” by 2024. On December 16, California Senator Scott Wiener from San Francisco introduced a bill to legalize psilocybin and other psychedelic substances.

“Psychedelics help people heal from trauma, depression and addiction,” Wiener tweeted. “Why are they still illegal in California?”

InnerTrek, a Portland company, is currently training around 100 students in three groups to become licensed “facilitators,” who create a safe space for dosing sessions and provide a calming but non-intrusive presence. Some courses in the six-month, $7,900 course are online, while others are in-person and held near Portland in a building resembling a mountain cabin, with Tibetan prayer flags fluttering in the wind nearby.

Because psilocybin use is still illegal, the only mushrooms at the training center were the shiitake mushrooms, which were served in the miso soup at lunch.

Trainer Gina Gratza told students that the space or “container” for a dosing session at a licensed center should include a couch or mats to sit or lie on, an eye mask, comfort items such as a blanket, and stuffed animals. a sketch pad, pencils and a bucket to vomit. A session usually lasts at least six hours.

Music is an important part of the experience and should be available through speakers or headphones. (Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research in Baltimore have developed a playlist the ” tries to express himself the sweeping arc of a typical session of medium- or high-dose psilocybin.”

“They are here to support safe passage and to hold the container that powers a release and deployment,” Gratza told the students. “Notice how you speak and what the energy of what you are sending out might be conveying.”

The trainers emphasized that those who take psilocybin should be given the freedom to explore any emotions that arise during their inner journey. For example, they should not be comforted when they cry. Expressing anger is fine, but it should be agreed beforehand that no objects will be thrown or hit.

“We don’t lead,” Gratza said. “Let the experiences of your participants unfold. Be careful with words. Let the participants come to their own insights and conclusions.”

Tom Eckert, the architect of Ballot Measure 109, is now taking it forward as InnerTrek’s program director. He said it’s not about getting people high, it’s about using psilocybin to improve life.

Researchers believe in psilocybin changed the way the brain organizes itself, allows a user to embrace new attitudes more easily, and helps overcome depression, PTSD, and other issues.

“What we are promoting here in Oregon is a platform for psilocybin services,” Eckert said in an interview. “And service means a sequence of sessions in which a psilocybin experience is contextualized. So there is a preparation beforehand and an integration afterwards. It’s a therapeutic sequence.”

Oregon pioneered the regulated use of psychedelic mushrooms in the United States, but psilocybin, peyote, and other hallucinogenic substances have been used by the indigenous peoples of Mexico and Central America to induce altered states of consciousness in healing rituals and religious ceremonies since pre-Columbian times.

Its cultivation and use is legal in a handful of other countries, including Jamaicawhere some high end mushroom resorts have risen. A program of Heroic Hearts Projecta veterans service organization, brings military veterans with PTSD and athletes who have experienced trauma to the jungles of Peru for recovery sessions ayahuasca, a herbal psychedelic.

In October, the Canadian province of Alberta announced the first provincial regulations for psychedelics-assisted therapies. The new rules, which come into effect in January, require a psychiatrist to oversee every treatment Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

Psilocybin remains illegal in the rest of Canada, but that hasn’t deterred businesses in Vancouver, British Columbia sell openly magic mushrooms. Police are not interfering, instead targeting violent criminal organizations that produce and trade harmful opioids, the CBC reported.

A store in Portland called the mushroom house also reportedly openly sold psilocybin until police canceled the operation on December 8 and arrested the shop owner and manager.

In the last election, several rural Oregon counties chose to allow psilocybin services in unincorporated areas within their borders, although several cities in those counties stayed put. Densely populated counties with the state’s largest cities — Portland, Eugene, and Bend — did not opt ​​out either, although the county, with its capital in Salem, did.

The Oregon Psychiatric Physicians Association and the American Psychiatric Association opposed Measure 109, saying it was “unsafe and making misleading promises for Oregonians struggling with mental illness.” You don’t have to be a doctor to get a facilitator license, they pointed out.

However, Eckert said the status quo doesn’t work.

“We need a revolution in mental health care,” said Eckert. “The current way we are working with mental health is simply not enough and we are showing that in the results. We’re having something of a mental health crisis here in Oregon and beyond.

“I’m not trying to throw away the existing structure,” he added. “There’s definitely value, but there’s clearly something missing.” ___

This story has been updated to correct that the county voted with Salem to ban psilocybin services.