What this work does not do
Almost everything written about psilocybin right now is written by people who want you to do it. This page is the other half of the conversation, and I would rather you read it before we ever speak.
Why I wrote this page
I am among the first generation of people doing this legally. Colorado License #54 is a small number because the profession did not exist three years ago. That comes with an obligation I take seriously: whatever norms this field ends up having, the people working now are the ones setting them.
The fastest way to damage a young field is to overpromise. So here is the plain version of what psilocybin assisted therapy does not do, written by someone whose income depends on people deciding to do it.
If this page talks you out of it, it has done its job. That is a good outcome, not a lost one.
It is not a cure
There is no cure here for depression, for anxiety, for PTSD, for addiction, or for grief. The research that gets quoted in headlines is real research, and it is also early: small studies, short follow-up windows, carefully screened participants, and clinical settings that look nothing like ordinary life.
Some people improve substantially. Some improve and then slide back over months. Some notice very little and are quietly devastated by that, having pinned a great deal of hope on a single day. All three of those are normal, and only the first one gets written about.
I cannot tell you in advance which one you will be. Neither can anyone else. What the evidence actually shows.
It is not a single day
The medicine day is the part people picture, and it is the least important part to plan your hopes around. What tends to happen is that something opens. What happens next is up to the following six months.
The work after is unglamorous. It is noticing a pattern in real time and choosing differently while tired. It is a hard conversation you have been avoiding for four years. It is sleep, exercise, therapy, and the slow rebuilding of a life. The medicine can make that work feel possible. It does not do it.
This is why every program I offer weights integration as heavily as the session itself. A field that sells the journey and skips the integration is selling the wrong thing.
It is not a replacement for care you already have
I am not a doctor, a psychiatrist, or a psychotherapist. I am a Natural Medicine Facilitator licensed by the State of Colorado. That license permits me to prepare you, to sit with you, and to help you make sense of it afterward. It does not permit me to diagnose you or to manage your medication, and I would not want it to.
If you have a therapist, keep them. If you are on a psychiatric medication, any change is a conversation between you and your prescriber — never between you and me. People sometimes arrive hoping this will let them stop everything else. That hope is understandable and it is the wrong reason to be here.
This work sits alongside ongoing care. It does not sit in place of it.
It is not a guaranteed experience
Nobody can promise you a mystical experience, a vision, a message, contact with someone you lost, or an insight that reorganizes your life. Some days are quiet. Some days are mostly physical. Some days are simply hard, and the value of them only becomes visible much later, if at all.
A beautiful session and a changed life are two different things, and they do not reliably come together. I have seen people have a profound day and change nothing, and people have an ordinary day and change everything.
And it can be difficult. Fear, grief, nausea, confusion, and the sense that it will never end are all within the normal range. My job is not to prevent that. My job is to stay steady while it happens.
When waiting is the better answer
Some of the most useful conversations I have end with "not yet." Those are not failures. Timing is part of safety.
You are in acute crisis. If you are in immediate danger, this is not the intervention. Call or text 988 in the United States, or go to an emergency room. Stability first, always.
The loss is very fresh. In the first weeks and months, grief is doing what it is supposed to do. Intervening early can interrupt something necessary.
Your life has no floor under it right now. Unstable housing, an unsafe relationship, a job collapsing this month. This work asks you to open. Opening without a floor is not brave, it is unkind to yourself.
There is nobody with you afterward. The days following a session matter. If there is genuinely no one, we build that support before we build a schedule.
Someone else wants this for you. A partner, a parent, a friend who had a great experience. If you are not the one asking, the answer is no, and that is not negotiable.
A medical or psychiatric factor makes it unsafe. Personal or close family history of psychosis or bipolar I, certain cardiac conditions, pregnancy, and specific medications are real limits. Full safety and screening information.
What to do instead, if this is not the fit
I would rather point you somewhere useful than keep you in my inbox.
Find a therapist first. For a great many people, a year of good ordinary therapy is the higher-value first step, and it also makes this work more useful later if you still want it.
Get stable first. Sleep, medication management, and a psychiatrist who knows you are not lesser options. They are frequently the correct one.
Consider a clinical trial. Trials are free, closely monitored, and contribute to the evidence base. ClinicalTrials.gov lists what is currently recruiting.
Try the cheaper thing first. A committed meditation practice, a men's or women's group, a grief group, time outdoors, a real vacation. I have thirty years of meditation practice behind me and I will not pretend the medicine is the only door.
Or simply wait. This will still be legal in Colorado next year. There is no closing window and I will never suggest there is.
If you have read all of this and still want to talk
Then you are exactly the kind of person I want to talk to. The first conversation is free, it is not a sales call, and if I think the answer is no or not yet, I will tell you.