This story by Lindsey Toomer appeared on Colorado Newsline on Monday September 23, 2024.
Jamie Blackburn, a school counselor from Golden who has taught yoga for almost 20 years and used to teach high school science, was thinking about going back to school.
Her initial idea was to study clinical counseling. But research she read about the benefits of psychedelic therapy led her to pursue a different kind of education experience.
“When I realized that there was a psilocybin-specific training program where I could really specialize in that and not go back and do this whole breadth of knowledge in the clinical field, I thought that was kind of a cool route to take,” Blackburn said. “Really it blends all of my favorite things.”
Those favorite things include clinical research, science, mental health care, and a spiritual focus on the sense of self Blackburn said she’s found in yoga.
“The piece about psilocybin that I really like is that, at least as we’ve been going through this training, it speaks to that lens of things where … there’s not something necessarily wrong with you that we need to give this clinical diagnosis to, but it’s really helping people uncover the highest version of themselves,” she said.
Advocates say psilocybin will serve as another item in the mental health care tool kit that can help Coloradans who are struggling. Research has suggested psilocybin could be used to treat PTSD, obsessive-compulsive disorder, substance use disorder and major depression.
Blackburn started as a student with InnerTrek’s psilocybin facilitator training program in May, traveling to Oregon once a month for in-person “intensives,” and she’ll complete her 40 hours of required hands-on practice — a part of the training requirements called a “practicum” — in November. InnerTrek is an Oregon facilitator training program that expanded its curriculum to meet Colorado’s training requirements.
Colorado voters approved Proposition 122 in 2022, making Colorado the second state, after Oregon, to decriminalize the use of psychedelic mushrooms.
People will not be able to walk into a healing center and leave with psychedelic mushrooms or other psilocybin products for consumption at a later time, as is the case with cannabis dispensaries. Someone interested in taking psilocybin through the regulated program will need to go through a screening process to determine any risks of taking natural medicine. If they are deemed an appropriate candidate for psychedelic therapy, they will take natural medicine in a secure, regulated environment with a licensed facilitator to supervise and walk them through the entire experience.
In Colorado, anyone 21 or older who has a high school diploma or equivalent and has met the state’s training requirements can become a psilocybin facilitator. The state also has a separate license for people with medical backgrounds who are interested in providing psilocybin treatments.
Starting in 2025, prospective facilitators will be able to complete their practicum in Colorado. If someone pursuing a license wants to complete their practicum now, they must travel to Oregon, where regulated mushrooms are already being cultivated.
Colorado’s Department of Regulatory Agencies has approved seven facilitator training programs so far. They’re offered by InnerTrek, Elemental Psychedelics, SoundMind Institute, Changa Institute, Naropa University Center for Psychedelic Studies, Integrative Psychiatry Institute and Ceremonia.
Which program a prospective facilitator chooses depends on what they’re looking to get out of it, said Tasia Poinsatte, executive director of the Healing Advocacy Fund in Colorado. The Healing Advocacy Fund is a nonprofit organization that advocates safe and equitable access to psychedelic therapies. It started in Oregon after voters in the state approved a state regulated psilocybin program in 2020.
Some programs have smaller cohorts with more hands-on learning opportunities, and others are larger with online and hybrid options. On top of the state-required hours for certain topics, programs can choose to focus more time on certain subjects or add more.
Training breakdown
Poinsatte said training has always been considered a key component to efficacy and safety of psilocybin therapy “because the experience with psilocybin can be really challenging.”
“Particularly with people who are going in for mental health reasons, they can require a lot of support during that experience to really maximize the benefit,” Poinsatte said.
The fund analyzed Oregon’s psilocybin training programs to determine the key components needed in Colorado’s training requirements to support safety. Poinsatte said the main takeaway was a need for hands-on experience during the training process.
The state also included more hours for safety and ethics, as well as new module requirements on trauma-informed care and suicide risk. Poinsatte said Colorado’s Natural Medicine Advisory Board incorporated most of the Healing Advocacy Fund’s recommendations into the final training requirements.
The state requires that facilitator training includes 150 hours of coursework, 40 hours of supervised practicum, and 50 hours of consultation across six months while the student provides natural medicine facilitation under a training license. A more experienced facilitator will supervise and provide the person in training with feedback and conduct an evaluation before they receive their final license.
Training programs can also offer an accelerated option for facilitators who “have extensive prior training and experience,” Poinsatte said. For InnerTrek, this is the newest addition to its program, dubbed the Legacy Pathway.
Nate Howard, InnerTrek’s director of operations, was involved early in the advocacy for Oregon’s measure approving psilocybin. He said the intent behind InnerTrek wasn’t necessarily to start a school or a business — rather, its leaders wanted to “see this project through,” he said, referring to the state-regulated psilocybin market. Facilitator training was the first step.
“Our graduates have opened up not the majority, but a disproportionate number of clinics, centers in (Oregon), and are now also throughout the country,” Howard said. For example, he said former InnerTrek students were involved in advocating Colorado’s Proposition 122 as well as Massachusetts’ ballot measure in November that would establish a state-regulated market.
InnerTrek is accepting applications for its first Colorado-based training cohort, which will begin in February 2025. Howard said the program is also opening a center for in-person retreats for its students in Longmont. InnerTrek’s training uses a mix of online and in-person learning.
Since Blackburn is going through InnerTrek’s current Oregon-based program, she will have to go through the Legacy Pathway to meet the requirements for licensure in Colorado. Howard said the cohorts starting next year all have an additional month of training to meet the new requirements in Colorado.
“The first graduates of these programs I think will be better served practicing within the rules that they’ll actually be regulated and supported by,” Howard said in reference to the practicum requirement for licensees.
Students in InnerTrek’s psilocybin facilitator program practice facilitator techniques with one another at InnerTrek’s training facility in Oregon. (Courtesy of InnerTrek)
Blackburn said she chose InnerTrek because of its emphasis on ethics and safety. Her biggest takeaway so far is that she’s learned to be open to the various experiences a client might have during a psilocybin session.
“Some people can have really blissful experiences. Some people can have things come up like past traumas, or more experiences that are uncomfortable, and really how to sit with people and use coping skills that I already use … to help people regulate the nervous system,” Blackburn said. “But helping people sit with any experience that comes up and knowing that whatever comes up is OK.”
Shannon Hughes runs Elemental Psychedelics, a training program in Colorado. She was a tenured professor who taught how drugs and medicines are used in behavioral health care at Colorado State University. The program’s co-founder, Dori Lewis, is a therapist who has experience with mushrooms. Hughes also works with the Nowak Society, a Colorado nonprofit that aims to organize the professional psychedelic community that has emerged over the last few years.
The pair decided to create Elemental Psychedelics to offer a more intimate, “boutique” training pathway, with small, locally based cohorts. Their program also places greater emphasis on ethics and personal experience taking psilocybin mushrooms.
Elemental’s fall cohort will be the first in its mushroom facilitator program, but the organization has led retreats and ketamine-assisted therapy training for years. Hughes said they were “really overwhelmed” by the volume of interest and how much experience students came into the program with. Half of their students have a clinical background, mostly therapists, and the other half are “wellness” students who have experience in other fields.
“I think I’m most looking forward to helping create a connected community of practice,” Hughes said. “It’s harder to do in a large cohort that’s mostly online, so just having the relationality and the community connections built in these smaller person cohorts, I think we’re really excited to be able to do that.”
Social justice-centered
What students will do once they’re licensed will vary. Hughes said she sees a lot of people in private practice, such as therapists who plan to incorporate psilocybin as a treatment option within their existing practice.
Blackburn intends to get licensed in both Oregon and Colorado, and she’s interested in incorporating psilocybin into wellness retreats. She’s also interested in research on how psilocybin can help people experiencing anxiety around terminal diagnoses.
“Because it’s such a new field, it’s hard to know what it’s going to look like a year from now,” Blackburn said. “I’m really just keeping myself open and keeping my options open … I’m going to take it one step at a time and get my license first and then figure out what the next steps are from there.”
Naropa University’s Center of Psychedelic Studies offers two programs related to psychedelic facilitation: a psychedelic-assisted therapies certificate for people in medical professions and a new psilocybin facilitator training certificate for anyone else who meets the state requirements. The Boulder-based university’s psychedelic-assisted therapy training was approved for Oregon psilocybin facilitators before Colorado approved its own program.
Naropa is looking for potential facilitators who are willing to work on their own personal growth within the program, who are comfortable with uncertainty given the emerging nature of the field, and who want to center “people that are most impacted in our society” within the state-regulated model, Cabral said.
“Being with those feelings of uncomfortability around the shifting that’s happening or the unknowns, that’s also how we might feel being with a client,” Cabral said. “Even those skills are transferable.”