12 APRIL 20-26, 2023 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | for his time and started his own underground healing business. Early clients came from ayahuasca circles, but now around 90 percent of them come from referrals. What Eshleman offers now is a “bona fi de service,” he says, adding that he’s not sure whether he will pursue an offi cial state permit even if one becomes available. While being legally protected and part of a publicly accountable system is appealing, he also worries about “stripping away the mystical experience,” he explains. “People are coming to me, and they say they just feel stuck. There’s something they don’t understand about their lives, their pasts, and they just want to know how to get through it. You can’t really pathologize it,” he says. “It’s a sense of stuff-ness, this opaque lens through which they are viewing life, and not taking in the totality of their experience.” Still, there’s a muddy line between trained therapist and spiritual healer that must be better defi ned, Lief suggests, adding that some form of self-regulation is essential for facilitators working in therapeutic settings if these methods are going to be sustainable. “Do I think you could go into a therapist’s offi ce in Aurora for this? I do. Do I also think there is room for something like this in the wilderness? Totally,” he says. “Being conser- vative isn’t my nature, but people have to be careful. If we don’t do it in this fi eld ourselves, then the government is going to come in and do it, and that would be an awful situation.” Prop 122 passed with just under 54 percent approval from Colorado voters, and how it will be implemented is still being deter- mined. The measure didn’t create limits on the personal possession and cultivation of psilocybin mushrooms, nor did it give local governments the ability to ban psychedelic therapy centers, which are set to begin open- ing in 2024. But the new law did not allow for the establishment of retail psychedelic operations, only healing centers, so there won’t be mushroom stores popping up like the hundreds of cannabis dispensaries cur- rently in Colorado. Even if Colorado won’t see mushroom dispensaries, however, the parallels between cannabis and psychedelic legalization are un- avoidable, from the names involved to the argu- ments over the future of plant-based medicine. Prop 122 called for the creation of the state Natural Medicine Advisory Board, with members appointed by Governor Jared Polis to recommend how medical psilocybin should be regulated and overseen by the De- partment of Regulatory Agencies (DORA). Of the fi fteen names on the board, at least six mentioned their experience working with or researching legal cannabis during their confi rmation hearings, including Dr. Sue Sisley, a federally licensed cannabis re- searcher, and Ricardo Baca, former cannabis editor at the Denver Post and current owner of pot marketing fi rm Grasslands. The board is charged with making recom- mendations by September on everything from public health and safety to equitable access, Indigenous and religious use, harm reduction, product research, ethics, licensing and facilitator training, and will later advise DORA on potential legalization of the other substances decriminalized by Prop 122. The Colorado Department of Revenue, the state agency responsible for regulating legal can- nabis, could get involved with the regulation of psilocybin production down the road, too. Like cannabis legalization, psychedelic reform has both medical and recreational implications, and there’s a lot of money to be made off the new industry. Although the retail aspects aren’t expected to be as strong for psychedelics as they have been for cannabis in Colorado — where there has been over $14 billion in dispensary sales since January 1, 2014 — clinical treatment involving psilocybin can easily cost more than $1,000 per session, while multi-day retreats can eclipse $5,000. Concerns about crime, public health and societal impacts, all topics of discussion surrounding legal cannabis, have emerged regarding psilocybin, as well. The canna- bis industry has been criticized for being largely white-owned despite people of color bearing the legal brunt of prohibition, and psychedelic activists worry that psilocybin legalization could lead to a similar situation. According to natural medicine activist Melanie Rose-Rodgers, Native American tribes and religious groups that implement psychedelic use in ceremonies should be protected from clinical regulations. “In cannabis, there are different lanes. I don’t know if the right word here is ‘exemp- tion,’ but we really need to respect honor and protect religious use. Indigenous cultures have proven they know how to do this safely for thousands of years. But I’m uncertain of what happens, because there’s a really big lobby involved now,” she says. “Right now this is a big opportunity for citizens of Colorado to reach out to their representatives and voice their opinions. I feel like this a different and more equal playing fi eld than in cannabis.” Any new form of mental treatment, es- pecially an intoxicating one, comes with a risk that must be addressed, according to Dr. Jana Bolduan Lomax, who supported Prop 122 and is currently enrolled in a ten-month psychedelic therapy training program at Colorado’s Integrative Psychiatry Institute, a certifi ed school for mental health profes- sionals based in Boulder. Lomax has been a clinical psychologist in Colorado since 2006, and became interested in the potential of psychedelic therapy a few years ago after reading various articles and studies. Although she’s considering adding psychedelic therapy to her practice, she’s not sold yet — despite being a believer in the potential of psychedelics in palliative care for end-of-life patients and its treatment of addic- tion, depression and other mental illnesses. “That’s been going on for a long time, and some people have had great benefi t from that,” she says. “I don’t want to take that away from anyone. I just want people to walk into these situations as well-informed consumers.” Lomax cautions that psilocybin and other psychedelics don’t work for everyone and aren’t necessarily “a magic bullet”; seeing benefi ts “requires a lot of ongoing work” from the healer and the patient, she notes. “We have very well-worn responses to stimuli in our environment at pre-verbal stages, before we’re able to talk, and based on our relationships,” she says. “Throughout our lives, we continue to see evidence that supports these belief systems throughout our brain. We want to keep thinking that we’re not lovable, that we’re not worth it. [Psychedelics] can really heal and rewire the way we think, so that’s where I’m very hopeful.” Prop 122 doesn’t require a professional license in order to administer psilocybin in a therapeutic setting, which Lomax fi nds unsettling. While she stops short of suggest- ing that anyone holding a session should be licensed and says she respects Indigenous and ceremonial use of psychedelics, Lomax worries that new or untrained healers and therapists won’t be equipped to handle a patient on mind-altering substances. “There needs to be really, really strong training, and what I have been taking away from my own training is a focus on ethics, and how do you help someone when they’re in an altered state of consciousness? When someone is tripping or hallucinating, they’re not rational. They might ask for a hug or express love to the therapist, when it’s not about the therapist but the experience, so a therapist needs to be well trained on consent and how to interpret things,” she says. Citing New York magazine’s podcast Power Trip, which dives into the ethics of psychedelic healing and sexual and psy- chological abuse committed by facilitators, Lomax says she hopes that training will be required for anyone conducting psilocybin therapy in a clinical setting. However, she also wants to see a balance struck that al- lows Indigenous, religious and personal use outside of clinical settings. “I want psilocybin specifi cally to not go down the path of being a big-pharma commod- ity. There’s something very different between psychedelic-assisted therapy and these natural plants being used in sacrament and being used personally. For sure, they’re therapeutic, but it’s handled very differently than the way we regulate mental health,” she says. “It’s just not the same as paying someone for therapy or having it regulated by the insurance industry. All of those things really muddy it up.” Healing Advocacy Fund director Natasia Poinsatte envisions a licensing procedure that would be “tiered.” A multi-state non- profi t that pushed Oregon’s psilocybin ini- tiative and Prop 122, the Healing Advocacy Fund is actively engaged with the measure’s implementation in Colorado. Poinsatte says that training and licensing protocols will be established for psychedelic therapy, but will not be a requirement. “The vision is to allow somebody who has extensive experience to be recognized in the training and licensing process,” she says, while reiterating that state rulemaking will ultimately decide that process. Naropa’s fi rst four days of psychedelic therapy lessons are about ethical issues such as patient vulnerability and the right use of power, according to Lief, who calls bad experi- ences “inevitable” with medical psilocybin. “Some therapist across the country is going to cross the line, because that’s what people do. Let’s acknowledge that and do everything we can to create a foundation to be as tight as we can be. Most of our partici- pants said they’d never talked about this stuff in medical school, but without this founda- tion, we’re going to pay for it later,” he says. Eshleman isn’t opposed to more edu- cation, adding that he and others in the psychedelic space “have a lot to learn as a community.” He’s optimistic about more collaboration and the sharing of best prac- tices now that legalization is on the horizon — even if no one really knows what that will ultimately look like yet. The Natural Medicine Advisory Board estab- lished by Prop 122 held its fi rst meeting on April 13. At that gathering, boardmember Dr. Cla- rissa Pinkola Estés suggested that DORA allow the group to bring a level of humanity and inclusiveness to the conversations, given the rigid structure of state government and how much the public’s input will be limited in board discussions. “We’re talking about medicine that has been given to all of us since the beginning of time,” she said. “You mentioned DEI — diversity, equity [and inclusion]. There’s one other element, and it’s coming up from the young people — and it’s B., belonging. Welcoming. Being not transactional, but relational. That’s what I would hope for, for our board.” Pinkola Estés, a daughter of Native American and Spanish parents, has been a post-trauma recovery specialist for 53 years and has served on a number of state and university boards for Psychedelics continued from page 10 continued on page 14 Naropa University president Charles Lief (right) speaks at a Naropa retreat in 2022. NAROPA UNIVERSIT Y
