Three thousand five hundred dollars.
That’s how much it’s going to cost to swallow 4 grams of psilocybin mushrooms and undergo a six-hour therapy session at EPIC Healing Eugene—if and when the clinic gets its license to run a “psilocybin service center” and its owner, Cathy Jonas, gets her facilitator license after undergoing 300 hours of training and passing a state-mandated test.
Together, those two licenses will cost her $12,000 a year. On top of that, she must spend thousands on a security system, liability insurance, and a 375-pound safe. All in, Jonas estimates she’ll spend $60,000 to open her service center and, at $3,500 a session, she expects to barely break even. “They have really made this hard,” Jonas, 56, says.
Two and a half years ago, Oregon voters approved Measure 109, making Oregon the first state in the nation to legalize the supervised use of psilocybin mushrooms. But that freedom comes with fine print. The program requires users to trip only in the presence of a trained facilitator in a service center using psilocybin grown by state-approved manufacturers and tested by state-licensed labs.
All of that adds costs. The result is a price tag that’s going to astonish the fungi-curious. A single session—5 grams, six hours—will cost more than the median Oregonian’s biweekly take-home pay.
Still willing to pony up? Sorry, get in line. At press time, no service centers—the only places you’re allowed to take psilocybin legally—had been licensed by the Oregon Health Authority. Three manufacturers, one testing lab, and just four facilitators had been licensed as of April 25.
In other words, the ballot measure created an appetite that the regulated system seems unprepared to satisfy. The outcome? The legalization of psilocybin mushrooms in Oregon is spurring an expansion of the decades-old illegal market.
Hellbound and Down 