What’s Crazy (And Not So Crazy) About Oregon’s Psilocybin Prices
Magic mushrooms in Oregon are free.
Psilocybin mushrooms sprout up wild all over the Beaver State along with the rains. It costs nothing to eat one with a friend under a tree. The feeling of waviness, lightness, connection, sparkliness–and sometimes, yes, confusion and fear–costs you nothing. Except giving up an afternoon.
If you want to do anything else, psilocybin has a price. Maybe a ticket to a concert. A tent to sleep in. A Spotify subscription for the album Music for Psychedelic Therapy by the electronic artist Jon Hopkins. An energy healer or massage therapist to knead out the kinks in your aura or lumbar.
What was the exact cost of all that? For about 50 years, these costs were hidden. No one was allowed to get some training to guide you through, or even pick the mushroom.
Exciting news: Two states have legalized psilocybin therapy for the first time ever. Click here to get on the waiting list for Oregon psilocybin therapy. And click here to get on the waiting list for Colorado psilocybin therapy.
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A Number Appears
The prices of mushroom trips continued like this–hazy, foggy, shifting. Then, suddenly last week, the Oregon Health Authority issued its first license for a psilocybin service center. Service centers are places where you can do psilocybin assisted therapy. EPIC Healing Eugene, the first center, dropped a price list for a psilocybin experience-thunk! A menu in black and white.
Here’s EPIC’s price list:
The Price of a Mushroom
Many people online said: this is bonkers. Who’ll pay $300 for a group microdose experience? Or $500 for a whiff of fungus in an individual session? Or $3,500 for a private session with 2.5 to 4 grams? These prices seemed psychotomimetic–crazy-making.
A medium-dose group session with two or three people is $2,300. That mimics a common way of doing mushrooms. Yet the price feels huge. And, yet: what are we comparing that $2,300 number to? Or should we be thinking more deeply about what we pay for our health? About what we value?
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So, Why is EPIC Healing Eugene So Expensive?
Portland’s Willamette Week broke down the costs. The owner, Cathy Jonas, had to pay for 300 hours of training and …
… two licenses [for her center and for her as a facilitator that] 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.
And, if people are upset by the cost, it might be worth considering who or what they’re mad at, exactly. The facilitator says she just can’t do it any cheaper, due to state laws and fees. The state says they can’t make it cheaper and still pay for the regulations. The federal government says she can’t do it all.
Yes, underground guides are less expensive. Yet there are trade-offs for working in gray areas. Community, unlicensed guides might not have insurance, oversight, or ethical boards that add safety. They might not pay social security or medicare or fund the local schools.
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What Should the Psilocybin Prices Be?
The idea that full-dose mushroom sessions should cost, say, a few hundred dollars, isn’t realistic. Sessions last six hours, plus prep and integration. A skilled carpenter would make at least $400 for that much time. But if we’re comparing apples-to-apples, how does psilocybin therapy compare to traditional therapy prices?
A skilled therapist often charges $200 an hour. It will take her about eight hours to do a mushroom journey, counting prep and integration. So you’d pay $1,600 for eight hours of her time–if she was just talking. And in a mushroom journey, she’s navigating rougher waters.
Skilled sitters can be the difference between a highly–useful, life-changing, mind-expanding trip and a ho-hum one you’d never bother mentioning to a neighbor.
“People don’t understand … for the providers doing this work, this is wildly different than traditional talk therapy,” said Dr. Dana Lerman, MD., co-founder of Skylight Psychedelics, which trains therapists in psilocybin-assisted therapy. “Holding space for another human while they enter another realm and process not only their shit, but also their ancestral trauma and more, is simply incomprehensible. After journeying with clients, we often have to find time and space to let go of what we took in. We do this in various ways, yoga, meditation, immersion in music, via ceremony with other medicines including Hapé, psilocybin etc. Our work continues after we leave the space. This isn’t something that’s often talked about. It’s hard to put a price tag on this work.”
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Psilocybin as Healthcare
Many folks becoming psilocybin therapists are coming from other parts of healthcare. They’re nurses, doctors, EMTs. If you think about psilocybin as healthcare, and mushrooms as a medicine, your frame shifts slightly from thinking they’re free. Healthcare is expensive in the U.S. Prices vary wildly, but here are some average costs:
MRI ~ $1325
Colonoscopy ~ $2700.
Ambulance ride ~ $1200
We can compare a medium-dose session on mushrooms to an ambulance ride. If you need a ride to the E.R. because you broke your nose or your thumb–call a friend, call a Lyft. And, yet, sometimes … you want a paramedic–with her EKG machine and her IV fluids and years of schooling and malpractice insurance and medical direction–no matter what it costs.
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These are imperfect analogies. A collapsed lung, for which you should call an ambulance, is different from depression, for which you might call EPIC Healing. Yes, you could eat a free mushroom in a state park and maybe feel happier. Yet what if you’re a noob with a lot of anxiety, or you have some trauma in your background you’re worried will pop up? Might it not be nice to have someone by your side who is trained and thoughtful and works within the law?
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Want to Learn More About Magic Mushrooms Strains?
Interested in learning more about the different varieties of magic mushrooms strains? Check out our primer below.
