Oregon’s first psilocybin treatment center receives license, will start serving clients this month

PORTLAND – In a major step toward access to legal psilocybin in Oregon, Epic Healing Eugene became the first licensed treatment center in the state on Friday.

Licensing training centers is the final step in setting up the framework for the voter-approved psilocybin program in Oregon. Under the program, people 21 and older can take regulated amounts of psilocybin under the supervision of trained facilitators in licensed facilities. The state has already approved training programs, facilitators, workers, manufacturers and one lab.

Angie Allbee, who leads the psilocybin services for the Oregon Health Authority, congratulated Epic Healing on Friday.

“It may take some time for licensees to set up operations once they are issued a license,” Allbee said. “Each licensed service center, and the licensed facilitators who work for or with them, will set their own costs and manage their own operations and communications.”

Allbee encouraged people interested in accessing services to visit the psilocybin services website under I Want To … Access Psilocybin Services.

Licensed treatment centers mean that the first-of-its-kind industry can now be tested.

Dr. Elizabeth Nielson, co-founder of Fluence, one of the licensed facilitator training programs in the state called Friday’s announcement “an important, reassuring step for the field and for those who will receive the first legal psilocybin services under Measure 109.”

Healing Advocacy Fund, a nonprofit that supports Oregon’s psychedelic mushroom program, said in a release that the Eugene center would start serving clients this month.

Cathy Rosewell Jonas is the founder and owner of Epic Healing Eugene and is also a licensed social worker.

“Witnessing clients engage in their deep interpersonal journeys within themselves, as well as my own personal experience working with healing psychedelics, has enabled me to work through the challenges of opening up a service center in Oregon,” she said in the news release. “This is the first step, and we will soon work to create more access for people to this life-changing therapy through scholarships and creating ways for people to sponsor services for other people.”