Four women – two daughters, their mother and their grandmother – recently gathered in Colorado for the emotional journey of a lifetime. They underwent psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy using psilocybina compound found in mushrooms.
The retreat, specially designed for women, was legal following Colorado voters decide last year to decriminalize the use of psilocybin.
As three generations of one family came together, they hoped for a new and different path to healing.
Delaney Sanchez, 23, said she was diagnosed with anxiety when she was a teenager, which manifested itself in panic attacks. The medications to treat it, she said, were not effective.
“They made me feel very…a little numb to everything,” she said.
Recently, her mother, Dana Sanchez, 59, asked her if she wanted to try mushrooms – with family, including her 77-year-old grandmother.
“We had talked about it… about my anxiety that I was really interested in and I felt like if my grandmother could do it, I should be able to do it too,” Delaney Sanchez said with a laugh.
Magic mushrooms took root in the counterculture movement of the 1960s and found their way into research laboratories. About 200 species of mushrooms are known to contain the active component that produces psychedelic effects. But psychedelics, including psilocybin, were banned in 1970.
About 30 years later, scientists began to re-examine psilocybin and found that it increased brain activity. Today, clinical trials are underway at leading research institutes, and some are now turning to them in search of a cure.
Heather Lee, a therapist for more than 30 years, said she took one of the first courses to become certified in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy after Colorado becomes second US state vote in favor of creating a regulated system for substances like psilocybin and another hallucinogen, psilocin.
“Mushrooms seem to be very gentle teachers,” Lee said. “They highlight and bring to the surface materials that need tending.”
Her recent therapy session with the four women involved drinking mushroom tea, after which each woman would retreat to a personal space for introspection, aided by eye masks and headphones with preloaded soundtracks. Lee said she could not guarantee people’s safety but monitored “very carefully” during her sessions.
Shortly after drinking the tea, Dana Sanchez began to feel uncomfortable, while Delaney Sanchez became emotional and ill.
“I had a rough start, for sure,” Delaney Sanchez said. “I struggled with it a lot… an overwhelming feeling of anxiety and just feeling trapped in my own panic. And then I just had to let go. And I just feel like a Once I did it, it became much more peaceful.”
Danielle Sanchez, 25, smiled during her session and later said she found a deep sense of peace and love.
“I felt like I could face my own fears with a smile on my face and just say, ‘This is stupid, just forget it!'” she said.
Donna Strong, the grandmother, faced darker thoughts, which she and the others shared more than four hours after drinking the tea, in what Lee calls an integration session.
“Mine was a little dark. I just couldn’t move. You know, I felt uncomfortable. And I think maybe that’s my whole life,” Strong said.
All of the women said they felt healing had taken place – a shared experience for which Dana Sanchez was grateful.
“The gift is the women in my family,” she said. “How strong we are, but also we’re growing together and we’re releasing stuff together.”
Lee believes a psychedelic renaissance is happening.
“People are hungry for emotional and psychospiritual healing,” she said. “We need soul healing.”
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