07/09/2024
Oregon Psilocybin Service Centers Face Challenges In First Year
It’s been a year since the initial rollout of Oregon’s psilocybin program, and service providers are hitting some hurdles: legal red tape, hefty license fees and a lack of customers.
One Albany business is uncertain it can survive another year.
💸-‘Not profitable’-
Sitting in a large leather chair, Patrick Winczewski leaned back with his hands clasped over his torso. The T-shirt he wore features mushrooms and text with the pun, “I’m a Fun-guy.”
He sat in a room used for appointments, in the same kind of chair he uses when facilitating a psilocybin session. But this time, instead of clients, his co-workers and team sat beside him.
Rarely is the building fully staffed like this. In fact, since its opening, the business has had to scale back hours and benefits. Part of the reason is that there just aren’t enough customers.
“We get more calls from facilitators who want to work here than customers,” Winczewski said.
In 2020, Oregon became the first state to legalize psilocybin for therapeutic use after voters approved Measure 109. The rules were finalized in January 2023, and the first psilocybin service center went online in Eugene in May. The second licensed facility was Inner Guidance in Albany, which opened its doors in June 2023.
🤷♀️-Jess Hume-Pantuso-
Upon opening, Inner Guidance owner Dee Lafferty was optimistic. Business was good in the beginning, she said. But after only three months or so, business slowed.
She ended up having to change the business model.
“I wanted to run this business like I run my therapy business and have people have benefits and time off and all the things that a good employer will give you,” Lafferty said from a leather chair on the adjacent side of the room.
“The way it's set up, I can't do that,” she said.
In the past year the seven facilitators have seen about 165 clients.
Winczewski has had to grapple with whether he should renew his license, he said. The annual license costs $2,000. That’s more than other medical professionals pay to renew their licenses, Lafferty said.
He did end up renewing, but Winczewski is looking for a second job. And he isn't the only one.
Workers have gone from full-time to part-time, and many either have other jobs or are actively looking for second jobs.
The center has its own renewal fee: $10,000 a year, Lafferty said.
“It just hasn’t been profitable,” Lafferty said.
Psilocybin itself is pricey, she said. Then there are other costs that add up: Insurance and banking are more expensive than they would be for other businesses because psilocybin is still illegal at the federal level.
Inner Guidance crowdsourced on social media to raise the money for the renewal fee. Before reaching their goal, staff weren’t certain they would be able to continue, Lafferty said.
And even though they were able to pull together the funds, a cloud of uncertainties hangs over them.
“Next year, here we are again. Then what are we going to?” Lafferty said.
Albany's Inner Guidance had to fundraise to keep its doors open.
Unstuck, a psilocybin service center in Corvallis, opened just this spring, but in watching other service centers, owner Heather Thomas is nervous about the future.
And while she doesn't have to renew the annual licenses yet, the expenses are adding up in ways that are hard to miss, Thomas said.
Insurance, banking and rent are all expensive, she said. With more facilitators than available facilities for them to staff, staffers end up in debt, Thomas said.
Meanwhile, she and her other business partners incurred debt to launch the business and are “nowhere close” to paying themselves back, she said.
One of the biggest challenges is awareness, Thomas said. People don’t know that psilocybin is legal in therapeutic settings, while others believe it’s been legalized like ma*****na with a dispensary model.
But unlike ma*****na, psilocybin must be taken in a service center under the eye of a licensed facilitator.
Then there's public perception: It’s difficult to open some people up to the idea if they were raised during the war on drugs, Thomas said.
Thomas spends a lot of time trying to educate people about what psilocybin is.
She's still hopeful about the rollout, but she has some apprehension, she acknowledged.
🛑-Red tape-
On the outside, Inner Guidance, a psilocybin service center, is in a blink-and-you-miss-it location. The building sits in North Albany on 904 NW North Albany Road.
The cream building with painted red accents has a wind chime at the front door. There aren't any mushrooms or signs denoting it offers psilocybin services.
On the inside, the rooms are tranquil and plain. There are images that represent water and other elements, lamps that display soft purple light and blankets and stuffed animals for clients to use.
The space isn’t very flashy, and that's on purpose — partly to do with being respectful of the building owner but also because Lafferty has to adhere to certain advertising rules, she said.
She has to guarantee that among those exposed to advertisements, not more than 30% are children.
Mostly, Inner Guidance promotes itself at dispensaries and bars because Lafferty can guarantee those audiences are of age, she said. But it’s difficult when you are also competing with the unregulated, underground market, she said.
“If you're just getting some mushrooms off the street, and just some random person who's not a professional who's like trip-sitting with them, then it's not a reliable way to actually keep people safe and get the help that they need,” facilitator Sean Lane said.
With black market magic mushrooms, there’s also no way of telling if you are getting what you think you are buying, Lafferty said. And the research largely shows that the benefits of psilocybin are realized in therapeutic contexts with facilitators, she said.
Research suggests psilocybin may help address depression, anxiety, trauma and addiction.
Add to Lafferty's list are still other hurdles and red tape she hopes will change in the future. One is being able to offer end-of-life care. Some prospective clients who could benefit from psilocybin are bed-bound. They can’t leave the hospital or home.
Meanwhile, state rules require psilocybin services only be made available at a service center.
“People are looking to see us as an example, to see what is going wrong and what is going right,” facilitator Ethan Fields said.
People from outside Oregon hoping to legalize psilocybin in some way have contacted the Albany service center as legislation takes shape in their own state.
“Everybody's watching very, very closely on Oregon,” Lafferty said.
👀-Eyes on Oregon-
Measure 109 delegated the Oregon Health Authority to create rules around the rollout of the state’s psilocybin program. In the year since rollout, some challenges have emerged — but not all of them are within OHA’s authority to change because OHA has to adhere to the language of the measure, Oregon Psilocybin Services Section Manager Angela Allbee said.
Included in the verbiage is the requirement that psilocybin can only be consumed inside a licensed center, she said.
“A lot of times people have a hard time understanding the differences between the law and the rules. The law is our kind of the statutory container, and the rules have to fit within that law,” Allbee said.
As for the licensing fees, those won’t drop until the budget is sustained by the licensing fees, she said. In fact, they could very well increase first, she said, if there aren't enough licensees.
OHA has been listening to facilitators' concerns, and some changes are possible. State officials are also getting feedback from various groups, not just licensees but the public as well, she said.
What changes could be in the offing aren't yet decided and couldn't yet be shared, she said.
One of the concerns Allbee is hearing often is about the difficulty in finding a space to set up a service center and manufacturing site, she said. Rules governing proximity to food and medical services can limit where the service centers can operate.
That constrains already limited options when scouring for a city or county that didn't ban or place a moratorium on the ability of psilocybin centers to be within limits, like 10 cities in Benton and Linn counties did, along with Linn County itself.
Asked about how she would measure the success of the rollout, Allbee said there are several indicators. One is that the number of licensees and service centers are on the rise. And licensee numbers have gone up every week, she said.
OHA has approved 344 licensed facilitators, 29 service centers, 12 manufacturers, and 9,911 products since the program started.
Although the number of products being sold could account for second doses, “we know that a significant number of people have been served under this model,” Allbee said.
Also, OHA has received only three reports of emergency services being contacted, which supports how safe the program has been, she said.
There’s another component that is a little less quantitative: client stories.
Soon, OHA will offer an online dashboard with data about those who are seeking services, she said. The public will be able to see the demographics of users — race, ethnicity, language, disabilities, sexual orientation, gender identity — as well as the reason for seeking out psilocybin services and other information, she said.
The program is still very new, and all the kinks won't be worked out right away, Allbee said. The landscape will change further once out-of-state licensees are allowed to apply next year, too, she added.
“I think at the end of the day, our focus is clients accessing services and making sure that that's done safely, effectively and also equitably,” she said. “We're trying to support licensees; we're trying to support the clients and overarching public health goals from the agency perspective.”
🤞-Hopeful-
Wendy Trench looks at her life as distinctly divided into two parts — as if someone took a pen and drew a line right down the middle. There is her “old life” before she did psilocybin therapy, and then there is her “new life,” after her psilocybin session at Inner Guidance.
Trench used to describe herself as a “grumpy old veteran,” she said as she leaned against the door of the psilocybin center’s room.
“I never was able to let go of that stuff that I needed to let go,” she said.
She tried veterans groups and community groups and other ways of coping. But paranoia and a feelings of being unsafe seemed to follow her no matter how much she tried to shake them off.
Trust wasn’t an easy thing for her, but she felt safe with the people at Inner Guidance, she said. After her psilocybin session, she saw the world differently. She herself was different too.
“I'm trying everything, wearing different clothes. I'm eating different food. I'm listening to different music. And everywhere I go, I share my enthusiasm and my excitement with people, and when I go places, people are drawn to me,” she said.
These are the success stories that leave facilitators at Inner Guidance hopeful. Winczewski sometimes gets emails from clients telling him they no longer need medication to treat their depression.
He wants people to know you don't have to be suffering to reap the benefits of psilocybin, that anyone can benefit and have a positive experience. He also wants people to know that sessions are accessible despite what people may hear about the cost.
Since its opening, a scholarship program ensures more people have access to their services. Clients can also do a $300 trial to test out the experience and make sure it feels right for them, Winczewski said.
The business is working on its own nonprofit, Cap and Stem Northwest, to keep funding the scholarship program. When the center posted the fundraiser to cover the cost of the renewal fee, operators were surprised by how fast they were able to raise the money.
To the group of facilitators, it symbolized their impact to the community.
“I am hopeful about all of the change that we've seen in our clients as a result of receiving psilocybin therapy, and that we continue to see them as they stay in contact with us … and see the light in them,” Lafferty said.
Shayla Escudero graduated University of Southern California with a Master of Science in Journalism. She covers Albany city hall and Linn County. She is passionate about telling people forward stories and shining a light on injustices. She can be reached at [email protected]
