🫠 Psychonaut POV

Welcome to Tricycle Day. We’re the psychedelics newsletter that's waving our white flag. You win, inner experience. 🏳️

Courtney Campbell is a runner. No, not marathons. More like, “I’m tripping. Get me out of here.” So when psilocybin centers became a thing, he set out to build one where he’d actually be willing to sit still. Two years later, he runs Chariot, the only psilocybin center operating across state lines.

We asked Courtney how filmmaking prepared him to design psychedelic spaces, what separates clients who transform from those who don't, and what he learned watching his dad breeze through 15 grams.

Wait, legal psychedelic mushrooms? How is that even possible?

After years of selective breeding, Limitless created a mushroom strain with undetectable levels of psilocybin and psilocin, but all the secondary alkaloids that produce visuals, introspection, and euphoria intact.

What’s left is a powerful psychedelic experience that's 100% legal and lab tested. (They’ve got the receipts.)

And before you ask… no, there are no synthetic additives, either.

Warning: these fungi are potent. Start low and test your sensitivity.

Like a lot of us working in the regulated space now, if you'd told me pre-COVID that in 2025 I’d be running healing centers administering high doses of psilocybin, I would have said that sounds amazing… and I don't believe you.

What drew me to this was my own personal healing journey with psilocybin. I personally benefited from the exact work that we do so much that it almost felt obligatory to be involved somehow. When Measure 109 passed in November 2020, I was excited but I wasn't thinking “this is my chance to open a center.” I was too busy dealing with the pandemic at home with two young kids and my wife. But as the plan rolled out more, my wife encouraged me to look into one of the facilitation programs. So I enrolled in Synaptic Institute’s facilitator training program as part of the first cohort.

One thing became clear as we went through the program: there weren't going to be that many service centers opening, and the ones that were opening sounded like places I would probably try to run out of during a session. (I have a history of being a runner.) If I had eaten five-plus grams of mushrooms at one of those spots, there's a very good chance it'd be hard to keep me in there. I thought there had to be a way to create a center that's more conducive to this work, that's not sterile, that feels safe and comfortable.

I wanted something closer to a home than a business. We didn’t want that dentist-office feeling with a drop ceiling and overhead fluorescent lighting. The space we ultimately found in Portland is a 1910 Craftsman that was converted to a law firm in the 80s. For most of its life it was a house. I didn’t make the connection between filmmaking and this work until you asked, but I do think it comes from a similar place of being very sensitive to one's environment.

They're not that different, which is surprising. My concern going into Colorado was that Oregon had been really thought out. It was a two-year process after the measure passed. Colorado opened only nine months after their measure passed, so I was worried it would feel like the Wild West.

Oregon's OHA has been incredibly responsive. Anytime we've had a question or concern, I've been able to call or message them and get an immediate response. Colorado's been really good as well. What surprised me is that even though Oregon's program is more mature, there haven't been many issues in Colorado. The administrators learned from Oregon and made things maybe a little more lax, which has worked.

What struck me was that it's the same challenges we experienced in Oregon in the early days that we're now experiencing in Colorado. There’s a friction that exists with a brand new regulatory agency trying to figure everything out on the fly. It's like going back in time to start over again, but the difference is now we have more confidence of where we're going.

The clients are quite similar too, despite what people might assume about the demographics of Oregon and Colorado. Folks spending money to come to a healing center and work with psilocybin are open to the work and willing to do it. It's a self-selecting group.

This is not a silver bullet that’s going to fix all your problems in one session. Surrendering in a psychedelic experience—letting go of whatever you're holding onto—that's not easy to do. It can take many experiences for some people to fully get there.

Say somebody comes to us with OCD that's affecting their daily life. They've built up defense mechanisms, these layers of armor to protect themselves from something that felt unsafe. Some nuts are just tougher to crack. It takes more time and more willingness to endure another uncomfortable session.

The people who get the most benefit usually feel like they got enough out of it that they want to explore more, so they'll come back. Some people schedule two sessions in a week. They'll do one, have a rest day, do integration with their facilitator, then do a second one. Those are the folks where we really see a shift.

I can give an example of my dad. He didn't come to our center, but I went on a retreat with him in Jamaica. He's 80 now. This is somebody who was essentially abandoned by his parents and has a lot of childhood trauma. He's never done any work on himself or seen a therapist in his life. He had to have that armor to survive.

They gave him 15 grams on the last day. I took 8 when he took 15, and I was having a wild experience. Afterwards I asked him how it went. He said something like, “It was okay. I felt a little funny. The music sounded better.” That's what I expected from him. People have an impressive amount of resistance to letting go. You’re probably not going to solve a lifetime's worth of trauma in a few experiences. I was nonverbal for six hours, whereas he was just chilling, listening to music, able to talk to people normally.

Numinus's licensed psilocybin facilitator training includes free supervision and consultation after you graduate. Join one of their Friday info sessions to learn what else sets their program apart.

People come in pretty clear about why they're there, but what comes up is oftentimes not what they expected. They'll set intentions about what they hope to address, and yet whatever comes up is exactly what needs to come up. I'm constantly surprised by how the medicine knows what they need, even if they don't.

People spend a lot of time in talk therapy learning the why. They know why they're doing these behaviors, why they're feeling like this, and yet that knowledge doesn't change the day-to-day. This work with psilocybin allows them to say, “yeah, I knew that all along, and now let's live that life.” Having the experience of feeling something versus just intellectually understanding it is where the real transformation happens.

It's going to happen as more states open up. I’ve realized that my initial concerns about expanding were pretty unfounded. This work can get mixed up with cannabis, where big companies changed the landscapes of states. But psilocybin facilitation is very different. One is a product; the other is a service to people.

The goal is that people are able to access this type of healing and not have to travel across the country to do so. If regulatory changes allow us to expand, then we'll keep growing. But even if Chariot had only ever stayed the one Portland operation, that would have been more than enough fulfillment for me personally.

On access and equity, it’s worth mentioning that psilocybin therapy is expensive because you're essentially paying out of pocket for a very time-intensive medical treatment. We've always worked on a sliding scale to meet clients where they're at. Ultimately we'd rather have people doing this work. What Althea's doing with the Forward Fund, as well as other philanthropic efforts to help support folks, is great. Hopefully we get to a world where this isn't out of reach for most people.

Take a look inside Chariot’s centers in Portland or Boulder, or book a complimentary consultation to explore working with psilocybin.

That’s all for today, Cyclists! Whenever you’re ready, here’s how we can help.

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DISCLAIMER: This newsletter is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice. The use, possession, and distribution of psychedelic drugs are illegal in most countries and may result in criminal prosecution.