New Horizons

Colorado stands of at the forefront of the psychedelic renaissance. In 2022, we were the first state to decriminalize the personal use of certain psychotropic substances, including the mind-altering compound psilocybin active in “magic mushrooms.” In 2024, CU Denver launched the country’s first psychedelic-facilitator training program within academia, and the university is collaborating with NYU on the country’s largest study on psilocybin’s benefits for stage-3 and terminally ill cancer patients. As a naturally occurring medicine that’s been around for ages, psilocybin’s recent resurgence feels distinct, mature, professional—a far cry from its 1960s counterculture heyday. Renewed interest in its uses within a regulated, therapeutic environment has revived both public engagement and institutional funding.

“We’ve finished almost four years of a five-year study that’s funded by the National Cancer Institute with a grant of $2.1 million,” says Dr. Jim Grigsby, who’s been working towards this critical mass for almost fifty years. Today, he and his colleague, Dr. Shandra Brown Levey, lead CU Denver’s Center for Psychedelic Research as co-directors and investigators on its marquee study, Psilocybin for Anxiety and Depression among People with Late-Stage Cancer. “It’s some of the most meaningful work I’ve ever done,” Brown Levey says. “There wasn’t any support or funding for this type of research for a long time, so I’m glad that people are coming back around to it.”

Plant-based Medicine

Brown Levey observes that attitudes towards therapeutic, plant-based psychedelics have shifted. “It’s something I think our populations are asking for,” she says. “We want to be able to offer these methods in safe, effective ways, so people can have the option and engage if they so choose.” While earning her doctorate in clinical psychology, Brown Levey developed an interest in oncology and general health psychology. Before joining Grigsby at the Center for Psychedelic Research, she spent 15 years as the Director of Integrated Behavioral Health in the Department of Family Medicine at CU Anschutz. She says her current research reinforces the same ideals that led her to clinical psychology in the first place. “It’s not that psychedelics were something that I was initially drawn to,” she explains. “It was more a general motivation to alleviate suffering. And then, through the pandemic and through this study, I’ve found that psychedelic work is deeply profound and has a tremendous amount of healing potential.”

As a double-blind, placebo-controlled study, Brown Levey, Grigsby, and their co-investigators don’t know which participants have been given psilocybin or a placebo. Their course involves three preparatory sessions, a dosing day, and then four integration sessions, providing a substantial amount of data. It’s a rigorous study with exacting inclusion and exclusion criteria, ensuring the safety of each participant, all of whom have been diagnosed with either stage 3 or stage 4 cancer. At the end of the study’s official run next year, their research team will compile and analyze the data, at which point they can begin to publish their findings.

“Because of things like MKUltra [the CIA project carried out from 1953 to 1963] and Richard Nixon’s political tricks, we lost about 30 years’ worth of research on this,” Grigsby says. The study will eventually comprise around 100 participants, and the researchers are actively seeking more individuals who meet the criteria and could benefit from this clinically oriented, therapeutic process. Both Brown Levey and Grigsby are also adamant in crediting Indigenous cultures with stewarding this ancestral knowledge—an intergenerational understanding and respect for the healing properties of psychedelics that can be traced back for centuries, perhaps millennia.

Cross-cultural Exchange

Carolina Corrêa was first introduced to Indigenous legacies of psychedelic healing while earning her undergraduate degree in Brazil. She studied with Dr. Silvio Coelho dos Santos, a prominent anthropologist and expert on southern Brazil’s Indigenous tribes. “That exposure to Indigenous communities and to the world of psychotropic plants was how I began to realize the power of this medicine,” she says.

Last September, Corrêa launched Numia, a clinic for psychedelic-assisted therapy located in Cherry Creek. As a woman-founder and an immigrant, she’s already overcome ingrained biases within the business world. She’s more focused, however, on shaping a new era of integrated psychedelic therapy and all the responsibilities that role entails. At Numia, “we are very much focused on trauma-informed care,” Corrêa explains. “For some individuals, it’s just harder to really get in touch with traumas that were perhaps locked in their unconscious.”

Numia’s clientele represents a broad demographic. “We are working with individuals from the ages of 21 to 80, and they’re coming to us from all over the country,” she says. “We help a lot of people with mental health conditions like treatment-resistant depression, addiction, PTSD, and serious childhood trauma. But we also work with couples and people simply wanting to explore and expand their minds, and better themselves in the process.” Additionally, Numia has had success working with pro-athletes and former athletes, especially those who have experienced traumatic brain injuries, identity crises, or feelings of hopelessness.

Rewriting Thought Patterns

Studies have shown that the United States is currently experiencing unprecedented levels of depression, anxiety, and loneliness, which Corrêa has observed in her practice. “Younger people are feeling so disconnected,” she says. Still, simply administering the medicine is not a magic cure-all. “The protocols we’ve developed are essential. We offer two preparatory sessions and two integrations, and it’s a participatory process of working together—client and clinician—with integrated support across all health channels following the protocol. It’s a very multidisciplinary approach.” She also points out that Colorado is the first state to allow for this type of integration across psychedelic therapies and more traditional health care providers.

Brian Levin, Numia’s Director of Operations, explains that psilocybin effectively resets certain neural connections or pathways in the brain that may have been causing unwanted behavioral patterns and/or emotional responses, such as persistent anger or sadness. He uses the metaphor of skiing to describe how psilocybin-assisted therapy can allow for new thought patterns to emerge. Let’s say you’re skiing a mogul hill, and you have your preferred route down the mountain. It can be difficult to deviate from that route, or those thought patterns, even if they’re unhealthy or unwanted. Psilocybin is akin to a powder dump on that mountainside. It has the potential to wipe out old ways of thinking and unlock new neural pathways—the “first tracks” of the mind.

Psychedelic Frontiers

While psilocybin-oriented wellness and therapeutic practices have been gaining traction within mainstream American culture, the future of this medicine within the United States is still unwritten. Brown Levey elaborates that, in terms of government regulation, “trying to predict what is going to happen legislatively at a state or federal level is almost impossible. We see things moving forward; we see other things moving backwards. I hope that we— as scientists, as caregivers, as clinicians—can continue to work together and support one another to improve our quality of life.”

Corrêa understands that, as early adopters and practitioners of regulated psilocybin-based therapy in the United States, she and her team must adhere to the highest ethical standards. “Being familiar with certain traditions, I wanted to provide this therapy in a setting that I thought would be the safest for the Western world,” she says. “That requires a therapist guiding the journey, knowing how to monitor it, and how to make sure someone is a good candidate—a professional who holds space for the participants in a way that is careful, with warmth and attunement, and who will be really cautious while proceeding with this type of work. I am obviously very protective of this space—what I built was not easy to do. I don’t take it lightly.”

It’s notable that, for the first time in history, women are holding leadership positions in the scientific, governmental, and business fields that psilocybin and psychedelic-related initiatives must successfully orchestrate in order to thrive. “I know I have the best intentions to make this go the way it needs to go in terms of clinical models,” Corrêa asserts. “It’s taking responsibility for people’s health—for their bodies, their minds, their spirituality—everything that makes someone a human being.”

Perhaps that’s what differentiates this era from past cultural movements. Maybe the 1960s were just the prelude, and this new approach to psychedelics will lead to lasting, meaningful change. “We’re really here to help inform in the best way possible,” Brown Levey says. “That’s why we got into this—to put some good into the world, and to alleviate pain and suffering. If we can do that together, then hopefully we’re benefiting one another. We don’t have all the answers, but we’re continuing to learn.”

Emilie Trice is the local editor of MyDenver. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Paris Review, and many other publications