'The attrition is setting in': how Oregon's magic mushroom experiment lost its way

Psilocybin in Oregon is facing attrition five years after the state became the first US state to legalize supervised use, with clinics closing and facilitator numbers dropping. The report highlights Journey Service Center in Portland as an example of early promise, including accounts of terminal illness clients and people with severe obsessive compulsive disorder. But practitioners now describe the industry as increasingly costly, hard to access, and constrained by rules and fees, with prices reported as high as $3,000 per session and limited or no insurance coverage. Regulatory and business hurdles are central to the story: requirements like licensing fees, surveillance, distance rules, and insurance challenges, plus local government patchwork bans. The piece also notes concerns about lack of diversity among participants and describes how some centers are shifting toward lower cost microdosing packages and community-based models to stabilize demand.