(sings song) (sings song) - I think at the beginning, there is a very sincere act of bravery and courage that is carried out by people that choose to take this medicine.

- The come up sometimes feels like you're sort of holding on for dear life and your heart starts racing a little bit.

I'm trying to hold on, I'm trying to ask questions and then I realize that the only thing to do is to let go.

- My vision of a path forward is a culture that has fully metabolized the lessons that the psychedelics have to teach us.

(bright music) - What's happening in Oregon right now is the ground floor for the industry.

And a lot of people all over the country, and potentially all over the world, are watching Oregon.

What's happening here is very impactful.

(bright music continues) - [Narrator] Oregon has everything a mushroom could want, plenty of water, plenty of wood to eat, and plenty of people devoted to it.

- So here in the Pacific Northwest, we have a few species of psilocybin fungi.

You can't walk very far in the right season without encountering one of these.

And in some instances, they actually thrive in areas where, you know, human civilization is existing.

We have Psilocybe cyanescens that grows all around city parks, we have Psilocybe ovoideocystidiata, which inhabits the same environments as Psilocybe cyanescens and it is suspected to be from the Ohio River Valley where it's in its natural habitat.

(waves whooshing) We have Psilocybe azurescens, which is found in the dune grasses on the coast predominantly, and that dune grass was introduced to stabilize the dunes so people could build housing there.

- So here in my left hand, we have a Psilocybe azurescens, the world's strongest psilocybin-containing mushroom.

And on my right hand, I have two specimens of Galerina marginata, which is a deadly poisonous mushroom that looks very similar to a Psilocybe azurescens or a cyanescen.

You can see a Psilocybe azurescens has a conical shape, and you can also kind of see on the stem that it's bruising blue, which is a signifying factor showing that it's containing psilocybin.

- [Narrator] For psilocybin containing mushrooms, that blue color is the whole point.

It's the sign of a chemical reaction that evolved millions of years ago.

But why this chemical has a profound effect on people is a matter of some debate.

One popular idea, the so-called "Stoned Ape Theory", says that mind-altering chemicals from mushrooms help drive the evolution of human consciousness, and humans in turn cultivated the mushrooms.

But recent research suggests the chemicals responsible are far more ancient than our hominid ancestors.

- You can think of the whole psilocybin system as a grenade, and psilocybin is like the pin in the grenade.

And what happens is when you damage the mushroom, you trigger like a cascade of oxidative reaction, and basically, that pin gets pulled and these enzymes that are now exposed to oxygen at this trauma site start to chew away the psilocybin, turn into psilocin and they actually link it together and polymerize it into this compound that visually is blue.

And this blue color is herbivore deterrent, essentially, it causes ill effects in the gut system of bugs.

- [Narrator] When a human eats a Psilocybe mushroom, psilocin floods the brain, triggering sensors meant for chemicals the brain makes.

They spark a frenzy of activity, cross-wiring brain areas and altering senses and thought patterns.

How humans discovered this is lost to time.

But over the millennia, several cultures developed ways to use this experience for personal healing and strengthening community.

- So much of what this medicine is is relational.

It's not even as much of you, you know, taking just this mushroom as it is like you connecting to, you know, different parts of your world that you weren't able to access before, both in your interpersonal relationships with other people but also with the planet and with your own body and with your own spirit.

(soft music) (people chattering) - The Rhizome is a community-oriented psychedelic healing space, so it's a place for people to gather in community around the psychedelics and the psychedelic experiences that they've had.

I tend to the medicine itself a lot, that looks like filling microdose capsules.

On any given day, having people come here to be with medicine, answering people's questions about dosing, that's a really big one.

Preparation is absolutely essential for this work.

When you think about negative experiences, most of the time you can trace it back to a lack of or an improper preparation.

On a more macro, you know, interpersonal level, I'm relationship building with people to properly orient them toward me.

Are those comfortable?

- Yeah.

- How does your body feel?

It's so hard to language most of what happens in that space.

It definitely highlights the mind-body pathway 'cause we're often so alienated and cut off, mind from body.

- Mm-hmm, yeah.

- My work with psilocybin has involved bringing people out of their alienation into a deeper sense of communion with each other and just a more grounded place, a sense of like, I can handle this.

And then there's also the aftercare, the follow up.

So for people who had a peak experience, how do we integrate this?

How do we make sense of this?

- [Speaker] Have you ever tried mushrooms?

- [Narrator] Making sense of a psychedelic experience can take many forms.

- [Speaker] My sense of self fell away and I felt like I was just an extension of everybody else around me.

- [Narrator] Art, movement, but also community events, like storytelling, support groups and learning to live with complex chronic conditions.

- In April of 2020, I contracted COVID and I did not get well.

I tried mushrooms for the first time and I wrote out two intentions, one, to heal from long COVID, and two, to reconnect with my joy.

(audience applauding) - We're volunteer run, we offer a lot of community spaces, largely integration circles.

So folks who've had psychedelic experiences or who are curious about psychedelic experiences can come and discuss their thoughts and feelings and processes amongst each other, amongst people who know what it's like to be there.

- Today, I'm actually hurting a little bit, but I did take some psilocybin this morning, it's my regular dosing day.

- Especially with chronic pain, when you have depression and anxiety, and it's there for a long period of time, we start to reinforce those pathways in our brain.

- I mean, when you're in it, it's very hard to see anything outside of it.

If it wasn't for psychedelics, I don't know if I'd be here today.

- There are certain people that should avoid psychedelics.

If you have like schizophrenia, if you have uncontrolled bipolar disorders, if you have heart conditions, it's something you should be careful of.

But for the most part, the psychedelics felt like they bumped that needle and let the record continue to move forward.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Oregon stepped into the psychedelic spotlight in 2020 when voters passed Measure 109, creating a state-regulated program for psilocybin-assisted therapy.

But the road to that point was long.

The oldest known records of ritualistic consumption of psilocybin mushrooms come from the Mixtec culture of what is now Mexico.

A 1957 Life Magazine story exposed Mazatec rituals to readers around the world, spurring magic mushroom tourism to the region.

Mesoamerican spores and knowledge were appropriated into the global psychedelic counterculture of the 1960s, a movement that took deep root in Oregon.

But in 1970, the US Federal Government made psychedelics, including psilocybin, illegal, and research into their medicinal potential slowed to a halt.

Then, in the mid 2000s, medical researchers started to take another look.

Evidence began to mount that psilocybin could help with a large list of mental health conditions, and some attitudes started to soften.

But the psychedelic movement in Oregon never really went away.

- Oregon has an incredibly rich and unique history with the counterculture of the '50s and '60s.

A lot of, you know, alternative communities in Eugene and Veneta and and Portland were created, and I think that's part of the reason that, you know, this measure was made possible was because there's already such an open-mindedness towards using psychedelic drugs here in this state.

- [Narrator] But not everyone in the state is on board.

Some counties have voted against implementing Measure 109, and how to safely and responsibly introduce powerful psychoactive chemicals into communities is still an open question.

One that has become more urgent thanks to an explosion of psilocybin products available online, and even in physical stores, angling to be the first in what could be a lucrative new market.

It's new territory with real potential dangers.

If administered without proper preparation and screening, psilocybin can cause psychological distress, terrifying experiences that can sometimes persist longer than a session, and in some rare cases, cause temporary psychosis, especially in people at risk for schizophrenia.

And as with all mushrooms, inexperienced foragers risk eating poisonous lookalikes that can cause illness and death.

(lively music) But scientists are now working to mitigate at least some of the risks.

- TrypLabs is a mushroom focused laboratory so we're looking at psilocybin mushrooms in particular and focusing on Oregon Measure 109.

(lively music continues) What we do is we analyze the mushrooms for their potency and we also analyze different mushrooms for their DNA and to see what species they are, quantifying them in order to provide accurate dosage data for these therapists and facilitators to administer these products.

If we look at historic use in Central America, different indigenous cultures maybe used mushrooms with cacao and honey and, yeah, we have chocolate bars, gummies, tinctures, I've seen even hydration boosters, there's a lot of different infused products out there.

The weirdest thing is that some of this stuff is products that are usually suited for children.

I hope that we don't go too crazy going into like mimicking like Skittles packaging for mushrooms.

We extract the psilocybin and psilocin from the mushroom using ultrasonic technology.

Basically that bursts open these fungal cell walls and helps move the active components into solution.

We run that through a machine called HPLC, which is a high performance liquid chromatograph.

And so, as the individual components pass through the machine, they're able to be detected and quantified.

The goal when I started TrypLabs was to just be boots on the ground here in the Pacific Northwest, getting as many samples as we can, collecting, analyzing, demystify the mushrooms from more of like a grassroots approach.

(lively music continues) - [Narrator] A mushroom is just the visible part of a larger underground network composed of countless connective threads.

Now this little mushroom is above ground, forcing the state, the market, and traditional medicine to grapple with a different approach to mental health, while the underground community devoted to it persists.

- What I hope we're seeing in some of this process of legalization is we'll recognize the pieces of our system that aren't working for us as human beings.

I hope that it will bring to light and recognize that what's most healing is community.

(light music) (light music continues) (gentle music) - It's so hard to have other people in the room.

- [Arya] I'm series producer Arya Surowidjojo.

Thanks to the support of our members, our team was able to explore the expansive story of psilocybin mushrooms in Oregon.

Our filming was only possible because of the support and trust of many communities.

Thank you.

(gentle music continues)