Becoming an Oregon Psilocybin Facilitator

A psilocybin facilitator is someone who guides and supporting clients through a psilocybin experience. Through Oregon’s Measure 109, clients can visit a licensed service center to experience psilocybin with a facilitator. Experiences can be either individual or in groups. You can search “psychedelic therapy” online for a sense of how people describe the experience.

To qualify as a facilitator, you must:

• Be 21 years of age or older

• Until January 2, 2025, be a 2+ year resident of Oregon

• Hold a high school diploma or equivalent

• Graduate from a psilocybin facilitator training school that is OHA-approved and HECC-approved

• Pass a licensing exam and maintain an active facilitator license

For Oregon Psilocybin Services, you do not need to be a licensed clinician (e.g. psychotherapist, medical doctor, social worker) in order to qualify as a facilitator. However, individual training schools may have different requirements.

Some training schools have already begun operating. On January 2, 2023, license applications will become available for facilitators.

The Oregon Health Authority (OHA) has a list of schools whose curricula have been approved. From there, most schools must get certified by the Higher Education Coordinating Commission (HECC) before they are able to begin teaching.

Please make sure your school has both OHA and HECC approval before you secure a spot at the school. They must receive the approvals before you enroll. If you enroll and begin classes before the school receives OHA and HECC approval, it is possible your training will not be counted for your facilitator license qualifications.

Training schools vary in their approach. Some are in-person, some are entirely remote. All schools must have a minimum of 120 hours of core training with a minimum of 40 hours of hands-on practicum training. As of fall 2022, tuition currently ranges between $8,000-$12,000. Terms currently range from a few months to more than a year.

All schools must include a thorough set of required curriculum approved by the Oregon Health Authority. Here is the Oregon Health Authority’s list of hourly requirements by curriculum category, and a list of detailed topic requirements per category.

As of fall 2022, tuition in these schools ranges from $7,000-$12,000.

Many of the schools have scholarships, sliding scale tuition, or payment plans available. Please check with specific schools to see what your options are.

The Sheri Eckert Foundation also has a needs based scholarship program.

The Oregon Health Authority has a directory of licensed services centers for those service centers that consent to having their information shared.

While the Oregon psilocybin ecosystem does not yet have a dedicated job board (and we encourage someone to start one!), Psychedelic Alpha has one for the psychedelic-assisted therapy space at large.

The Psilocybin Services Directory is starting a directory for Oregon psilocybin facilitators and service centers that will launch sometime in 2023.

Psychedelic Support has a national directory of practitioners where you may be able to list yourself.

You can also consider reaching out through your training school community to see who’s hiring.

Creating your own service center is also a possibility, though this is a serious undertaking. Check out our resources for service center operators to learn more.

Since service centers are just beginning to open, it is still hard to know. Cost of services can range greatly between psilocybin service centers ($1,200 - $3,500 for centers that are open as of 7/10/23) and centers are often looking to provide different holistic experiences for their clients. Facilitator rest time is also important; many ketamine and underground facilitators maintain a limit of one session a week.

By factoring in the cost of operating a service center (real estate, staffing, and operational costs), one may be able to make an estimate of how much a facilitator could make.

Most Oregon licensing boards have not yet made statements about Oregon Psilocybin Services. As service centers begin to open, we anticipate we may begin to hear statements from licensing boards and professional associations.

This is a complicated topic, and we would advise looking into this further on a case-by-case basis to understand the implications.