Go Ask Alice: Psilocybin Dosing in Oregon

The mystery that surrounds psilocybin dosing here in Oregon reminds me of a snippet of a Roethke poem.

The shape of a rat?

It’s bigger than that.

It’s less than a leg 

And more than a nose,

Just under the water

It usually goes.

In fact, I’ll add another stanza…

Does it come in a gelcap?

Is it stranger than that?

Do you eat the whole shroom?

Or make mushroom tea?

Is it stored in a sock drawer

In a plastic baggie? 

Yep, it’s confusing, but I promise you it’s interesting, and though I’ve covered this briefly in other articles, I plan to lay it all out right here like a tie-dyed picnic blanket in the sun.

Do You Eat the Actual Mushroom?

If you’ve done your homework on clinical trials and read the standard books on psilocybin therapy, you probably know a little bit about what it looks like. You’ll know about eyemasks, soundtracks, cozy blankets and facilitator support, but how the dose is administered is rarely even mentioned.

In most trials, researchers use a gelcap that contains purified psilocybin extract, the compound that, once ingested, converts to psilocin and produces psychoactive effects. Whether this is prudent or not (i.e. there’s a ton of anecdotal evidence that suggest other alkaloids in the mushrooms encourage more neuroplasticity etc) is fodder for another article, but for the sake of this breakdown, you simply need to remember that in most clinical trials, the dose comes in pill form and is measured in milligrams of psilocybin. A typical dose is 20 - 30 mgs. 

In Oregon, however, we do things a little differently. The mushrooms that folks consume at our service centers derive from whole fungi that are grown on state-regulated farms/labs. Most of the providers offer a wide variety of strains of psilocybe cubensis and pre-grounded homogenized mixtures as well. In addition to the actual mushrooms, some providers make chocolates and honey sticks too. Though every product is labeled with the total milligrams of psilocybin analyte which allows us to align our dosing practices with clinical trials, the dose in Oregon never comes isolated in a pill form.

As far as actual ingestion, it’s really up to you. I’ve had clients eat the mushrooms whole, grind them up and make tea, or marinate them in orange juice or lemon juice too. All these methods have their advantages, and we basically land on the manner that seems to correspond with a client’s intentions around ritual and ceremony. 

Are Psilocybin Doses Measured in Grams?

Most folks that belly up to the magic mushroom counter in Oregon are used to measuring their mushrooms in simple grams—for the sake of argumentation, let’s call this the sock drawer method. Back in the day, we’d lay out about 4 grams of caps and stems, take two grams a piece and drift away into another dimension. What was the total amount of psilocybin and psilocin present in those stems and caps? We had absolutely no idea. Even when we evenly spilt the same strain of mushrooms, there’s a pretty good chance that our doses were materially different. 

So how do we compare past experience to these legal magic mushrooms whose labels espouse milligrams of total psilocybin analyte? First, we have to understand that different strains of mushrooms are more powerful/potent than others. Let’s take a hypothetical look in that sock drawer again. Here we have two bags of mushrooms that weigh exactly 3 grams. One is a Starry Night, a high potency strain, and the other is Golden Teacher which is a lower potency strain. While these mushrooms weigh the same, the total psilocybin analyte of the Starry Night is much much higher than the Golden Teacher. Consequently 2 grams of the former might feel like 4 grams of the latter!

Clear as a gasoline puddle? Good. Though we lose something by eschewing the mystery dose, we gain quite a bit by knowing the psilocybin and psilocin content of our legal fungi here in Oregon. This allows us to be much more precise when it comes to dosing and offer the client a clearer idea of how the experience might stack up to past journeys. So in case I lost you in the sock drawer, here’s an extremely general rule of thumb. A 25 mg dose of psilocybin analyte roughly equates to 3.5 to 5.5 grams of net weight sock-drawer mushrooms.

Is There A Standard Dose of Magic Mushrooms?

In Oregon? For legal psilocybin therapy? Nope. I’ve had some clients take 15 mg and some take 40mg. It depends on intentions, contraindications, comfort level and a zillion other things. With my clients, we have an open conversation. We begin with the standard clinical dose of 25mg as a springboard for discussion, rummage through our old sock drawers and land on what feels right.

So it’s not a blue pill

Or magical Advil. 

It’s both—lab-tested fungi

And a big cosmic dose—

Just under the eyemask

It usually goes…