The winter after Dr. Tami Clark’s husband Doug passed away, she received an intuitive hit nudging her to look into plant medicine. Cancer had taken Doug from Clark and her children and, months later, the lingering grief was dark, heavy and raw. Clark’s psilocybin journeys brought some relief, allowing her to process and release stuck sadness.

“Counseling helps, but at the same time doesn’t help,” she says. “We miss that person so deeply. For me, the plant medicine helped bring the grief up from where I was storing it and allowed me to release it.”

After decriminalizing psychedelic mushrooms in 2019, Colorado voters approved Proposition 122 in 2022, allowing psychedelics to be grown and possessed. Once Colorado approved facilitation, Clark knew it was time to add guided psilocybin wellness journeys to her offerings at the TLC Acupuncture & Natural Medicine clinic.

Today, Clark is a licensed psilocybin facilitator that has been green-lighted by the Town of Breckenridge to move forward with psilocybin experiences at her healing center. The reiki master and acupuncturist specializes in death and dying, chronic illness, depression and anxiety. Through acupuncture, she has helped hundreds of patients process grief and trauma and reconnect with their inner selves. She says psilocybin experiences can “reignite vitality, making life feel vibrant and enchanting once more.”

Clark’s training included 150 hours of intensive learning, covering everything from safety and ethics to journey preparation and integration. Clients must be over age 21 and must commit to four appointments. During these sessions, Clark conducts a consultation to go over medical history and any medication or mental health contradictions that might disqualify the client from this type of experience.

She prepares the client for the journey by discussing their desired setting and intention, and designating a responsible post-journey driver. On the actual psilocybin journey day, a minimum of five hours is booked (three hours for a micro-dose session) and clients choose psilocybin in the form of capsules, chocolate or tea. Every journey is different, Clark says, noting that she is there to support clients with eye masks, blankets, music, essential oils and temperature control.

“I’m in the room the whole time,” Clark says. “I do not offer counseling or psychiatric services. I’m there for support, keeping them calm, making sure they’re not getting anxious about the journey itself.”

Clark says it’s important to recognize the legal differences between cannabis and psilocybin in Colorado — you cannot walk into a healing center and purchase psilocybin. It must be administered in the healing center.

The fourth and final appointment is an integration session where Clark works with clients to process what came up for them during their journey. The community response since opening her healing center this past summer has been positive on all fronts, she says, without any push back or skepticism. Her guided psilocybin experiences clientele has mostly fallen between the ages of 40 and 75, and have been working through depression, grief, addiction, end-of-life anxiety, chronic pain, eating disorders and migraines.

“It’s beautiful to see the changes people go through,” Clark says. “Psilocybin creates new pathways in the brain. New ways of thinking. There’s so much anxiety and depression in the world and this is such a great medicine and tool.”

tlcacu.com

Lisa Blake
Writer
@lisananblake | lisablakecreative.com