Now Welcoming Clients: Psilocybin-Assisted Therapy at PIPS
A new chapter in psychedelic-assisted care in Oregon — and we’d love for you to be part of it.
After years of research, training, and careful planning, we’re excited to share something we’ve been working toward for a long time: the Portland Institute for Psychedelic Science (PIPS) is now offering psilocybin-assisted therapy services, in collaboration with our affiliated nonprofit, Northwest Psychedelic Services (NWPS).
We’ve started taking referrals. Several clients have already been seen. And we couldn’t be more glad to open this door.
What we’re offering
Oregon is one of the few places in the country where adults can legally access psilocybin in a supervised setting. It’s a remarkable opportunity. But the law that created Oregon Psilocybin Services (OPS) is intentionally narrow: by design, OPS is not health care, and facilitators are not required to be mental health providers. That leaves a meaningful gap for people who are seeking help with anxiety, depression, trauma, grief, or other concerns and who want the kind of psychological preparation and follow-up that the research suggests really matters.
That’s the gap we’re built to fill.
At PIPS, psilocybin-assisted therapy means structured psychotherapy with a licensed clinician before, during, and after a psilocybin session. Psychotherapy can occur at our clinic or via telehealth, while the psilocybin session occurs at a licensed Oregon service center in Portland. The therapy and the psilocybin experience are planned together, with one shared focus: your wellbeing and your goals. Insurance can typically cover the psychotherapy portion of your care when it’s tied to a diagnosed mental health condition.
It’s the kind of care our team has spent years delivering inside clinical trials. Now we’re bringing that same rigor, and the same warmth, into our outpatient practice.
How it works
We’ve organized our care around three phases that flow naturally into one another:
1. Consultation and assessment. We start with a thorough conversation about your history, your goals, what you’ve tried before, and what you’re hoping for. We’ll talk about whether psilocybin is likely to be a good fit, what the risks and benefits look like for you specifically, and how this might sit alongside the rest of your care. If it’s not the right path, we’ll be honest about that and help you think through other options. For any risk factors we identify, we’ll help you develop a plan to mitigate them.
2. Your psilocybin session through OPS. If we decide together to move forward, we’ll help you plan your psilocybin session. You can have the option to work with your therapist as your facilitator during the psychedelic experience itself.
3. Integration and ongoing support. This is where the real work of change usually lives. After your session, we’ll meet to make sense of what came up (the emotions, memories, insights, and questions) and translate those into something durable in your life: in your relationships, your habits, your sense of self. We draw on evidence-based methods refined through years of clinical-trial experience to help short-term shifts become lasting change.
Why this team, why now
We’re a group of clinicians and researchers who have spent years inside the studies that built the field — and inside the work that built Oregon Psilocybin Services. Members of our team have been involved with OPS since its earliest days, serving on its rules advisory committees, helping shape the standards that now govern the program, and teaching one of the first cohorts of facilitators in the state. To date, our clinicians have overseen more than 300 supervised psilocybin sessions.
That foundation sits alongside a wider history with psychedelic and adjacent therapies. We’ve guided psilocybin retreats for years, delivered ketamine-assisted therapy, and contributed to the scientific literature on shame, self-compassion, and psychedelic-assisted treatment. And we’ve recently completed our clinical trial of MDMA-assisted therapy for Social Anxiety Disorder (SAMATI), with results that exceeded what we typically see in SAD treatment.
We share that because it shapes how we work with you. We know what careful screening looks like. We know how to prepare someone for an experience that can be intense, disorienting, and meaningful all at once. We know how to support the messy, beautiful, slow process of integrating what comes up afterward. And we know the limits of any single experience, which is why we emphasize the therapeutic relationship that surrounds it.
We’re also part of a growing community. There’s a lot happening in Portland and the broader Northwest right now, and our goal isn’t to do this alone, it’s to help build the ecosystem that makes safe, ethical, accessible psychedelic-assisted therapy possible for the people who need it.
Building toward broader access
Our affiliated nonprofit, Northwest Psychedelic Services, is part of how we’re trying to widen the door. A portion of every NWPS session fee is set aside as a scholarship fund that we hope to announce soon.
Curious whether this is right for you?
If you’ve been wondering about psilocybin-assisted therapy, for yourself, or for someone you love, we’d be glad to talk. There’s no pressure and no obligation. The first step is a conversation: we’ll listen, we’ll answer your questions honestly, and together we’ll figure out whether this is the right path for you.
Ready to start, or just have questions?
Talk to a clinician at PIPS | pips@portlandpsychotherapy.com | (503) 281-4852
3700 N Williams Ave, Portland, OR 97227
We’re glad you’re here. We’re glad this work is finally available in Oregon. And we’re glad to do it with you.