DENVER – As thousands of people attend the Psychedelic Science Conference at the Colorado Convention Center this week, an organization called Moms on Mushrooms wants to get the word out about what they're doing to support mothers who use psychedelics.
“We are a community of mothers who want to gather around the sacred use working with psychedelics, specifically microdosing. And we started a year ago and our community has grown to almost over 600 women actually. We provide education and a safe place to create an intentional practice with psychedelic medicine,” said Tracey Tee, founder of Moms on Mushrooms.
Tee said the use of psychedelics changed her life by helping her heal and work through mental health issues.
“But when I was learning how to work with it, what I understood was that it's different from us — we come to this medicine differently, we come to it with different concerns, we heal differently. We don't have time to go to three-week Ayahuasca retreats in the Amazon rainforest, we don't go to yoga retreats in Bali,” Tee said.
Tee said Moms on Mushrooms is providing a support group for women and working to make psychedelics more accessible to moms.
“There's the overwhelm with being a mom, there's the overwhelm of being supermom in this modern society and having to do everything,” Tee said. “And I think there's an urgency and a craving for women to go deeper and like to talk to each other on a soul level.”
Anastasia Lopes, Moms on Mushrooms head of facilitation and integration, said she wants mothers who are struggling with mental health issues and are interested in psychedelics to know they’re not alone.
“For me, I was a young mom. I was breastfeeding my child and, you know, taking care of others through this vessel of my own body. And so having psilocybin as an ally to help me, like reconnect to myself, was a really powerful thing,” Lopes said. “We need a village. That’s what Moms on Mushrooms provides.”
In Colorado, psilocybin was decriminalized in 2022. But federally, psilocybin is still considered a schedule 1 drug with no accepted medical use.
“With microdosing, specifically, we're not high. So you're taking a sub-perceptual dose of psychedelic medicine so you're not feeling it. There's no hallucinogenic effects,” Tee said. “We don't want to be checking out — we're actually dialing in.”
Moms on Mushrooms will participate in the Millions of Moms event outside the Colorado Convention Center on Friday, June 23rd at 11 a.m.
During the event, participants will call for more comprehensive research into psychedelics.
