Startup hopes to be at forefront of psilocybin cultivation and treatment

By Olivia Young

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    Colorado (KCNC) — The State of Colorado is continuing to license businesses that will provide psilocybin therapy, but so far, only a handful of licenses have been given out.

The state has approved one standard healing center, one manufacturer and one testing facility. Two cultivation licenses have been handed out, with nine more pending. One of those pending applications belongs to startup Entheogyn.

Entheogyn co-founders Shane Schoolman and Michael Heim believe in the healing power of mushrooms.

“These complex chemicals that have this beneficial interaction with the human biology are unique and diverse,” said Schoolman, who is also the chief scientist at Entheogyn.

In 2021, the pair founded Mycolove Farm, along with former Denver Bronco Jake Plummer, where they grow and extract functional mushrooms like lion’s mane and reishi.

“We built Mycolove love for healing. We want to heal the world,” Schoolman said.

But when Colorado legalized psychedelic mushrooms in therapeutic settings, Schoolman and Heim created a new startup, Entheogyn.

“We are already doing a lot of this work, so why not step into it and raise the bar and bring quality and a certain element of ethics to it?” said Heim, who also serves as chief mycologist at Entheogyn.

“Entheogyn aims to be a vertically integrated psychedelic company, from cultivation to formulation to post-clinical care,” Schoolman said. “We want to make safe, effective, psychedelic-assisted therapy treatments accessible at the end of the day. And the mission for Entheogyn is to transform mental health through integration of clinical science as well as culturally informed practices.”

Entheogyn has already secured a natural medicine business owner’s license from the state, but licenses for cultivation, manufacturing and a healing center of their own are pending.

Entheogyn will have two locations, one will be a healing center where clients receive guided psilocybin therapy. Another will be a facility for psilocybin cultivation and product manufacturing, which is governed by state specifications and will need to be tested by a licensed third party.

“We want to be able to cultivate them in a way where we’re able to target therapeutic outcomes specifically, whether that’s PTSD, addiction, whatever complex mental health or personal transformation,” Schoolman said.

Once licensed, Entheogyn will be able to supply its own and other Colorado healing centers with psilocybin.

Long term, Entheogyn hopes to bring both locations together. They also want to develop a digital therapeutic platform.

“Our long-term goal is to have a vertically integrated center where it’s housing all of these, as well as post-integration aspects, whether that’s talk therapy or yoga or meditation, what have you post-treatment. We want to have like a centralized facility where you can sort of see the transparency, and maybe see the mushrooms as we cultivate them, see the product manufacturing and then experience all in one spot,” said Schoolman.

“Traditionally, you know, lots of cultures have used these for medicine. And there’s a certain phobia in the West about these, you know, beautiful organisms,” said Heim. “Oh, my God, is it going to hurt me, or am I going to trip? And there’s a huge stigma around this subject.”

He believes there is a lot of stigma around the use of both functional and psychedelic mushrooms, but said there’s a long history of the medicine’s use in Indigenous traditions. Entheogyn wants their work to be culturally informed.

“I’m definitely focused on trying to establish some of those relationships with some of our Indigenous communities. And like Shane said, we want to make it accessible,” Heim said.

Mycolove will remain a separate company focused on functional mushrooms.

“We want to bring awareness to the healing powers of fungi in general as a whole, yeah, not just psychedelic, but also functional fungi. I think it’s really important that we transform those stigmas and remove barriers of it, of accessibility for personal healing,” Schoolman said.

Heim and Schoolman say it has been challenging to secure a location for their facilities, since there are state and local restrictions on natural medicine centers. Entheogyn hopes to open in Boulder County.

Once Entheogyn secures a lease for their cultivation and healing centers and gets license approval from the state, they hope to open this summer.

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