7 Signs You’re Ready for Psilocybin Therapy
Do you feel called to explore the healing power of psilocybin mushrooms, but wonder if you are truly ready?
Research has shown that psilocybin-assisted therapy can help people move through mental health struggles, including depression, end-of-life distress, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and alcohol and tobacco use disorder.
Embarking on a healing journey with psilocybin is no small feat. While often illuminating, the experience itself can be challenging and bring up thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations that may be difficult to navigate.
Then the session ends, and the real work begins. Integration. This is where you integrate some of the things that you experienced in the psilocybin journey into your daily life, turning it into long-lasting positive changes and making use of the all-important window of neuroplasticity.
Getting the best results out of the process means being emotionally, physically, and spiritually ready for what’s to come.
While only you can know when the moment is right, if you’re wondering what “ready” looks and feels like, here are some signs it might be the right time for psilocybin therapy.
You Have Already Done Some Kind of Inner Work
Have you explored your inner world?
Before psilocybin therapy, it’s helpful to have already done some work traversing the landscape of who you are beneath the surface.
Inner work can look many different ways. In the context of therapy, it might mean reflecting on unhealthy or dysfunctional behaviors and where they come from, thinking deeply about how you show up in your relationships, or understanding the stories and beliefs behind your emotional triggers.
Psilocybin mushrooms often bring up uncomfortable psychological material that we need to look at and process to be able to move through it. If you’ve never explored your psyche and what makes you who you are, it’s a good idea to do so first.
While therapy is a great way to do this, it’s also possible through meditation and mindfulness, coaching, spiritual work, or other modalities that encourage self-reflection.
Having an understanding of your inner world will also help you clarify your intentions for the journey, as you work together with your therapist.
You Have a Toolkit of Supportive Practices
When you feel overwhelmed, disconnected, or just blah, what do you turn to?
Do you have a toolkit of healthy, supportive practices to help you in these moments?
Psilocybin therapy takes work, and in the aftermath, we may feel emotionally raw, depleted, or overwhelmed by what we experienced.
It’s important to have a set of practices on hand that help you ground and nourish yourself emotionally and spiritually, should this be the case.
Each person has their preferences, but generally supportive practices include meditation, mindful movement such as yoga or dance, breathwork, attending women’s or men’s circles, journaling, and connecting to nature.
These acts of self-care help us listen to our inner world and what we need, and tap into the wisdom of our body.
You Have Experienced an Altered State Before
You don’t have to have taken psychedelics before to undergo psilocybin therapy. But having experienced some kind of altered state where you felt present and connected to your body, or to a greater sense of meaning, is helpful.
This could have been through breathwork, meditation, ecstatic dance, shamanic journeying, sound healing, or even long-distance running. Or, of course, previous experience with psychedelics and other mind-enhancing substances.
Having felt what it’s like to be in a “trance state” gives you some familiarity with the psychedelic experience, and helps you feel safer and more grounded going into a psilocybin journey.
You Have a Support Network
When life gets hard, do you have people around you that you can lean on for support?
Whether a therapist, family members, or close and trusted friends, having people who support your journey and understand why you’re seeking out psychedelic therapy is crucial.
Following psilocybin therapy, you may need extra emotional support as you integrate the journey and navigate the content that it brought up. It’s crucial to have people around you who can provide this support should you need it.
You Have Time and Space to Prepare and Integrate
Are you looking at your packed schedule, wondering where you could find a day to squeeze in the psilocybin session?
Or could you create space in the weeks before and after a psilocybin journey to properly prepare and integrate the experience?
In the weeks and months leading up to a psilocybin session, you should have time in your schedule to reflect and journal on your intentions, and engage in practices that help you ground and connect to your body.
It’s important to go into your session with a sense of safety and a regulated nervous system, which is often incongruent with the pace and demands of modern life.
Creating space ahead of a journey might look like taking time off work, saying no to social or family obligations, or arranging childcare so you can focus on yourself.
Straight after a psilocybin session, you should have enough time – ideally a couple of days – to “land” before going straight back to your usual routine.
In the following weeks and months, it’s a good idea to have extra space in your schedule so you can ground in the insights, continue the therapeutic process, and make the changes you seek to make.
You Understand the Limitations and Risks of Psilocybin Mushroom Work
If you are hoping that psilocybin mushrooms will act as a magic pill that will solve all of your problems… It’s time to have a deeper conversation with your provider.
Psilocybin mushrooms are one of many tools that we have in our toolbox. And they’re not a catch-all. While effective for depression, folks struggling with certain types of PTSD may be better off with another medicine or modality.
Check out this podcast to learn more about specific mental health struggles psilocybin can help with.
And most importantly, they help us when administered alongside ongoing talk therapy and within the context of a safe therapeutic relationship.
Mushrooms also aren’t without risks. While the physiological risks are low when folks are screened properly, sometimes people can enter into a period of emotional or psychological destabilization following psilocybin therapy.
This often ultimately leads to breakthroughs in the person’s healing journey, but it can feel overwhelming at the time, and requires them to have proper support and space to process.
You should speak to your psilocybin therapist or facilitator about the limitations of psilocybin mushrooms and get clear on what they are best suited to help with.
That Inner Voice is Saying, “It’s Time”
OK, let’s say you’ve checked off all of the above signs.
You’re deeply committed to your healing journey, you have a supportive community and environment in place, and you’re clear on your path ahead.
Do you have that intuitive feeling – a deeper sense of knowing – that’s telling you: it’s time?
Maybe it comes to you in dreams. Or when you’re spending time in nature. When you’re meditating. Or even when you’re doing chores.
This is a knowing that goes beyond cognitive understanding and reason. It’s felt in the body. Perhaps an openness, a warmth, or a sense of calm when you are still and ask yourself: Is now the right time?
It’s okay to feel nervous or even a bit of fear before taking psilocybin. But when it’s right, there should be an internal, intuitive nudge that’s telling you – this will be good for you, even if you’re scared.
Explore Legal Psilocybin Therapy in Colorado
Ultimately, only you will know when it’s the right time to start a process with psilocybin-assisted therapy. Hopefully, these guidelines have helped to bring you closer to that inner knowing.
If you’re based in Colorado and are looking for licensed practitioners to support you through psilocybin therapy, we are accepting client applications at our center in Fort Collins as of August 2025.
Fill out the interest form, and we will reach out to you to schedule an initial consultation. Find more information on our approach to psilocybin-assisted therapy here.