From Legacy Growers to Legal Frameworks: Shaping New Mexico’s Psilocybin Future
Ancient Roots of Psilocybin and Global Traditions
For millennia, psilocybin mushrooms have flourished across the world, honored as allies in healing, ceremony, and connection. Here in New Mexico, where cultures and traditions overlap in rich and complex ways, we now stand at the threshold of weaving this ancient medicine into a modern framework.
Public Comment on New Mexico’s Medical Psilocybin Program
I recently had the opportunity to provide public comment at the New Mexico Department of Health’s Listening Sessions for the Medical Psilocybin Program. In my remarks, I urged the Department to ensure that traditional healers are included in the program’s design.
As I shared in my testimony:
“As a community herbalist (yerbera) in New Mexico, I urge the Department to create a pathway for culturally competent, non-licensed facilitators to participate in the psilocybin program. Our community-based healing practices are safe, structured, and deeply rooted in New Mexico’s heritage. The rules should include alternative training and certification routes for traditional healers, recognition of ceremonial settings as approved therapeutic environments, and representation of traditional practitioners on the Advisory Board. This will ensure the program reflects our state’s diversity and cultural history.”
Learning from Other States’ Psilocybin Programs
Our communities deserve to have these medicines held in ways that reflect our culture and history. As New Mexico shapes its program, we must also learn from the oversights of other states — where traditional practitioners were left out of the conversation, limiting the inclusivity and effectiveness of their programs.
Honoring Multiple Pathways to Psilocybin Healing
There will always be people who prefer a more clinical setting, guided by a licensed therapist or medical provider — and that is valid. But there will also always be people who feel more at home being guided by a trusted community herbalist, a curandera, a tribal elder, or other religious or spiritual leader.
All New Mexicans deserve the opportunity to choose their set, setting, and facilitator. That means the program must create a pathway for culturally trained, non-licensed facilitators to qualify as clinicians through alternative certification.
Gratitude for Legacy Growers and Underground Psilocybin Providers
For us, this is not just theory — it’s part of our life. My husband, Cory Brown, is a mycologist who has been cultivating psilocybin since the late 1990s. Guided by our moral compass, we know that just because something is written into law doesn't mean that it's right and justified. He is part of the legacy of underground providers, continuing the work of those who kept these medicines alive following prohibition. So much of where we are today is thanks to those who trusted their inner North Star and held this work with courage, long before laws began to shift.
Community Conversations: The Enchanted State at the Lensic
We recently attended The Enchanted State: Exploring New Mexico’s Psychedelic Future, hosted by Limina Foundation at the Lensic. It was a powerful conversation about how these ancient practices can meet the moment we are living in now — a moment defined by both crisis and opportunity, by the need for healing and the responsibility to do this work wisely.
An Invitation to Understanding Psilocybin in New Mexico
And finally, to those who may feel uncomfortable about psilocybin medicine: please know two things. First, even prior to the Medical Psilocybin Act being passed, it was already legal in New Mexico to grow psilocybin mushrooms. And second, if — like us — you have religious exemption, you are also free to consume them. My invitation is simple: even if this path is not for you, please hold back judgment. These medicines deserve respect, and so do the people who work with them in good faith.
Looking Ahead: Building a Culturally Inclusive Psilocybin Program
New Mexico has an opportunity to create something unique — a psilocybin program that honors both science and spirit, modern practice and ancestral wisdom. My greatest hope is that we take it.
