On a picturesque autumn evening in early November, the sunset belied a briskness to the Denver breeze. But inside a nondescript brick building downtown, anticipation was heating up the air.
A group of 25 people sat in a circle on the floor, each with a ramen spoon full of a brownish paste. Among them was Rabbi Ben Gorelick, a fast-talking 42-year-old with a multi-colored mohawk. On that night, Gorelick’s tempo was a couple beats slower than usual as he calmly instructed those in the room to consume what was on the spoon — a customized mixture of psychedelic mushroom extract — and find a spot to lay on the floor as they prepared to “drop in” during a guided breathing exercise.
The people in the room were part of a spiritual group called The Sacred Tribe, which Gorelick founded in 2018 and which since has grown to more than 270 members. About once a month, Gorelick hosts a weekend-long retreat that creates space for people to explore “the relationship to self, community and God” using psilocybin mushrooms that his team grows in Denver.
“This is not what a normal conservative or reform synagogue looks like,” said Gorelick, adding that his approach falls in line with Kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism. “The goal is not to blast people to the moon. Itap to give people just enough of a threshold dose that they have that openness to connecting.”
Scenes like this have become more commonplace in the American underground, as shrooms and other psychedelics have experienced increased exposure and a recent renaissance in the research of their potential medical benefits. Denver, which became the first city to decriminalize personal possession and consumption of psilocybin in 2019, has been a leader in this movement and helped inspire a wave of similar initiatives from Oakland, California, to Washington, D.C.
— Full story via Tiney Ricciardi, The Denver Post
Mushroom rabbi grows ceremonial psilocybin for Denver congregation — but is that legal?
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