Niko Skievaski

What Colorado’s New Data Collection Bill Means for Psychedelic Therapy - Althea On May 6th, 2025, the Colorado House passed SB25-297—legislation that adds a major new layer to the state’s evolving natural medicine framework. This bill directs the Colorado Department of Public...

🚨 Colorado just passed SB25-297, requiring de-identified data collection from psychedelic healing centers starting in 2026.

It’s a big step toward evidence-based care—but raises real questions about privacy.

Why it matters & how we’re navigating it at Althea: withalthea.com/2025/05/07/w...

This is the “why” behind the work we’re doing at @altheapbc.bsky.social not just helping people feel less bad, but helping them feel more alive.

As I’ve stepped deeper into this work, I’ve come to believe that regulated psychedelic care isn’t just about access to substances — it’s about access to meaning, safety, and human connection.

Psychedelics, when held in the right container, offer more than clinical outcomes. They invite grief to be witnessed, dignity to be restored, and possibility to reemerge.

When we talk about psychedelics in mental health, the headlines often focus on the stats: reduced depression, eased anxiety, fewer PTSD symptoms.

But healing is not just the absence of suffering. Healing is presence. It’s feeling connected again — to yourself, to others, to the world around you.

20 drugs, ranked by harm to the user and society. Psilocybin ranks last, with MDMA and LSD also in the bottom quartile. withalthea.com/2025/02/17/i... @altheapbc.bsky.social

This is a tough one to share. I had tears in my eyes throughout this interview and again as I edited the video and wrote the post.

Oh, and let me know if you're part of the Colorado ecosystem and I'll add you! go.bsky.app/FZB7p4N

An AI Bot for the Colorado Natural Medicine Program The team is developing an AI model trained on Colorado’s Natural Medicine Program regulations to assist with inquiries regarding rules and compliance. Available through a custom GPT applicati…

I made an AI bot to help us understand the CO Natural Medicine Program. It's trained on the law, rules, and guidelines published by DOR and DORA. Ask it all your questions about the program! altheapbc.com/2025/01/29/a...

Does Psilocybin Treat Depression? The FDA has designated psilocybin as a Breakthrough Therapy for treatment-resistant depression and major depressive disorder, prompting clinical trials indicating its effectiveness in reducing symp…

From clinical trials, to dosage and treatment methods, to pharmacology, I attempted to gather a review of psilocybin for depression. Let me know what I missed!

These were the top reasons people sought out facilitated psilocybin services, collected through Althea. altheapbc.com/2025/01/12/c...

Psychedelic Journeyers Assessments to aid in psychedelic journeys.

Psychedelic assisted therapy is now legal in two states. But it's still difficult to find a facilitator that meets client preferences. The market is fragmented.

Althea is starting to match seekers with licensed facilitators in Oregon and (coming soon) to Colorado.
altheapbc.com/journeyers/

Mystical Experiences How do you make sense of a psychedelic journey? These experiences are often described as ineffable or hard to describe. So where to begin? Mystical Experience Questionnaire The revised Mystical Exp…

Anyone have experience with using the Mystical Experience Questionnaire post-journey? I've used it to quantify the experience and bring some structure to the ineffable. Althea provides an easy way to take it and will send a detailed report to help you interpret. altheapbc.com/mystical-exp...

Standardization gives us a pivot point to build upon, sharing what we've seen in the real world to iterate.

I love your question on what could be lost. If a tool is widely adopted and certain people are uniformly screened out because of it, it might create selection bias. What are your thoughts?

Review Board Board members are responsible for collecting feedback from the wider collective and determining how to implement it within the PRAC Tool.

PRAC is utilizing an open source model, so contributions from the community are vital. To start, there will be a Review Board to review change requests and publish each version. Applications are open to join the first review board here: practool.org/review-board/

Psilocybin Risk Assessment Collaborative

The world needs a standardized screening tool for psilocybin use. Each practitioner seems to have their own.

The Psilocybin Risk Assessment Collaborative will build and distribute a screener in an open and collaborative way. Learn more and join the collaborative here: practool.org

Come 2025, Colorado will go live with the nation's second legal psilocybin program. I've been trying to find my Colorado folk here to pull together this starter pack, but it's slim pickings. Let me know if I missed you!
go.bsky.app/FZB7p4N

Oregon Psilocybin Program Last week, we released a set of new features that fundamentally aligned Althea workflows with how the Oregon psilocybin program has unfolded. This not only includes the latest regulatory compliance…

Oregon has the only legal psychedelic program in the country. It's explicitly non-medical, so HIPAA doesn't apply. We had to come up with a new data sharing heuristic from the ground up. I discussed a bit here, as Althea on-boards practitioners in Oregon. altheapbc.com/2024/12/10/o...

Sunrise over Boulder this morning.

Psychedelics: New paradigm in mental health care? - ColoradoBiz With the 2022 passage of Proposition 122 decriminalizing psilocybin mushrooms and other psychedelic substances in Colorado, a new industry is taking shape: psychedelic-assisted therapy.

“We have the potential to treat thousands more patients here in Colorado than have been done in all of the academic trials,” @sthom003.bsky.social says. “We can learn from the experience of these Coloradans.”

coloradobiz.com/psychedelics...

A Thanksgiving tradition?

Psychedelics: Can we call it an industry? - Boulder Weekly Oregon shows that healing centers will be few, likely serve out-of-towners. Boulder Weekly. Psychedelics. Niko Skievaski

Colorado psilocybin healing centers are gearing up for tourist season:

“We’re going to market primarily in the midwest and support our clients with a virtual 12-week program around their journey.”

boulderweekly.com/features/on-...

I cover psychedelics for Boulder Weekly! We're a small paper but I'd appreciate the add! :)

I saw a quote from a malpractice insurer (who recently pulled out of psychedelics) that was 5x more expensive to cover PAT!

PBCs aren't certified, but B-Corps are. Many B-Corps are PBCs though. I don't know any certified B-Corps off the top of my head in this space. I'll send you a DM though.

Naropa cancels psilocybin training course - Boulder Weekly Applicants left with unanswered questions after an email from Naropa cites "unforeseen circumstances" for the unexpected cancellation.

Insurance in the psychedelic space is ripe for a new entrant. Traditional carriers can't handle it. Naropa has to form a new corporate entity because their current provider won't insure their psilocybin training program.
boulderweekly.com/news/naropa-...

Thanks for giving us a place to start!

4/ There is certainly a PBC-precedent in our space with Lykos Therapeutics (FKA MAPS PBC) as the most well known.

Is the PBC the middle ground as we learn how to balance purpose and profits in psychedelics?

3/ At Althea, we went with the PBC route, primarily to take advantage of private investment. This structure enables a PBC to take their public benefit statement into account, along with shareholder value. This enables us to have shareholders, who also need to buy into the public benefit.