Press Release:

Ashland, Oregon — January 14th, 2026 —Confluence Retreats, a nonprofit providing small-group psilocybin retreats under Oregon’s Legal Psilocybin Services Initiative, is pleased to announce a new collaboration with the Carhart-Harris Lab at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF). The partnership will contribute participant data to the CHL Global Psychedelic Survey, a large-scale study examining how psychedelic experiences unfold in real-world settings involving psilocybin, the psychedelic compound found in magic mushrooms.

Since Oregon launched the nation’s first legal psilocybin services framework in 2023, an estimated 15,000 people have already participated in licensed sessions - yet little data exists about what actually happens in these community-based, non-clinical environments.

Oregon is also unique in requiring precisely dosed, lab-grown psilocybin mushrooms, giving researchers an unprecedented opportunity to study psychedelic use in naturalistic settings while maintaining a dosing consistency comparable to clinical trials.

While controlled clinical studies remain essential, most future psychedelic use is expected to occur outside laboratory environments. By contributing structured, multi-timepoint data from its retreat participants, Confluence Retreats is helping UCSF researchers explore how preparation, set and setting, group support, and licensed facilitation shape outcomes within the world’s first regulated psilocybin ecosystem.

Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris, neuroscientist and Director of the Carhart-Harris Lab at UCSF, shared:

“As psychedelic use expands beyond laboratory and clinical settings, it becomes increasingly important to understand how these experiences unfold in real-world contexts. Oregon’s regulated psilocybin services framework presents a unique opportunity to study psychedelic experiences in naturalistic environments while retaining key elements of standardization. This collaboration allows us to learn from community-based use in a careful, systematic way that can meaningfully inform the field.”

This collaboration builds on a long-standing partnership between Confluence’s founder, Myles Katz, and Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris, the study’s Principal Investigator. In 2019, Katz helped facilitate a collaboration between Synthesis Retreats (where he served as co-founder) and Imperial College London, where Dr. Carhart-Harris led the Psychedelic Research Group— later, the Centre for Psychedelic Research. That “Ceremony Study” was one of the earliest efforts to examine psilocybin mushroom experiences in naturalistic settings, offering insights from group psilocybin retreats into communitas, emotional breakthrough, and mental health outcomes outside of clinical trial settings. The new collaboration extends this shared scientific lineage into Oregon, the first place in the world to regulate psychedelic therapy for public use.

Created by the Carhart-Harris Lab at UCSF, the CHL Global Psychedelic Survey collects data from individuals planning to use psychedelics in any setting - at home, at festivals, in underground ceremonies, or, as in Oregon, in legally regulated service centers and retreats. Participants take surveys at several timepoints before and after their psychedelic experience, enabling researchers to track psychological, emotional, and relational outcomes over time. Confluence Retreats will assist retreat participants who opt into the study, minimizing disruption to their retreat experience while allowing them to participate in important scientific research.

Founder Myles Katz emphasized the importance of this collaboration:

“Oregon’s regulated model offers something genuinely new to the research landscape: a chance to observe psilocybin experiences in real-world retreat environments while still using standardized, precisely dosed, lab-grown medicine. We are honored to contribute to research that deepens understanding of both the benefits and risks of psychedelic use outside traditional clinical settings and helps quantify how a retreat model, such as ours, may provide different outcomes than other non-laboratory settings.”

This collaboration also aligns with themes explored in Dr. Carhart-Harris’ forthcoming book, How Psychedelics Work, which examines how emerging policy models - including Oregon’s Measure 109 psilocybin framework - are reshaping the landscape of psychedelic use outside the laboratory. For the book, Confluence Retreats founder Myles Katz was interviewed to contribute perspectives from Oregon’s first-in-the-nation regulatory system, which now serves as the setting for this research partnership.

About Confluence Retreats

Confluence Retreats is a nonprofit psilocybin mushroom retreat provider based in Ashland, Oregon. Founded on the principles of psychological safety, small-group intimacy, and accessibility, Confluence supports up to eight participants per retreat with licensed facilitators, extensive preparation and integration, and nature-based settings that foster reflection and connection. Since its inception in December of 2023, it has become the most highly rated and most-reviewed licensed psilocybin retreat program in the United States.

About the Carhart-Harris Lab at UCSF

The Carhart-Harris Lab at the University of California, San Francisco conducts interdisciplinary research on the effects of psychedelic compounds on the brain, behavior, and mental health. Led by neuroscientist Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris, the lab focuses on understanding how psychedelic experiences interact with psychological, social, and environmental contexts, with an emphasis on rigorous, ethically grounded science. Current research spans clinical, computational, and naturalistic studies aimed at advancing evidence-based approaches to psychedelic-assisted care.