Welcome to Mushroom Illuminations, a portal for self-discovery and transformation through the safe, legal, and well-regulated use of psilocybin mushrooms.
I’m Johnny Dwork, one of the first state-licensed Psilocybin Facilitators in the U.S. I provide expertly facilitated psilocybin experiences designed for spiritual insight, physical and emotional well-being, and creative breakthroughs. My team and I provide a well-structured, supportive environment where your journey unfolds with clarity, intention, and care.
For more than forty years, I’ve facilitated transformational experiences in non-ordinary states of consciousness—ranging from group retreats and vision quests to private, individual journeys. My facilitation approach is rooted in compassion, integrity, curiosity, and profound respect for the extraordinary intelligence accessible through these powerful fungi.
You can learn more about my experience here.
My philosophy and life mission: to show up as The Hero archetype in the adventure of my life and to help my clients do the same in theirs.
I believe every human possesses an innate vital force— a deep drive toward wholeness and meaning. When awakened, this force guides us toward well-being, personal growth, and empowerment.
Following Oregon’s well-regulated Psilocybin model, I practice a non-directive approach, allowing your Inner Healer to lead the way. This honors your autonomy, moving beyond the hierarchical power dynamics often found in Western healthcare.
My work is deeply informed by Kylea Taylor’s “Ethics in Caring,” ensuring a facilitation practice that is safe, ethical, and profoundly supportive. It is my responsibility and profound honor to hold space for those who step into this courageous, life-changing work.
“Psychedelics allow us to rise to higher levels of perception and observe problems from another perspective. Not only that, but they also provide a direct personal and emotional experience of what it feels like to transcend those layers of suffering.”
Benefits
Potential Benefits of a Psilocybin Experience
Cutting-edge neuroscience now confirms what indigenous wisdom traditions have known for millennia: psilocybin has the potential to catalyze profound healing and transformation when used in the right setting. Groundbreaking research from Johns Hopkins University, NYU, and Imperial College London has demonstrated psilocybin’s ability to:
- Promote emotional resilience & well-being through neuroplasticity | More here
- Foster deep spiritual and mystical experiences with long-lasting positive effects | More here
- Enhance creativity, problem-solving, and cognitive flexibility | More here
- Expand mindfulness and self-awareness, fostering personal growth | More here
- Alleviate anxiety and depression – including treatment-resistant depression | More here
- Interrupt patterns of addiction, offering breakthroughs for substance use disorders | More here
Oregon state law permits the regulated use of psilocybin to address mental and emotional health challenges and also to cultivate creative expression, spiritual insight, and personal growth. This may include exploring new ways in which to:
- Reconnect with a deeper sense of purpose, vitality, and inner wisdom.
- Expand your artistic or athletic practices.
- Cultivate new relationship and/or business strategies.
- Deepen interpersonal connections.
- Prepare for major life transitions including end-of-life.
I specialize in supporting clients in pursuit of these wellness benefits, drawing on my life experience as a world champion athlete, successful entrepreneur, visionary artist, minister, empowerment facilitator and community leader.
If you are curious about the possibility of having me serve as your Psilocybin Experience guide, please get in touch via the contact form at this website. I’m happy to set up a complimentary Zoom call so we can begin to explore this possibility.
I currently facilitate psilocybin experiences at the InnerTrek Psilocybin Service Facility in Portland, Oregon, which is the gold-standard facility on the North American continent. Once you and I have connected and have decided we want to work together, you can sign up to do sessions with me.
Protocol
Choose the Protocol That is Best For You
Individual or Group Sessions
You may choose to experience your psilocybin journey alone, with me as your guide, or you may choose to do the journey work in a group setting, which would be co-facilitated by me and my highly accomplished colleagues at www.Innertrek.org. Generally speaking, 3-day-long group sessions offer the additional benefits of two Psilocybin experiences and a full integration day.
Single Sessions or Multiple-Experience Sessions
A single full-dose session can have profound, life-altering effects, and that may be enough for you. But if you choose, we can set up a series of journeys to deepen your growth.
For those who are new to psychedelics, I will sometimes suggest an initial, small-dose session before your full-dose session(s), or, as described above, a three-day group experience.
Making the decision to take a full dose of Psilocybin with the right mindset and in a proper setting can invoke the archetype of ‘The Hero’ within us. A serious commitment to engage this potentially empowering modality can also offer evidence that our ‘Innate Inner Healer’ is actively striving for greater awareness and wholeness. Regardless of the outcome, this process can serve as validation of hope in action.
“Johnny is consistently one of the most positive, insightful, and kind forces in my life. Congratulations to anyone that is able to cross paths with the helpful and attuned force-for-good that is Johnny Dwork.”
The Process
How Does This Process Work?
All full-dose psilocybin experiences within the Oregon model follow a specific protocol to ensure a safe and meaningful experience:
Health Assessment and Qualification
There are three conditions that exclude someone from being able to access psilocybin services:
- Having used the prescription drug Lithium in the past 30 days,
- Having thoughts of causing harm, or wanting to cause harm, to self or others,
- Having been diagnosed with active psychosis or treated for active psychosis.
Additionally, there are some mental health, family history, and medical considerations that may not necessarily exclude someone from participation, but that may suggest a need for potential clients to reach out to trained experts for further discussion. Visit the Oregon Health Administration’s website for more information and to see their Client Intake Form.
Thoughtful Consideration
Once you have determined that you are not limited by the three conditions described above, your journey begins with a brief, complimentary, private consultation during which we begin to discuss your intentions, prior experience with psychedelics, and any relevant personal history. This conversation helps determine if this path is right for you and whether we are well-suited to embark on this journey together. Certain conditions, such as eating disorders, require specialized care beyond my scope of practice. If our consultation determines that you would be best served by one of my colleagues, I will refer you to them.
Intake
You will apply with either facilities or facilitators by first filling out a very detailed health questionnaire. Once you pass the health screening assessment you will begin an orientation process with a facilitator by phone and/or zoom video call. The facilitator may suggest further screening and/or permission to consult with your healthcare team to further ensure that you are healthy enough to do this work. The facilitator may also suggest that you engage in some form of additional preparatory counseling. Once your health and stability are fully confirmed you can choose a facilitation program and schedule dates.
Orientation
You will then undergo one to three orientation sessions (via Zoom) to prepare you for the experience(s). Facilitators may encourage you to start journaling and practice a daily breath-centered meditation practice in order to most effectively prepare. Depending on your personal goals and expectations and in consultation with your facilitator, you can choose the intensity of your experience(s). Dosages may range from sub-threshold microdoses to full-strength doses.
The Experience
You will meet with the facilitator(s) at the facility the day before your experience for the final orientation session. You will then arrive at the facility on the morning of the journey. Full dose experiences usually last 6-8 hours. Clients are encouraged to take off two days before returning to their work and life responsibilities.
Integration
This is the post-journey phase of the process in which you begin to make sense of what happened during the journey and work to integrate this new awareness into your daily life. All clients are encouraged to do one or two integration sessions with their facilitator one to seven days after the experience. Facilitators may encourage you to do more integration work, which may include therapeutic counseling.
Psilocybin Resources
How to Choose a Psilocybin Facilitator
The Healing Advocacy Fund has published a superb guide to finding a licensed Psilocybin Facilitator in Oregon that best suits your personal needs.
What do Psilocybin Services Cost?
Private, one-on-one psilocybin sessions range from $1500 – $2800. This includes the $700/day space rental fee, and the facilitation cost. Group retreat sessions are 3-4 days long. The cost, starting at $1800, is event dependent.
At this time, health insurance does not cover Psilocybin facilitation or the cost of the mushrooms. Health insurance may cover integration counseling support after the facilitation process is complete. Those who are low-income and/or in systemically marginalized groups (BIPOC) may apply for sliding-scale fees and, in some cases, scholarships.
What do Psilocybin Services Cost?
- A profoundly inspirational interview with one of the first people to engage Oregon’s Psilocybin Service, an 88-year-old Oregonian who turned to Psilocybin to heal from decades-old trauma.
- Sam Harris’ Mushroom Experience – An articulate description of one person’s “heroic level” Psilocybin experience.
- Michael Pollan’s Mushroom Experience – In the second half of this short talk, Michael describes a strong psilocybin journey he experienced.
Preparing for Your Psilocybin Experience
Robin Carhart-Harris is widely considered the leading psychedelic scientist on the planet today. His Youtube channel has many excellent educational videos:
Code of Ethics
My work with clients is guided by the Oregon Psilocybin Services code of ethics
Oregon Psilocybin Services Website
I consider it a profound honor and a responsibility of the highest order to be entrusted with the care of clients who do this courageous work.
I serve my clients with respect and I honor the intelligence of each person’s inner healer.
About Johnny Dwork
In early 1973, shortly after my traditional religious coming-of-age ceremony, I had my first visionary plant medicine experience, which blew the frame off my very limited world-view and triggered a passionate pursuit of self-actualization.
Shortly thereafter, during a series of life-changing psilocybin journeys, I received visionary insights that empowered me to co-create the sport/art form of “Flying Disc Freestyle,” and then become a world champion in that form. Further empowered by psilocybin’s visionary insights, I went on to earn the world’s only Bachelor of Arts degree in “Flying Disc Studies.”
This psychedelically informed path, from uninspired student to ever-curious, visionary outlier at the top of my field, became the norm for me as I embarked on a series of unusual, challenging, highly rewarding careers in widely disparate professions that afforded me the ability to consistently show up as the Hero archetype in the journey of my life. As this life path eventually led me to be of service to others, I began life-coaching and presenting workshops on how we can live our dreams.
I facilitated my first group visionary experience in early 1979. This led to the creation of a wide variety of immersive experiences with leading visionary musicians, artists and facilitators of the time. In 1982, I began hosting all-night-long vision quest retreats. Over a 17-year span 800 people safely took part in those life-changing journeys.
In 1984 I attended a psychology conference where a world-class assemblage of cultural visionaries including Ram Dass and Dr. Timothy Leary talked about the interwoven fields of spirituality, health counseling and the psychedelic sciences. Deeply inspired by what I learned at that conference and wanting to learn more from these visionary giants, I co-founded a company that recorded lectures at the Omega Institute, The Open Center, the Association of Humanistic Psychology, The Association of Transpersonal Psychology and the New York Academy of Sciences. This put me at the feet of innovative thought leaders including Joseph Campbell, The Dalai Lama, Ram Dass, Dr. Tim Leary, Stan Grof, Terence McKenna, Ralph Metzner, Tony Robbins, Andrew Weil and Michael Harner. I eventually went on to collaborate with Dr. Leary, combining my visionary multimedia show with his lectures.
I then moved west to found Peak Experience Productions in order to produce large-scale, mythic-theme-based, multi-day-long music and performance-art festivals that were designed for audiences who sought safe, life-changing, visionary peak experiences in a community setting. Through these events, thousands of participants each year came to see their life journeys in a mythic/heroic context.
Starting in 2003 I began producing and co-facilitating sober and inebriant-free Sacred Fire Circle retreats in which participants tend an all-night fire for three continuous nights. It is commonplace for this practice to trigger some of the same profoundly transformative shifts that happen through sacred medicine journeys.
All along this path I have served as an ordained minister in the Universal Life Church, providing my communities with a wide variety of non-denominational, spiritual rituals, and ceremonies, including weddings, memorials, and private consultations.
In 2019 I began working in support of Oregon’s Measure 109 campaign, also known as the Oregon Psilocybin Services Act. This ballot measure passed in 2020. I then completed the first-ever Psilocybin Services Facilitator training program with InnerTrek. In the summer of 2023 I became one of the first state government-licensed Psilocybin Facilitators.