Portland’s First Magic Mushroom Dispensary

magic mushroom dispensary

The country’s first over-the-counter magic mushroom dispensary shop is open in Portland — with a semi-legal set-up that flaunts the state’s trailblazing psilocybin therapy legislation. Customers who come to the Shroom House on West Burnside Street can score the psychedelic fungi, which are considered a schedule one substance federally, by showing two forms of ID and filling out an application that asks about depression and anxiety.

The storefronts are hard to miss. In Canada’s biggest cities, dispensaries with names like Fun Guyz and Shroom City display paintings of colorful fungus on their exteriors and invite passersby in to “walk into a new reality.”

Navigating Legality: Understanding Magic Mushroom Dispensaries

While the owners are aware they are taking a big risk, they say they are not worried about police raiding their store. They are not keeping the mushrooms hidden from the police, they advertise them in the newspaper and post their phone number on the website. They also receive a few calls per day from people who want to know more about the mushrooms.

Hodges says that many of the mushroom users who visit his store are first-time users who are micro-dosing — consuming a low “sub-hallucinogenic” dose to feel happy and awake without experiencing any hallucinations. A higher dose can create visual hallucinations such as auras around light, plants that look like they’re breathing and afterimages that change the way you perceive colors.

But others use the mushrooms to deal with serious mental illness, such as PTSD and anxiety. A passer-by who declined to give his last name said he takes one or two bags of mushrooms a month to help cope with symptoms from a head injury he sustained in a woodworking accident five years ago.