A Writer Goes Down the Rabbit Hole at Denver’s First Microdosing Cafe

I’m lying on a mattress in a basement off South Broadway. A mask blocks what little light there is, and a loud humming fills my ears. I know this sounds like the setup of a Liam Neeson movie, but I’m not a hostage—just a woman searching for relief in an unusual place.

It’s been about 20 minutes since I ingested two milligrams of psilocybin, aka magic mushrooms, in the form of a powder mixed into a strawberry smoothie, and if I’m going to start feeling things, now is the time, according to our licensed facilitator. Four other people are traveling on their own internal odysseys alongside me at Vivid Minds Cafe, one of the state’s first licensed healing centers following the passage of Proposition 122 in November 2022.

The building is part coffeeshop (which opened in August 2025), part natural medicine center (early March). Co-owners and spouses Manon Manoeuvre and Jeffrey Parton designed the space this way to make psilocybin-assisted therapy more approachable and affordable. Other Front Range healing centers focus on pricey macrodosing journeys (starting around $1,500), but Vivid Minds gives psychedelic-curious Denverites a chance to wade into the microdosing world in a group setting for just $150.

Until recently, I wouldn’t have counted myself among these curious minds. Thanks to my scary-but-effective D.A.R.E. officers, I’ve been too terrified to take more than two ibuprofen, let alone dabble in mushrooms. But burgeoning research into psilocybin has me rethinking my view on psychedelics. Although the evidence is mixed, some studies show that microdosers experience lower levels of anxiety and depression than their non-microdosing counterparts—a perk that’s especially attractive to me.

I’ve been on a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor for about seven years to manage my formerly crippling anxiety. As a child, I would obsessively watch the clock whenever my parents ran errands, convinced that a lengthy absence meant they’d died in a horrific car crash. My anxiety didn’t disappear with age; it only morphed. Now I lie awake wondering if the swollen lymph node in my neck is cancerous. Most of the time, my anxiety disorder is well-managed with medication, but recently it’s been resurging with a vengeance.

Which is why I’m lying here, a lavender-scented pillow beneath my head and a fleece blanket pulled up to my chin, wondering what will happen next. Will my heart start racing? Will scary hallucinations fill my vision? Will they have to wheel me out on a stretcher?

The post-consumption portion of the session began with a brief yoga flow before we settled onto our mattresses for a sound bath. But as the quartz bowls reverberate around me, I feel…nothing. My heart isn’t pounding, I’m not tasting colors, and I don’t anticipate the need for an ambulance. Microdoses are designed to be subperceptual. To see long-term relief, the science suggests microdosing every two to three days. “It’s not really a one-time thing,” Manoeuvre says. “For most people, it works more as a gentle, ongoing practice rather than a single-session fix.”

When the instructor calls us out of our final shavasana, I remove the mask. I had heard one woman crying softly during the sound bath; beside me, a man snores lightly. “Everyone’s experience can look a little different, so it’s not one-size-fits-all,” Manoeuvre says.

While I didn’t expect one 90-minute microdose session to eradicate my anxiety, my mind did feel different. Well, mostly my mindset. I no longer viewed magic mushrooms as a wild party drug or something to be afraid of. Instead, they cracked open a door I didn’t know was there. One I could choose to walk through, or not. Either way, I didn’t fear what was on the other side.

Read More: I Tried Magic Mushrooms for My Mental Health. Here’s What Happened.