Naropa’s Center for Psychedelic Studies (NCPS) will no longer be affiliated with the university, it announced Monday.
The new independent entity, renamed Memoru Center for Visionary Healing Arts, will expand the center’s offerings to include clinical care and research in addition to training in psychedelic-assisted therapies, according to a Dec. 16 release. The founding NCPS team is teaming up to launch the center with Boulder-based therapists and researchers who previously worked on Lykos Therapeutics and Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) clinical trials for MDMA-assisted therapy.
A Boulder-based clinic offering psilocybin and ketamine therapies will likely open in the first half of 2025, according to the center’s director, Joe Harrison.
“It creates a more overall robust program,” he said in a phone call with Boulder Weekly. “The clinical care, actually delivering the medicine and doing the practicums, was impossible to do under the university umbrella."
“Psilocybin is a federally illegal drug,” Harrison said. “So even though it's legal in the state of Colorado, it would have put that federal funding in jeopardy for the university.”
The announcement comes after the university in November paused its psilocybin facilitator training, scheduled to begin January 2025, due to insurance coverage issues. Harrison said the center is now “reassessing” whether that program will happen.
“The market seems to be shifting toward more advanced trainings,” he said. “So we may replace the psilocybin facilitator training program” with more focused, high-level programs, such as for end-of-life care or veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
The center’s foundational Certificate of Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies program (CPAT) will continue and will also meet the state’s requirements for psilocybin facilitator certification, he said: a 40-hour practicum in addition to 150-hours of instruction.
The new center has inherited Naropa’s state license to offer psilocybin facilitator training, and is in the process of transferring the university’s Oregon certification.
Apart from the Bachelor of Arts Psychedelic Studies Minor, which will remain at the university, all NCPS staff will now be part of the new organization, and current NCPS students “will not be impacted,” according to the release,
Harrison said the clinic will be ”experimenting with our clinical models over the next three years” to find therapy models that are more accessible and affordable.