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…