The festival, slated for June 9 at ReelWorks Denver, is hailed as the city's "first psychedelic mushrooms festival" by co-founders Jonathan Cherkoss and Eric Burden.
"This is more so a cultural celebration. It's really like a festival, so we're going to have live music, food trucks, vendors, art and things like that," Cherkoss explains. "We will have mushrooms on display, grow bags and things like that. Basically, whatever we're allowed to do under the Natural Medicine Health Act and Senate Bill 290 is our barometer."
Colorado voters approved the Natural Medicine Health Act in the November 2022 election, decriminalizing the cultivation, use and sharing of psilocybin mushrooms, DMT, ibogaine and mescaline while also legalizing the medical use of psilocybin. Senate Bill 290, passed in 2023, solidified the Natural Medicine Health Act while adding more guardrails for ibogaine, but the sharing and possession rules for psilocybin remained in place and without limits — as long as it's not for sale.
Laws and rules surrounding psychedelics are still under development or recently passed, and largely unknown to the general public. So Cherkoss and Burden hope that Shroom Fest attendees will learn a thing or two about proper psilocybin use and facilitation while also having fun. If a vendor chooses to share a microdose of psilocybin for free with an attendee, all of whom must be 21 or older, that's legal, they point out.
"You can come out, party and have a good time. There will be education, vendors and all sorts of good stuff there, but it's not so focused on boring things, like walking around and doing a big lap around the area," Burden says. "We want to kind of escape that conference- and lecture-style thing, and have more of a community where people can loosen up their ties and have some fun."
However, public consumption of psilocybin is still illegal in Colorado, they note, and won't be allowed at Shroom Fest.
Cherkoss and Burden aren't yet ready to announce the musical lineup, but promise there will be plenty of live music at the outside portion of the venue on Sunday, June 9, as well as a handful of food trucks, a full bar and around forty vendors. Tickets go on sale Thursday, February 28, starting at $55 (but they will go up to $65 after early-bird sales end).
Psychedelic Events in Colorado
Events allowing the display and sharing of psilocybin mushrooms have already taken place on a smaller scale in Denver, and both men have experience in putting on fungi-centric events. Cherkoss helped organize Colorado's first public magic mushroom growing competition last year, while Burden is the founder of Denver Spore Company, a Denver-based mycology and mushroom spore business."The real purpose of this is to make an accessible, fun event for everybody. I don't see a reason that we would need to hide behind calling it something that it's not. I want this just to be a mushroom festival," Cherkoss says. "With it being a community-focused event, a lot of people are really invested in the success of this program."
Colorado is still crafting regulations to create the state's new framework for medical psilocybin and laws surrounding DMT, ibogaine, mescaline and psilocybin, which are all currently decriminalized in Colorado. Much of the work falls on elected officials and an advisory board with the state Department of Regulatory Agencies, while the City of Denver and Colorado's new Natural Medicine Division, an arm of the Department of Revenue, are also holding rulemaking discussions for upcoming psilocybin regulations.
As the state continues to craft rules and regulations, entrepreneurs and psychedelics professionals have flocked to Colorado over the past two years to launch businesses, conduct research or practice forms of healing and ceremonial use, especially those involving psilocybin. Psychedelic Science, a conference held every other year by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, attracted around 12,000 people to the Colorado Convention Center last year. According to MAPS, Psychedelic Science is coming back to Denver in 2025.
PsyCon, another psychedelics industry conference, was also held at the Colorado Convention Center last year. Organizers recently announced that PsyCon would return to the convention center this October. The city is home to smaller psychedelic-centric events — from activism gatherings and cultivation classes to private psychedelic yoga sessions — throughout the year as well.
Denver was the first city in the country to decriminalize psilocybin at the local level in 2019, and Colorado was the second state (behind Oregon) to legalize medical psilocybin (and the first to decriminalize certain psychedelics). According to Cherkoss, Colorado has earned a spot at the top for events targeting the psychedelics space.
"I am surprised whenever I see psychedelic conferences or events happening in states like Nevada, New Mexico and places where things are not legalized. These places have not put in the blood, sweat and tears that Denver has," he says. "The way Denver lost the ball on cannabis events, culture and the industry itself — we have a very cool opportunity to make Denver a destination for these kinds of events. We have the legal protections and we have the people."
As the owner of a mushroom cultivation supply business, Burden says he is often contacted by people who want to learn more about psychedelic mushrooms and what they can do for their health. He believes that Shroom Fest will be the first chance for many to meet others with similar interests. And if they want to partake in legal psychedelics before the show, "I have faith that they will better their lives from it," he adds.
"I'm more concerned about bad behavior from the bar than the people who are excited about mushrooms."
