Colorado’s First Psilocybin Center Sues Former Staff Over Business “Conspiracy”

Legal psilocybin therapy is a very new game in Colorado, built on the promise of healing and helping, but the elbows are already flying in court.

Last month, the state’s first licensed and operating psilocybin healing space, the Center Origin, sued two former employees and the healing center they founded, alleging a “civil conspiracy” to funnel business into their competing project. The defendants’ attorney calls the claims “premature and in bad faith.”

Located at 1440 Blake Street, the Center Origin was the first psilocybin healing center licensed by the state and the first to open in Colorado, in July 2025. The Center offers what it calls “Journey Work” in individual, couple and group settings, which starts with clients explaining their intentions for therapy to a licensed facilitator. Then clients who wish to take psilocybin can do so and experience its psychoactive effects under facilitator supervision, with a post-trip integration conversation to “support long-term healing and transformation.”

The Center also offers many group forms of Journey Work, including therapy for men’s and women’s groups, and sessions for groups of people in recovery, health-care workers, older adults, veterans and first responders, people who live with chronic pain, illness or trauma, and those suffering from anxiety, grief, terminal illness and depression.

Based on a new, licensed form of mental-health therapy, the Center’s services are similar to those of other licensed healing centers now open in Colorado and Oregon, the only other state with legalized therapeutic psilocybin. But in its lawsuit against former employees Michaela Vogt and Avi Zadaka and their Littleton psilocybin healing center, NeuroAlchemy, the Center outlines what it sees as “proprietary systems, confidential information and business relationships” that were taken unethically — and in breach of contracts.

“NeuroAlchemy offers substantially identical services to [the Center], including psychedelic-assisted therapy services, facilitator training and related clinical programming, and targets the same customer base and referral sources,” the lawsuit claims.

The Center is accusing Vogt and Zadaka of stealing trade secrets, forming a “civil conspiracy,” and breaching their contracts and business obligations, such as “confidentiality, non-competition, non-solicitation, protection of company property and use of all company-developed materials solely for TCO’s benefit.”

According to Henry Baskerville, the attorney representing Vogt, Zadaka and NeuroAlchemy, companies that have legitimate trade-secret suits can show they’ve created “something really novel…something unique.” Something like Coca-Cola.

“The Center Origin doesn’t have any novel recipe for Coca-Cola,” Baskerville argues. “I believe there’s nothing proprietary with what the Center Origin is doing…they just happen to be the first.”

Vogt owns an equity stake of around 20 percent in the Center Origin. According to Baskerville, Vogt was led to believe that the Center owns the downtown property in which it operates, but an LLC belonging to Center founder Elizabeth Cooke actually does. After Vogt began having disagreements and other differences with Cooke, she left her role at the Center last fall, he says.

Vogt and Zadaka did sign non-compete clauses, but Baskerville says they’re “just not enforceable” because neither earned enough to reach the $125,000 salary threshold required to enforce non-competes in Colorado. Besides, state licensing and medical regulations allow patients to follow their doctors, caretakers and facilitators to new clinics and centers, he adds.

“”You can’t have a contract that forces someone to find a new doctor or facilitator,” he says.

Although NeuroAlchemy’s therapy and psilocybin-assisted services are similar to the Center’s, Baskerville says there’s nothing special or unique about them, pointing to over 25 licensed psilocybin spaces in Colorado, many with similar offerings. The two battling businesses operate under different models, he notes, with NeuroAlchemy’s based on renting out space and materials to facilitators who are independent contractors, while the Center has an employed staff.

Baskerville says he started negotiating with the Center’s legal representatives in November over a buyout for Vogt’s 20 percent stake, which she originally purchased for $100,000. But because of the building ownership issue, Vogt asked for a revision “after the value was misrepresented,” Baskerville says.

On March 18, Baskerville says he received a letter outlining the Center’s allegations against its former employees and their company, but the Center “filed a lawsuit before even waiting to hear our response.”

“I think the core of it was just a difference of opinion on the future of the business. My clients believe and strongly feel that the psilocybin community is about sharing, and what’s good for one is good for all,” Baskerville says. “Ms. Cooke felt that it was about profit, and profit alone.”

In a statement to Westword, the Center declined to comment on specifics, citing active litigation.

“The Center Origin has filed a lawsuit alleging a serious breach of trust by former insiders who misused proprietary systems, confidential information, and business relationships to launch a competing venture. The allegations are detailed in the complaint filed in Denver District Court,” the statement reads. “This case is fundamentally about protecting the integrity of a company’s intellectual property, the obligations owed by those in positions of trust, and ensuring fair competition in a highly regulated and emerging industry. Because the matter is now in litigation, we are not commenting beyond the filed allegations, but we are confident the facts will be established through the legal process.”

The Center’s lawsuit seeks financial damages as well as all profits made by NeuroAlchemy, along with an injunction barring its former employees from “using, disclosing or benefiting from TCO’s trade secrets, confidential information or proprietary materials,” and from soliciting or servicing the Center’s clients, facilitators or referral sources.