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A narrow, white-walled hallway winds behind a plain wooden door in Ehren Cruz’s Mars Hill home, connecting the log structure to a recently finished extension. Walking through the passage has an air of the fantastical, akin to navigating a hidden corridor in a magician’s tower.
Cruz chuckled as he opened the portal. “This isn’t even the secret door,” he said, flashing a sly grin.
To his three young daughters, Cruz indeed explains his profession as that of a wizard, albeit one with a salt-and-pepper goatee instead of a long white beard. “They know Daddy goes on journeys, that he works together with people who are trying to heal, who are trying to grow,” he said.
To the rest of the world, Cruz describes himself as a psychedelic ceremonial facilitator. Through his coaching service, The SpArc, he prepares clients for and guides them through immersive experiences taking psilocybin-containing “magic” mushrooms.
Possession of psilocybin, the psychedelic active ingredient found in over 200 mushroom species, is a felony under both state and federal law, but that hasn’t stopped scores of people from heading off to see the wizard. (Cruz holds that his guide work is permitted because clients themselves, not The SpArc, provide the mushrooms, and he hasn’t yet faced any legal challenges.) A steady stream of clients last year, some paying up to $2,500 for a six- to eight-hour journey and the associated coaching, yielded a comfortable full-time income. He also brought on two part-time facilitators to help with the influx of interest.
The SpArc is gearing up for even greater demand in 2024, to be met by the space at the end of the hallway. Cruz emerged from the passage to face another door, this one intricately decorated with colorful stars and golden geometric tracery.
Inside is the Communitas Sanctuary, a place for mind-expanding experiences like meditation, spiritual ceremony, creativity workshops, ecstatic dance—and psychedelic journeys—slated to open in late spring. An elaborate 40-foot mural by Asheville artist Gavinger covers the walls with rainbow-tinged skies, sacred temples from around the world, and the fierce figures of a dragon and phoenix.
Standing before the sanctuary’s back wall of windows, with the Blue Ridge Mountains outside, Cruz excitedly shared his plans. He envisions expanding beyond The SpArc’s current one-on-one guiding to hold retreats for small groups like men’s support circles and business leadership teams, hosting participants in geodesic camping domes on his 11-acre property. He wants to lead collective journeys that “break through thresholds of perceived personal limitation, overcome mental boundaries, and explore divergent ways of perceiving our world.”
North Carolina, like many states across the country, is reexamining psychedelics in light of new scientific findings that highlight their potential benefits for mental health. A bill that would allocate $5 million for experiments on psilocybin and MDMA, also known as ecstasy, received bipartisan sponsorship and a unanimous recommendation from the Health Committee of the state House last year. (Advocates say the bill stalled in the House Appropriations Committee as lawmakers battled over the state budget, but they expect the funding to pass in the short legislative session that starts in April.)
And Dr. Rob McClure, a psychiatrist with the UNC School of Medicine, is recruiting research participants to test psilocybin-assisted therapy for treatment-resistant depression—a state instiution’s first study of the substance in humans since the federal government banned it in 1968.
As North Carolina’s legal and scientific establishments take tentative first steps, Cruz and others like him are striding forward. Particularly in the western part of the state, a motley assemblage of guides, therapists, and psychonauts is already pushing the boundaries of psychedelic exploration.
The Quest Begins
Cruz, a child of Puerto Rican immigrants who grew up in central New Jersey, always had a fascination with magic and mysticism, often filtered through the lens of pop culture.
Even today, the 38-year-old doesn’t hesitate to employ the metaphors of the Force and Jedi Knights from Star Wars; a clear storage container on top of his home office’s bookshelf is crammed full of cards from the fantasy game Magic: The Gathering.
By the time he’d earned a fellowship for a master’s program at the Ohio State University in 2007, that youthful enthusiasm had grown into a scholarly interest in the traditions of 16th-century South America. He was intrigued by how civilizations like the Inca had incorporated mysticism and rites of passage, often involving psychoactive plants and fungi, into the fabric of their lives.
Cruz had dabbled with marijuana and psychedelics throughout his teens and early 20s, but he’d never personally experienced the type of cosmic vision that so animated the subjects of his research. That all changed in May 2008, when he decided to take four doses of LSD at the Summer Camp Music Festival in Illinois.
With Umphrey’s McGee and STS9 blaring away in the background, Cruz felt his ego dissolve into what he described as an overwhelming and undeniable awareness of the universe and its infinite interconnections. “One of the most revealing, powerful, transcendental moments, and terrifying situations, I’ve ever been in in my life,” he recalled.
The very next day, he dropped out of the academic program he was two months away from finishing and committed himself to understanding the nature of his revelation. Cruz approached his new path with the same rigor as his erstwhile academic career, engaging in intentional psychedelic use while studying esoteric spiritual traditions such as Hermeticism and Kabbalah.
In his professional life, Cruz began producing concerts and musical gatherings like the one where his awakening occurred. His skills led him to Western North Carolina in 2013, where he became artistic director for LEAF Global Arts, a nonprofit in Asheville, and curated a successful run of world music festivals.
When the COVID-19 pandemic ground live music to a halt in 2020, Cruz pivoted again. He took a mushroom journey to reckon with the loss of his livelihood, after which he stumbled across an advertisement for a new psychedelic coaching certification program run through California-based Third Wave. He was the first person to sign up.
Although he’d been guiding friends through psychedelic experiences for a number of years at that point, Cruz said, Third Wave offered invaluable formal training in the neurochemistry and medical contraindications of the substances. He also learned how to match dosages to individual needs, establish supportive settings, prepare clients for trips, and help them integrate their lessons into their daily lives. Those tools empowered him to launch The SpArc in 2021.
“Although I’m naturally a mystic practitioner, the safety for onboarding into this is typically the science,” said Cruz. “It’s always the first thing that people ask me: ‘What’s happening under the hood?’ And I’ve got to be able to go there. I can’t just say, ‘Oh, it’s going to create revelations!’”
Riding a Wave
Cruz’s business was well placed for the swell of mainstream interest in psychedelics that took off in 2022, enlivened by the Netflix documentary How to Change Your Mind. The miniseries, drawing from the bestselling 2018 book of the same name by Michael Pollan, offered viewers an accessible perspective on psilocybin and other substances as healing medicines.
“Michael Pollan was the gateway drug for people to get into psychedelics,” quipped Sarah Levine, a professional psychedelic guide and facilitator for The SpArc who also has her own group ketamine-assisted psychotherapy practice.
Levine co-founded the Psychedelic Society of Asheville in 2022 with Cruz, fellow guide Daniel Polk, and psychedelic enthusiast Daniel Casciato. Inspired by similar societies in Brooklyn and San Francisco, the group was the first of its kind in North Carolina and quickly attracted over 750 members. Asheville’s leaders also helped establish the Triangle Psychedelic Society, which how has more than 300 members, in 2023.
About 50 people gather each month to unpack their psychedelic experiences or learn from local luminaries like Dr. Raymond Turpin, whose Waynesville-based Pearl Psychedelic Institute is part of a national trial examining MDMA as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. (Cruz serves on the institute’s board of directors.)
The society and other modern manifestations of psychedelic culture, emphasized Levine, have left behind ‘60s stereotypes about hippie drug users. Attendees of society events, she said, run the gamut from young students to middle-aged entrepreneurs to retirees investigating the substances for the first time.
“It feels like a sangha at times,” Levine said, using the Sanskrit term for a Buddhist monastic assembly. “Like a spiritual community of people who have an interest in these medicines and want to learn about them and support each other when working with them more consciously.”
Cruz has found similar diversity among The SpArc’s clients, and he offers many services on an income-based sliding scale to make them more accessible. He’s led sessions for Silicon Valley startup founders, registered nurses, financial planners—and at least one Durham grandmother who had never before taken a psychedelic.
At age 63, Audrey Green was looking for a way to mark the transition into her elder phase. Although she was a personal coach and yoga instructor and highly skilled in helping others navigate stress, she’d found herself wanting a new perspective on the challenging dynamics of her family.
The Pollan documentary piqued her curiosity, as did some friends’ journeys with the psychedelic ayahuasca. Green reached out to a relative in Asheville, who in turn connected her with The SpArc. Cruz’s eloquence and coach training appealed to her, but what moved her forward was his spiritual authenticity. She recalled a black shirt with elaborate dragon embroidery that Cruz sported at their first meeting.
“I could just feel this wonderment about him and his presence. And the fact that he would choose to wear that for an interview with me, it felt like it was important,” she said. “He’s not coming to me in Nike tennis shoes and sweatpants—he presents as he is, a healer and a spiritual guide.”
After multiple preparatory sessions via Zoom to set her intentions and learn what to expect, Green traveled to Mars Hill to consume psychedelic mushroom tea under Cruz’s supervision. For a while, she wasn’t sure if the brew was having an effect.
“And suddenly I realized I was fully in it, because I was aware of being an upside-down sea turtle in a big, thick bed of mud,” she remembered. “I would look at my fins, and I would feel roots coming out from them, and I would feel connected to everyone I’ve ever known.”
Over the next several hours, her awareness shifted through affirmation, forgiveness, and finally a sense of complete freedom in the body of a powerful bird. The journey and subsequent talks with Cruz digesting the experience weren’t a panacea, Green said, but they’ve brought about lasting, positive change in how she handles difficult family conversations.
She compared her newfound perspective to that of a camera drone. “I have more capacity to back away and just trust time, that it’s really going to be alright,” Green explained. “We’re just these little specks in this cosmic reality, this stunning, complex universe.”
To Go Beyond
Psychedelic experiences like Green’s, Cruz believes, can bring about real healing. He supports medical research on psilocybin and other substances, and he’s met several times with the North Carolina Psychedelic Policy Coalition. The advocacy group of about 70 therapists, counselors, and doctors, founded by Students for Sensible Drug Policy staffers Gina Giorgio and Jeremy Sharp, leads the charge for funding and expanded access at the General Assembly.
But Cruz isn’t content to wait for psychedelics to receive state approval. Keeping these substances off-limits, he argues, ignores their potential to ignite personal growth. He’s especially impatient with those who demand the psychedelic experience be stripped of “bad trips”—encounters with anxiety, fear, or paranoia amplified by the effects of the drug—before it can be considered acceptable.
“We have a big issue in [Western civilization] of wanting things to be easy, comfortable, and simple. And the fact of the matter is, the challenge is the most critical part of the psychedelic,” Cruz said, growing animated as he shared stories of clients facing issues that decades of talk therapy hadn’t conquered. “They roar through, sometimes literally, or slam their fists, or cry for a whole box of tissues. And on the far side of that, they’re free.”
In Cruz’s mind, something deeper than Western medicine is needed to explain what is at work when someone takes a psychedelic. He understands what the science says about how mushrooms affect the brain; he isn’t afraid to employ technology in his practice, like a bioacoustic mat that pulses low sound waves through the body to help muscles relax.
Yet Cruz calls the room where clients undertake their journeys his temple. The bulk of the tools that populate the space come from much older traditions: a Native American medicine drum, a Buddhist bowl bell, a set of ten polished crystal balls on low wooden stands, arranged in the shape of the Kabbalistic tree of life.
“I’m a firm believer, through my own experiences and what I’ve guided, that we’re not just having synaptic discharges and these visions are just random hallucinations,” Cruz said of the psychedelic experience. “We have the ability to perceive into the subtle, the happenings of how nature and energy and things around us are genuinely in a coexistent tapestry.”
Daniel Walton is an Asheville-based freelance reporter covering science, sustainability, and political news. He was previously the news editor of Mountain Xpress and has written for The Guardian, Civil Eats, and Sierra. Contact him at danielwwalton@live.com.