How I Got Into Psychedelics and Psilocybin Facilitation
Hi, I’m Cate Ritter, a Transformational Coach and Licensed Psilocybin Facilitator in Bend, Oregon. This is the story of how psychedelics—especially psilocybin—helped me heal, reclaim joy, and ultimately become a legal psilocybin facilitator within Oregon’s legal framework.
Pressure & Performance
Cate with her coaches accepting her first-place golf trophy at age 8.
I grew up in a small mountain town near Mt. Shasta in Northern California. From age 8 to 18, I competed in over 300 junior golf tournaments across the country, eventually earning 99 trophies and multiple college scholarship offers. On the outside, I looked successful. On the inside, I was a highly sensitive, empathic kid running on stress, pressure, perfectionism, and “never enough.”
Growing up around addiction and emotional unpredictability, I learned to read the room, keep others happy, and push myself to achieve.
Same Subconscious Beliefs, Same Problems
Even after winning a Division One tournament and reaching the goals I’d chased for years, my health began to deteriorate. I eventually left competitive golf, but my drive to overachieve followed me into academics. In my first semester off the team, I earned a 4.0 GPA while taking 19 credits, working two jobs, and volunteering. The setting had changed, but the pressure hadn’t.
After graduating from college early, I moved to England, where I lived above a gastropub and learned farm-to-table cooking. That experience sparked a passion for healthy food that led me to study holistic nutrition and launch my wellness coaching business in 2009.
Years later, mold illness and a long list of diagnoses pushed me through what felt like every possible path in conventional, holistic, and functional medicine. Losing my beloved golden retriever and experiencing a traumatic car accident added grief and stress to an already difficult chapter.
I was doing all the “right” wellness things, yet I still felt depleted, stuck, and disconnected from myself.
When doctors began discussing disability options, I continued searching for support.
A turning point came when I began exploring subconscious work. I started recognizing how deeply I had tied my worth to achievement and how those old patterns continued to shape my life.
Working with my subconscious mind was the most helpful approach I had found up to that point. I watched long-standing patterns begin to soften and my nervous system slowly come out of survival mode.
This work helped me trust what I now call my inner healing intelligence—a wise part of myself that had the ability to listen inward and recognize what supported my healing. Experiencing these shifts through subconscious work sparked the curiosity that eventually led me to psychedelics.
The Call to Plant Medicine
2019 — Cate in Shaman Initiation Training in the remote jungle outside of Iquitos, Peru
Watching documentaries about ayahuasca stirred something in me, and I felt called to the Amazon to learn from Indigenous healers and plants.
In 2018, I traveled to the jungle outside Iquitos, Peru for an intensive two-week ayahuasca retreat and, in 2019, I completed a two‑month Shaman Initiation Training with Shipibo curanderos. Through more than forty ayahuasca ceremonies, participating in and volunteering at retreats, and completing an intensive training program, I gained a front-row view of both the profound potential of this work and the serious risks of poorly held ceremonial spaces.
I experienced mystical insight, divine connection, and confirmation of what I already sensed: I was meant to help others through deep, transformational work. The jungle made that calling undeniable.
What the Jungle Taught Me About Safety & Integrity
Alongside the beauty, the jungle showed me a lot about what not to do. I saw firsthand how vulnerable people are in altered states and how damaging it can be when safety and integrity are not the priority. There were shaky boundaries, risky conditions, minimal screening, and very little integration support, with medical scares, psychological breakdowns, and ceremonies scheduled so frequently that people had no time to process what was happening.
As an empath, I felt everything intensely. I often called for help during ceremonies and no one came, which triggered old abandonment wounds and made the container feel anything but safe. Living in the slums and jungle added its own layers of stress—parasites, poisonous critters, and constant uncertainty.
My experiences showed me why well‑held, ethical containers are essential for psychedelic work.
Ceremonial spaces should be a place where you’re not left alone and your vulnerability is honored, not exploited. Facilitators need to do their own inner work so their unresolved issues don’t interfere with someone else’s experience.
When I was invited to take a job as an Ayahuasca Facilitator, I declined. I wanted to help people heal in a way that felt gentler, safer, more joyful, and sustainable.
Why Psilocybin Became My Medicine
Bend Oregon’s Licensed Psilocybin Facilitator, Cate Ritter with Prism Bend
After I returned home, mushrooms started whispering into my life—through books, podcasts, research, and conversations. I felt called to psilocybin in a different way: gentler, earthier, more grounded. Where ayahuasca had cracked me open, I sensed that mushrooms might help heal the cracks.
My first licensed psilocybin journey—what I now call my “Joy Journey”—was shorter and kinder to my body, yet more deeply restorative than those marathon jungle nights.
In just a few hours, I released a mountain of grief and connected with an ocean of joy.
I felt like I was finally meeting my true, authentic self: softer, more spacious, and genuinely at peace.
Psilocybin helped me slow down, stress less, and feel safe in my body. It supported me in processing complex trauma, softening perfectionism, and expanding self‑love and compassion. It also strengthened my intuition and trust in life’s flow. While ayahuasca changed my life, it was psilocybin that healed much of the trauma I picked up along the way and brought my light fully back online.
Why I Prefer Psilocybin For My Work
Both ayahuasca and psilocybin have been powerful teachers, but psilocybin is the medicine I choose to work with professionally. A few reasons why:
Gentler on the body and nervous system: Journeys are shorter, the “take-off” is often smoother, and integration tends to feel more manageable for many people.
Legal and structured: In Oregon’s regulated framework, psilocybin services include preparation, a professionally facilitated journey, and integration support. That structure offers the safety and accountability I once longed for in the jungle.
Integration over intensity: Instead of back-to-back high-dose ceremonies, people can take one journey at a time, then integrate lessons at their own pace. Healing does not have to be brutal to be real. Joy can be medicine, too.
For my path and the clients I serve, psilocybin offers a grounded, loving, and effective way to work with the subconscious, release old stories, and reconnect with inner wisdom.
→ Psilocybin vs. Ayahuasca: Choose Your Psychedelic Experience
From Transformational Coach to Licensed Psilocybin Facilitator
Cate Ritter, Licensed Psilocybin Facilitator with Prism Bend in Bend, Oregon
Long before I sat with psilocybin, my professional life revolved around helping people feel better. I’ve spent nearly two decades as a Transformational Coach, with training in holistic and functional nutrition, yoga, heart‑brain coherence, subconscious reprogramming, and sound therapy.
Over time, I realized that my role isn’t to fix anyone.
The most effective work I do is helping people reconnect with their inner healing potential.
I create a safe space to help clear what blocks that inner connection—old beliefs, stuck emotions, and unprocessed trauma.
When Oregon opened a legal pathway for psilocybin services, I completed the required training and became a Licensed Psilocybin Facilitator. Prism Bend is my own creation to offer this work with the safety and integrity I wished I’d in my early psychedelic experiences.
My Values as a Psilocybin Guide
Everything on my path—golf burnout, chronic illness, jungle initiations, subconscious work, sound therapy, and psilocybin—shapes the way I support clients. A few core values guide my work:
Safety and integrity: Careful screening, clear boundaries, informed consent, and a commitment to doing my inner work.
Client empowerment: You and your inner healer lead this process. My role is to support you within our container.
Gentle, structured support: Preparation, journey, and integration are all important. I encourage clients to move at a pace that honors their nervous system, not a culture of intensity or spiritual bypassing.
Respect for the medicines and lineages: While I work exclusively with legal psilocybin in Oregon, I hold deep respect for the indigenous lineages and master plants that helped shape my path. I don’t see myself as a healer or shaman; I’m a guide walking alongside you.
I specialize in working with empaths, sensitive souls, and anyone navigating patterns like achievement‑driven worth, anxiety, depression, perfectionism, or old abandonment wounds. Together, we use psilocybin, subconscious work, sound therapy, and wellness-inspired retreats to gently clear what no longer serves and integrate what you want to radiate more of.
Why I Share This Story
Sharing all of this is vulnerable, but in a field like psychedelics, who you sit with matters as much as anything else.
You deserve to know what has shaped your facilitator, what they’ve learned from light and shadow work, and how they think about safety, power, and responsibility in altered states.
My journey has taught me that healing is less about finding the perfect medicine and more about how the space is held, how gently the work is paced, and how deeply we’re willing to meet ourselves. Ayahuasca cracked me open; psilocybin helped heal the cracks. Both led me back to my heart and to a life and practice built around joy, compassion, and integrity.
If you feel called to explore legal psilocybin work in Oregon and resonate with my approach, schedule a consultation below. The journey will always be yours—but you don’t have to walk it alone.
Much Love,
CATE RITTER
Transformational Coach & Licensed Psilocybin Facilitator #FL-AF7C7216