Douglas K. Gordon | CEO, Silo Wellness

Douglas is the CEO of Silo Wellness, a multinational, publicly-held company with global HQ in Toronto, Canada and operations in both Jamaica and Oregon. Silo's mission is to make psychedelics available today, wherever possible, to help people reduce trauma or enhance performance.

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What made you personally excited about psychedelics?

My interest in psychedelics was born out of deep respect for their powerful healing potential. Psychedelics, with their ability to rewire our neural pathways, can transform the lives of those with treatment-resistant mental illnesses, depression, anxiety or foundational childhood trauma. With and through psychedelic treatments, we have the opportunity to help and support individuals who have had to navigate mental health challenges. My role at Silo Wellness affords me an opportunity to help people and to add positive value in advancing this movement, and for that, I am extremely grateful.

In its simplest form, what is the mission of Silo Wellness?

Our mission is to make psychedelics available today, wherever possible, to help people reduce trauma or enhance performance. We do this by bridging modern science with indigenous traditions to remove barriers to access psychedelics and make them easier to administer and ingest.

Can you share a bit about each of the unique opportunities you are working on, from psychedelic medicine to retreats?

Our primary focus is to reach and educate the widest possible audience on the tremendous health benefits of functional and psychedelic mushrooms, through our exclusive global partnership with the Bob Marley estate.
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Additionally, we are committed to building our expertise and our business globally through our psychedelic wellness retreats in Jamaica and Oregon, the cultivation of psychedelic mushrooms and truffles, and our intellectual property, focusing initially on the commercialization of our metered-dosing psilocybin nasal spray.

How are you cultivating and sourcing psilocybin for your nasal spray? Is the Psilocybin synthetic or naturally derived?  

Our psilocybin is natural and cultivated at our facility in Jamaica.

Can you talk about your extraction process?

Our natural functional mushroom tinctures use triple extraction methodology (fermentation followed by hot water and alcohol extraction) and can be added directly to foods and beverages, such as coffee, or placed under the tongue.

You have a number of psychedelic retreats in Oregon and Jamaica. Why have you chosen these locations for your retreats and what advantages do you see from your positioning there?

In many ways, Jamaica is at the epicenter of the psychedelic mushroom movement – it’s the only country in the world where it’s not illegal to grow, extract and sell psilocybin mushrooms. Through Measure 109, Oregon has also established itself as one of the most progressive states in the U.S. with respect to the recognition of the significant role psychedelics can play in positively impacting mental health. Both Jamaica and Oregon offer beautiful, natural backdrops and we believe embracing the natural environment is key to accessing the benefits of an engaged, impactful and transformative psychedelic-assisted experience.

Will you be cultivating psilocybin exclusively for Silo Wellness or will you look to be a supply source for other psychedelic focused companies as well?

We currently cultivate to meet our own demands for our retreats and research, as well as to supply a couple of other entities in Jamaica. In the future, we plan to scale production and sell micro-dosing products, mushrooms and truffles through our distribution network and, in time, open brick and mortar retail operations in Jamaica under the Bob Marley name, which we intend to make one of the most recognized in the psychedelics space.

Right now you are focused on psilocybin, are you planning to expand into any other psychedelic substances?

Absolutely. We’ll continue to be at the forefront of the psychedelic wellness industry – exploring ways in which we canhelp people more safely and effectively access psychedelic treatments.We believe in the wide range of psychedelics and their powerful ability to impact mental health. We presently work with both psilocybin and ketamine and recently announced plans to expand our offerings in Jamaica to include 5-MeO-DMT (also known as “the toad”)-enhanced experiences.

What is the most common misconception you hear about psychedelics?

Misconceptions of psychedelics tend to be one of two extremes – fear and fanaticism. There are those who fear psychedelics due to decades of stigma and lack of education, and those who have extrapolated, oversold or miscommunicated psychedelics’ potential to address and treat mental health illnesses.

What do you believe is the most important thing for people to understand about the future of psychedelics as medicine?

Psychedelics have been used for decades in various cultures and are recognized for their powerful healing and transformative powers. They offer an important – and natural – opportunity for us to address the decades of ineffective and underwhelming results from a host of pharmaceutical drugs that many health experts readily admit are ineffective to large numbers of individuals suffering with mental health challenges.
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Thankfully, psychedelics have been recognized by both traditional holistic medicine practitioners and traditional scientific researchers and medical practitioners. The research currently being done to better understand how various psychedelics work is both vast and quite revealing. I am excited about the possibility that psychedelics will offer a convergence of science and nature in the appreciation not only of their effectiveness, but also their importance in helping offer a solution that will allow so many to live more fulsome and expansive lives.

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