Our Story

Odyssey was founded by Gabe, a Stanford-trained aerospace engineer with a passion for mental health. Psychedelics played a pivotal role in Gabe’s quest to manage his anxiety and lead a full life. You can read more about his story here.
Gabe’s search for his first psychedelic-therapy experience inspired the creation of Odyssey. He knew that there was nothing more important than finding an environment where he could feel safe and comfortable.

With an engineering and research background, he was looking for a place that was grounded of science and not overly new age-y, which proved surprisingly difficult to find. Over the next five years, Gabe worked at some of the leading psychedelic retreat centers and companies in the world. He saw first hand how beautiful and transformative these experiences could be. He was frustrated to see that to the general public, psychedelics were closely associated with astrology, tarot cards, and other new-age spiritual beliefs. This diminished the credibility of these experiences to many individuals who would otherwise greatly benefit from them.

Gabe felt that offering these experiences in a way that preserves the mysterious nature while maintaining a firm grounding in science and evidenced-based practices would be essential to realizing the potential benefit these could have for so many people. He dreamed of creating an organization that helped offer this to the world.
With Oregon’s monumental legislation taking effect in 2023, Gabe saw an opportunity to help bring this vision to reality. Odyssey opened its doors in September in 2023, shortly after the state opened to allow for legal services, by running the first retreat in US history.