About Dr. Anne Metz
Therapist first. Psilocybin facilitator second. Always both.
PhD, LPC · Director, Fluence Training Natural Medicine Program · Licensed Natural Medicine Facilitator, Numia Healing · Host, The Psychedelic Skeptic
Full Biography
Dr. Anne Metz is a licensed professional counselor, psilocybin facilitator, and counseling faculty member whose work spans psychedelic-assisted therapy, women's mental health, and counselor education.
She provides psilocybin facilitation through Colorado's regulated natural medicine program at Numia Healing Center in Denver, where she brings her full clinical background — not just facilitation training — to every stage of the work. She serves as Director of Fluence Training's natural medicine program in Colorado and is a member of New Mexico's Medical Psilocybin Services patient safety subcommittee, contributing to state policy on safe psychedelic access.
She teaches graduate-level counseling courses as clinical faculty at Southern New Hampshire University and hosts The Psychedelic Skeptic podcast, where she brings rigorous scrutiny and intellectual honesty to a field that often needs it.
Dr. Metz holds a PhD from James Madison University, where she completed a research fellowship in criminal justice reform at the University of Virginia School of Law. Her research on judicial sentencing practices — one of the first qualitative studies of its kind — led to significant policy changes enabling nonviolent drug offenders to access community-based treatment instead of incarceration.
She holds active clinical licenses in Colorado, New Mexico, Oregon, California, and Virginia, and has advanced training from Fluence, MAPS (now Lykos Therapeutics), and PsychAlchemy, among others.
I specialize in women's mental health not because it is a niche, but because women's experiences — the physical, hormonal, relational, and existential dimensions of a woman's life — are too often undertreated and underestimated by mental health care.
Perimenopause and menopause are identity events, not just medical ones. Infertility is grief that rarely receives the acknowledgment it deserves. The transitions of midlife — shifting sense of purpose, emptying nests, aging bodies, changing relationships — ask women to rebuild their sense of self without a roadmap. This is profound work. It deserves a therapist with both clinical depth and real investment.
That is what I offer.
I came to psychedelic-assisted therapy through the clinical evidence, not the culture. The research on psilocybin for depression, anxiety, grief, and existential distress is among the most compelling in modern psychiatry. The capacity of psilocybin to create genuine perspective shifts — to temporarily loosen the rigid self-concepts that keep us stuck — is directly relevant to the work I do with women navigating major transitions.
I am also honest about its limitations. Not everyone is a good candidate. The preparation and integration work is where the lasting change actually happens. And the quality of the facilitator matters enormously — which is why I completed training at Fluence, received education through MAPS, and hold an active clinical license in Colorado.
I am not a guide who happened to get a license. I am a clinician who chose to add this tool to a robust therapeutic practice.
From 2005–2010, I worked as a reporter for an alternative newsweekly in Charlottesville, Virginia — which is probably why I write the way I do.
I believe being bad at something is good for you. In recent years I've learned to ski (again, after 20 years off), throw clay on a pottery wheel, tap dance, produce a podcast, and sew my own clothes.
I'm passionate about our connection to the natural world and serve on the American Counseling Association Climate Crisis Task Force. Climate change is a mental health crisis.
I am prominently featured in the B-roll of a CNN documentary on the 1990s. I am still waiting for my residuals.
PhD, Counselor Education and Supervision
James Madison University · May 2018
MA/EdS, Clinical Mental Health Counseling
James Madison University · May 2014
Bachelor of Arts
University of Virginia · May 2003