
deep creativity
august 31 - september 5, 2026
- a psilocybin-assisted inquiry into creative agency -
are you composing your life, or living by default?
The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.- James Baldwin
about
Creativity is the best of us.It is the human capacity to experiment with life and turn possibility into reality. It shapes our daily choices, inspires art, shifts culture, innovates work, and changes the future. Applying this powerful process to our lives and beyond is the focus of our retreat.Deep Creativity is a psilocybin-assisted inquiry into one of the most powerful and least understood drivers of human life, our creative intelligence. In an age of superhuman technologies, this ability to compose our lives may be what matters most.Our approach is multidisciplinary. We draw from science, psychology, and technology, also engaging myth, movement, intuition, play, &wisdom. We ask our rational minds to meet mystery, and our mystical parts to honor evidence.The program follows the arc of the full creative process. As a group, we notice how creativity moves through us, what helps it expand, why it sometimes goes flat, and how to move through a block rather than be stuck in it.Taking place at gorgeous Camp Colton, we explore our subject in nature through exercises, conversation, improvisation, walks, and two carefully held psilocybin journeys.Working with carefully chosen intentions, we explore psychedelic space for new inspiration. Mushrooms willing, we attempt the old Promethean move: to bring back a spark of living fire from another world and put it to work in our lives.Creative intelligence rarely stays imaginary for long. It wants expression. It wants to enter the stream of human affairs. As more and more of life arrives to us pre-written now, this is a chance to revise the script, recover authorship, and outcreate the defaults.
psychedelic inquiry
Psychedelic inquiry is something new in the field of legal psychedelic practice.When psilocybin is held in a carefully structured container, with serious preparation and integration, we are seeing meaningful and lasting benefits. Many excellent retreats currently focus on trauma processing, symptom relief, or personal healing.Psychedelic inquiry takes another path. It starts from a more urgent premise: if we do not actively question how we are living, then markets, institutions, machines, and our own unchecked habits will happily fill in the blanks for us.For most of history, philosophers, artists, mystics, and scientists gathered around the big questions. Today, that work belongs to all of us.Inquiry becomes a way to reclaim agency: to examine what we have accepted, interrupt what we have repeated, and discover what else might be possible.A psychedelic inquiry is part intellectual adventure and part lived experiment, shaped entirely by the unique mix of people present. Honest dialogue, evocative exercises, live music, play, and safe, carefully held psilocybin journeys create a living investigation rooted in shared discovery.The aim is to help participants identify and loosen old patterns so they can move forward with greater clarity and courage in life.
who it's for
This retreat is for you if creativity matters in your life, as art, work, leadership, problem-solving, spiritual practice, service, or a way of meeting the unknown.It is for you if you are navigating change, complexity, uncertainty, or a threshold you cannot think your way through by ordinary means.You may be an artist, writer, philosopher, scientist, teacher, plumber, fisherman, builder, caregiver, entrepreneur, designer, organizer, healer, maker, or just ready to get unstuck.It's not your résumé. What matters is that you sense your creative intelligence asking to be taken seriously, in your choices, your work, your community, and your future.Deep Creativity is designed to help you recognize when old patterns are running the show, pause before the familiar script takes over, and meet life with more imagination, courage, humor, and choice.You leave with a working sense of creative agency, for your own life and for the people and places you belong to. This inquiry is meant to come home with you, into your work, your relationships, your community, and the larger world your creativity can help serve.
team
paul gachot
licensed facilitator in oregon and coloradoextensive work with writers & film directors on making and refining creative decisionsworked in writing, film, creative consulting, advertising, cultural programming, and experience design for 3 decadesintroduced psychedelic inquiry as a model for agency, & exploring core human themesAsterwild: founder
henry fields
licensed facilitator in oregonpreparation and integration counselorextensive work with creatives optimizing focus, self-actualization, and inspirationdraws on background in music, community building, education, & addiction recoveryfounded Inward Dive Fund access to psychedelic support services for underserved communitiesIntuitive Counseling: founder
questions about the retreat?
© 2026 deep creativityproduced by Odyssey PBC. created by Asterwild LLC.
Creative courage is discovering new forms, symbols, and patterns on which new life or society is built. - Rollo May



