Episode #18: Journeys to Purpose with Gabe Charlamides

Gabe Charalambides left a career as an aerospace engineer to found Odyssey Retreats, one of Oregon's legal psilocybin retreat centers. On this episode, he tells Cricket the full story: a Pema Chödrön talk that reshaped how he related to his own anxiety, a psychedelic experience someone once described as letting you "inhabit the same room as the Buddha — you just can't stay there," and a month spent volunteering at a retreat center in the Netherlands that convinced him this was his life's work.

The synchronicities keep stacking up. Gabe once toured a stunning property in Bend, Oregon, that was way out of budget and forgot about it, only to end up leasing that exact property years later as Odyssey's home base, whose owners, it turns out, had been waiting for someone just like him to show up. They also get into the unglamorous reality behind the magic: why Oregon law forces retreats to split the experience between a private lodge and a separate licensed facility in town, and how Odyssey has now expanded into Colorado.