About Anne

Dr. Anne Metz grew up in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley and attended the University of Virginia as an Echols Scholar, graduating cum laude in 2003 with a double major in Philosophy and Religious Studies — a foundation rooted in deep inquiry and a passion for understanding what it means to be a human being.

Her path to clinical work was not a straight line. After college, she spent several years modeling in Europe before returning to Virginia and working as a reporter for an alternative newsweekly in Charlottesville from 2005 to 2009. Both experiences shaped how she thinks about people — the stories they tell about themselves, the pressures they navigate, and the gap between how things look from the outside and how they feel on the inside.

In 2010, she entered the Clinical Mental Health Counseling program at James Madison University, earning her master's degree and eventually a doctorate in Counselor Education and Supervision in 2019. During her doctoral studies, she received a research fellowship at the University of Virginia School of Law, where she focused on criminal justice reform — work that would anchor much of her early career.

Dr. Metz's clinical training spans emergency, inpatient, and outpatient settings. She spent several years conducting psychiatric and substance abuse assessments in emergency departments and was certified by the Commonwealth of Virginia as an evaluator for the civil commitment process. She also served as the mental health liaison for a post-plea diversion program, handling assessment, treatment planning, and care coordination for justice-involved individuals, and led a Dialectical Behavior Therapy group in that setting.

Her research has focused on drug policy and sentencing reform. She conducted the first qualitative study on the punishment of low-level drug offenders in Virginia, work that directly informed sentencing policy changes in the state. Her publications include the Journal of Community Psychology, Behavioral Sciences and the Law, the Federal Sentencing Reporter, and the Handbook of Criminal Justice Reform.

Dr. Metz's interest in psychedelics grew from her commitment to ending the War on Drugs and her clinical experience with people for whom conventional treatment had stalled. In 2020, she completed a six-month clinical apprenticeship focused on the application of non-ordinary states of consciousness in therapeutic settings. She went on to complete Fluence Training's psilocybin facilitation certificate program and was licensed by the State of Colorado as a Natural Medicine Clinical Facilitator in 2025.

She now practices psilocybin-assisted therapy at Numia Healing, a licensed healing center in Denver, under Colorado's state-regulated Natural Medicine program. She was recently named director of Fluence Training's Natural Medicine program in Colorado, which trains licensed clinicians from across the country to work within the state's regulatory framework. She also serves on New Mexico's Medical Psilocybin Services patient safety subcommittee, contributing to the development of that state's emerging program.

Dr. Metz is clinical faculty in the Counseling Department at Southern New Hampshire University, where she teaches graduate-level counseling courses. She hosts "The Psychedelic Skeptic" podcast, which examines both the promise and the problems of the psychedelic renaissance. Her clinical orientation is strengths-based and trauma-informed, grounded in attachment theory and neuroscience.

She maintains active clinical licenses in Colorado, New Mexico, Oregon, California, and Virginia, and provides telehealth preparation and integration services through counseling compact privileges to clients in additional states.

Dr. Metz lives near Taos, New Mexico with her partner Marcus. When she's not working, she's usually sewing, skiing, hiking, making ceramics, or traveling in the van.