Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy in Los Angeles & Pasadena, CA
Some of the people who find their way to ketamine-assisted psychotherapy have tried everything. Years of talk therapy. Multiple medications. Modalities that helped, partially, but never quite reached the layer where the pain actually lives. KAP is for clients who've done the work and still feel stuck — and for whom a different kind of access to the inner world might be what finally moves things. It's not a shortcut. It's a different doorway into work that traditional approaches sometimes can't open.
How KAP Works: The Three Phases
KAP isn't a single appointment. It's a structured arc that moves through three phases — preparation, dosing, and integration — each of which does work the others can't. The medicine matters, but the work around the medicine is where lasting change happens.
Preparation
The preparation phase is where we lay the foundation. Before any dosing happens, we spend time getting to know each other and building the working relationship that will hold the rest of the process. This is therapy first, ketamine second.
In preparation sessions, we talk about what's bringing you in, what you've already tried, and what you're hoping might shift. We work through expectations — what KAP can do, what it can't, and what the experience itself tends to feel like. We identify intentions for the dosing sessions, build internal resources you can draw on, and address any fear or ambivalence you're carrying about the process itself.
This phase also includes coordinating your prescriber. KAP is a collaborative model — I work alongside a licensed prescriber who handles the medical evaluation and prescription, while I hold the therapeutic container. Together, we'll choose the format that makes the most sense for you (sublingual lozenges, intramuscular injection, or other options depending on the prescriber's protocol). You're at the center of these decisions, not on the receiving end of them.
The preparation phase typically takes two to four sessions, sometimes longer for clients with complex trauma histories. We don't rush this part. The quality of preparation directly shapes what's possible during dosing.
Dosing
Dosing sessions take place in a calm, comfortable environment, with me present throughout. You'll lie down, often with an eye mask and music, and the medication takes effect within minutes.
During the experience itself, ketamine produces what researchers call a non-ordinary state of consciousness — a softening of the usual mental defenses, a sense of distance from the inner critic, and access to thoughts, memories, and emotional material that normally stays out of reach. The experience varies widely from person to person and from session to session. Some clients feel deeply quiet and inward. Others want to talk through what's surfacing. Both are valid, and we'll have discussed your preferences ahead of time.
You stay in control. I'm there to support you — to help you stay regulated, to guide you back if needed, to witness what comes up. You don't have to perform, narrate, or "do" anything specific during dosing. The medicine does its part. You let it.
The acute experience typically lasts 45–90 minutes, depending on the format and dose. We don't end the session when the medicine wears off. We stay together long enough for you to land back in your body, drink water, eat something, and begin the slow work of integrating what just happened.
Integration
Integration is where the changes from dosing become changes in your life. The medicine creates an opening; integration is what walks through it.
In integration sessions, we reflect on what came up during dosing — images, memories, emotions, insights, body sensations. We connect what surfaced to the patterns you've been carrying. And we use the modalities that fit what's emerged, often weaving in EMDR, IFS, or somatic work to consolidate the shifts neurologically and relationally.
This is where my background as a trauma therapist matters most. KAP without strong integration is increasingly common — and increasingly disappointing for clients who have profound experiences that then fade without lasting change. Integration is the discipline of turning a non-ordinary experience into ordinary new patterns: how you respond to triggers, how you relate to the people in your life, how you treat yourself when things get hard.
Integration usually continues for several sessions after each dosing session, and the integration phase as a whole often extends past the active KAP work. Many of my clients continue therapy after their KAP series ends, working with the openings that the medicine helped create.
How KAP Integrates With EMDR and IFS
Most KAP providers offer the medicine. Fewer offer real therapeutic integration. Almost none integrate KAP with the specific modalities — EMDR and Internal Family Systems — that work most effectively with the openings ketamine creates.
This is the heart of how I practice KAP. Ketamine softens the defenses that have been guarding the harder material. EMDR and IFS are the modalities that know what to do with that opening once it's there.
Why Integration Matters
Ketamine alone produces real but often temporary effects. Mood lifts. Anxiety eases. Insights surface. And then, for many clients, the gains fade — sometimes within weeks, sometimes within months. The research is clear that ketamine's lasting benefits depend heavily on what happens around the dosing experience, not just on the medicine itself.
Without integration, KAP becomes a sequence of profound experiences that don't quite take. Clients describe it as "amazing during, fading after." The integration work is what converts a non-ordinary experience into ordinary, lasting change — new patterns of self-relating, new responses to old triggers, new capacity for closeness or stillness or trust.
KAP and EMDR
EMDR works at the neurological level, using bilateral stimulation to help the brain reprocess memories that have been stored in a way that keeps them feeling present and threatening. Ketamine creates a state of enhanced neuroplasticity — a window in which the brain is more able to form new connections and update old ones.
The combination is potent. Memories that have been stuck for years sometimes become workable in a single integration session after dosing. Protective parts that normally shut down EMDR processing are quieter and more permissive in the post-ketamine window. Material that would take many sessions to access through standard EMDR becomes reachable more directly.
I time EMDR sessions to fall within the neuroplasticity window that follows dosing — typically within a few days, when research suggests the brain is most receptive to lasting change.
KAP and IFS
IFS works with the protective and wounded parts of the inner system that organized around early experience. Many of the parts that drive depression, anxiety, and trauma responses are also the parts most resistant to direct work — they've been protecting you for so long that they don't easily step aside.
Ketamine often creates a temporary softening of these protectors. Clients frequently describe meeting their parts during dosing sessions in ways that hadn't been possible before — the inner critic recedes, the perfectionist rests, the part carrying old grief comes forward and can finally be heard. IFS integration after dosing is where these encounters become relationships, and where the parts can begin to relax their extreme roles for good.
For clients with complex trauma, this combination can reach material that neither modality reaches alone. The medicine makes the parts approachable. IFS gives them a way to be met and unburdened.
What This Looks Like in Practice
In a typical KAP arc, dosing sessions are followed within a few days by a longer integration session. Depending on what surfaced during dosing and what's most pressing, that integration session might lean primarily on EMDR (for memory reprocessing), primarily on IFS (for parts work), or weave both together. Somatic awareness runs underneath both — the body holds what the mind can't always articulate, and the integration work tracks the body alongside the cognitive and emotional layers.
This isn't an off-the-shelf protocol. It's a clinical integration built across years of training in each of these modalities individually, and refined through working with KAP clients specifically. Most KAP clients I work with are clients who chose this practice precisely because the integration is taken seriously.
About Your KAP Therapist
My approach to KAP integration is shaped by training that spans both the clinical research side of psychedelic medicine and the experiential side through retreat facilitation.
On the clinical side, I'm trained and certified through Fluence and MAPS — the two most rigorous training programs in psychedelic-assisted therapy — in work with ketamine, psilocybin, and 5-MeO-DMT. I served as part of the clinical team at Sunstone Therapies, contributing to FDA-regulated research trials on methylone-assisted therapy for PTSD in patients with cancer. This work grounded me in what the evidence actually shows about how these medicines produce lasting change, and in the kind of careful protocol design that distinguishes serious psychedelic medicine from the wellness-tourism end of the field.
On the experiential side, I spent time living in Costa Rica, where I supported facilitated work with traditional plant medicines and entheogens in retreat and ceremony contexts. That experience taught me how to read what's happening in someone's system during a non-ordinary state, how to hold space without imposing structure, and how to support the slower, often quieter work of integration in the days and weeks that follow.
Most KAP providers come from one tradition or the other. The integration work I offer reflects what each side knows that the other often misses — the clinical rigor that keeps the work safe and evidence-based, and the experiential fluency that keeps it deeply useful.
Risks and Safety
Ketamine is a powerful medicine. Used carefully, in the right clinical context, it has one of the strongest safety profiles of any psychiatric intervention developed in the last decade. Used carelessly — without proper preparation, supervision, or integration — it carries real risks that deserve to be named directly.
Physical Safety
Ketamine's physical safety profile is well-documented. The medical risks are low for clients who have been properly screened, and a licensed prescriber will conduct a full evaluation before approving you for treatment. Conditions that may rule out KAP, or require additional caution, include uncontrolled hypertension, certain cardiac conditions, active psychosis, certain substance use disorders, and pregnancy. Your prescriber will go through this evaluation in detail before any dosing is scheduled. During dosing sessions, you'll be in a comfortable, supervised environment with me present throughout. Vital signs are monitored as appropriate to the route of administration, and the prescriber remains available throughout the dosing window.
Psychological Risks
The psychological risks of KAP are smaller than the medical ones, but real — and they're the risks most often underestimated by casual KAP providers. Ketamine produces a non-ordinary state of consciousness, and that state can surface material the system isn't yet ready to hold. Without adequate preparation, this can produce acute distress during dosing, dissociation that lingers afterward, or — for clients with significant trauma histories who haven't been properly stabilized — a destabilizing experience that worsens rather than improves their baseline. These outcomes are largely preventable. The preparation phase exists specifically to assess readiness, build internal resources, and address material that needs attention before dosing begins. The integration phase exists to metabolize what surfaced and consolidate it into lasting change. Skipping or shortening these phases is what produces poor outcomes — not the medicine itself.
Concerns About At-Home and Telehealth-Only Ketamine
The KAP market has expanded rapidly, and a significant portion of it now operates as a telehealth-only model: a brief virtual evaluation, a prescription mailed to your home, and minimal therapeutic support before, during, or after dosing. These services often advertise themselves as KAP, but they are categorically different from clinically integrated work. I won't tell you these services don't help anyone — for some clients with mild-to-moderate depression and no significant trauma history, they may be sufficient. But for the populations I work with — clients with complex trauma, treatment-resistant depression, or chronic anxiety with deep roots — the lack of integration consistently produces the same pattern: profound experiences that don't translate into lasting change, and sometimes destabilization without the support to metabolize it. If you've tried at-home ketamine and felt that something was missing, it likely was. The medicine is real. What's typically missing is everything around it.
Substance Use and Dependency
Ketamine has potential for misuse and, with frequent recreational use, dependency. In the structured KAP model — supervised dosing sessions spaced over weeks, conducted in a clinical relationship with a licensed therapist and prescriber — the dependency risk is low. The risks rise sharply when ketamine is used outside this structure: more frequently than prescribed, in escalating doses, or without integration support. If you have a history of substance use disorder, this is something we'll talk through honestly during preparation. KAP isn't categorically off the table, but it requires specific clinical care, and in some cases another modality is the better starting place.
Working With Me
The reason this practice approaches KAP the way it does — full preparation, integrated EMDR and IFS work, structured integration — is because the research and the clinical experience both point in the same direction: outcomes track with the quality of the surrounding work, not just the medicine. Doing this work carefully isn't slower because we're being cautious. It's slower because that's what produces lasting change. If you're considering KAP and have questions about whether you're a candidate, what risks apply to your specific situation, or how this differs from other KAP services you've researched, the free 15-minute consultation is the right place to start.
KAP for Los Angeles and Pasadena, CA
I work with KAP clients across Los Angeles — including West Hollywood, Pasadena, Silver Lake, Los Feliz, Echo Park, Eagle Rock, Glendale, Highland Park, and the greater LA area. KAP requires in-person dosing sessions, conducted at my Pasadena office, while preparation and integration sessions can be held in person or via telehealth depending on what works best for your schedule and proximity.
Many of the clients I see for KAP are high-functioning adults — professionals in entertainment, tech, healthcare, law, and the creative industries — who've done significant therapy work already and feel ready to access something underneath the layer they've been working on. KAP is particularly suited to clients who are introspective, self-aware, and serious about doing the integration work that makes the experience translate into lasting change.
If you're outside the immediate Los Angeles area, in-person dosing in Pasadena is still feasible for many clients — most of my KAP clients live within a one-to-two hour drive, and dosing sessions are scheduled with enough flexibility to accommodate travel. Some clients fly in for a focused KAP series and return for ongoing integration work via telehealth.
I also offer specialized work in:
Ready to Explore KAP?
Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy in Los Angeles & Pasadena, CA
KAP is a meaningful undertaking, and starting with a conversation makes sense. The free 15-minute consultation is a chance to talk through what's bringing you to KAP, what you've already tried, and whether this approach is the right fit for where you are right now. There's no commitment required to ask questions.
I'm currently accepting new KAP clients.
In-person dosing in Los Angeles & Pasadena, CA Preparation and integration sessions available via telehealth throughout CA, NJ, MD, WY & ID
Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy Frequently Asked Questions
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Yes. Ketamine has been an FDA-approved medication since 1970 — originally as an anesthetic, and now used off-label for the treatment of depression, anxiety, PTSD, and other conditions. Used in a clinical setting, prescribed by a licensed physician, and administered as part of a structured therapy protocol, KAP is fully legal in California and across the United States.
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It's different from what most people expect, and different from any recreational drug experience you may have heard about. The acute effects last roughly 45 to 90 minutes, depending on the dose and route of administration. During that time, most clients describe a softening of the inner critic, a sense of distance from their usual mental defenses, and access to thoughts, memories, or emotions that normally feel out of reach. Some clients have visual experiences; others don't. Some feel deeply quiet; others feel emotional or activated. There's no "right" experience — and we'll have talked through what to expect long before your first dosing session.
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No. KAP uses sub-anesthetic doses of ketamine — much lower than the doses used for surgical anesthesia. You'll be in an altered state of consciousness, but you'll be awake, breathing on your own, and able to communicate if needed. Your motor and verbal abilities will be reduced during the experience, which is why you'll be lying down comfortably throughout.
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The medicine is the same, although format can vary (sublingual vs intramuscular vs IV infusion). Almost everything else is different. Telehealth-only services typically offer a brief virtual evaluation, a prescription mailed to your home, and minimal therapeutic support. KAP, as I practice it, includes structured preparation sessions, in-person dosing with a trained therapist present throughout, and integration work that uses EMDR and IFS to help the experience translate into lasting change. The research is clear that outcomes track with the quality of the surrounding work, not just the medicine itself.
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A typical KAP arc includes two to four preparation sessions, a series of dosing sessions (often four to six, sometimes more for complex presentations), and ongoing integration sessions throughout. Many clients continue therapy after the active KAP series ends, working with the openings the medicine helped create. The exact number depends on what you're working on and how your system responds — we'll have a clearer sense after the first few sessions.
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Ketamine has unusually rapid antidepressant effects compared to traditional medications. Many clients notice mood improvement within hours of their first dosing session, with effects lasting days to weeks. The rapid relief is one of the reasons KAP is being studied so heavily for treatment-resistant depression. That said, the lasting changes — the ones that hold after the acute effects wear off — come from the integration work. Quick mood lift is the medicine's gift; lasting change is what we build together.
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KAP is generally not covered by insurance. The therapy portion may be reimbursable through out-of-network benefits depending on your plan; the medication and prescriber visits are typically out-of-pocket. We'll talk through the full cost structure during the consultation so you have a clear picture before committing.
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Often, yes. Many KAP clients are on antidepressants, anti-anxiety medications, or other psychiatric medications when they begin. The prescriber will conduct a full medication review during your medical evaluation and will let you know if any of your current medications need to be adjusted, paused, or coordinated around the dosing schedule. This is part of why working with a prescriber alongside the therapy work matters — the medical coordination is built into the model.
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Possibly, with specific care. KAP isn't categorically off the table for clients with a history of substance use disorder, but it requires more careful clinical attention — and in some cases, another modality is the better starting place. We'll talk through this honestly during preparation, and the prescriber will weigh in on whether KAP is clinically appropriate for your specific situation.
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Difficult experiences — sometimes called "challenging journeys" — happen, even in well-prepared clients. Material can surface that's harder to be with than expected, or the altered state itself can feel disorienting. This is part of why I'm present throughout the dosing session: to help you stay regulated, to guide you back if needed, and to support you in working with what's coming up rather than against it. Difficult experiences in a well-supported container often turn out to be some of the most therapeutically valuable parts of the work. The ones that go badly are typically the ones that happen without adequate preparation or support.
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No. Some clients prefer to stay quiet and inward, with eye masks and music, processing internally. Others want to verbally process throughout. Both are valid, and we'll have discussed your preferences before the session begins. There's no expectation to perform or report — your job during dosing is to let the medicine do what it does. The talking part comes during integration.
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The honest answer is: it depends, and the consultation is the right place to figure it out. KAP can be transformative for treatment-resistant depression, complex trauma, chronic anxiety, and existential depression — particularly for clients who've already done significant therapy work and feel ready to access something underneath the layer they've been working on. It's not the right starting place for active crises, untreated psychosis, or certain medical conditions. The free 15-minute consultation is built specifically to help us figure out together whether this is the right fit for where you are right now.