Our 7-week training program for clinicians is now also open to pre-licensed clinicians! If you’re graduating from your masters or doctorate-level program within a year, you’re welcome to join. If you’d like to apply for our 2-year associateship training, please continue reading.

Training Philosophy

The two-year associateship training program at Alchemy provides pre-licensed therapists with an opportunity to receive training in a small cohort environment while supporting Alchemy’s mission of equitable psychedelic therapy. Alchemy’s theoretical orientation is comprised of the following approaches:

Depth psychotherapy

Depth psychotherapy (psychoanalytic and Jungian/archetypal models) is a model of treatment that accounts for unconscious processes that are highly significant in the development of psycho-spiritual well-being. The training program at Alchemy centralizes theoretical and practical considerations of contemporary Jungian and psychodynamic models. These considerations include: developing a therapeutic frame and holding environment, models for making use of the therapeutic relationship as a means to better understand the personality and relational patterns of the clients we serve, developing a symbolic perspective and the art of interpretation, metabolizing unconscious affect, making use of dreams, fantasies, and reveries, careful consideration of the here-and-now process of psychotherapy, archetypal amplification of psychological experience, and attention to the emergence of transpersonal experiences facilitated by deep engagement with the psyche.  

Psychedelic assisted therapy

The field of psychedelic assisted psychotherapy has shown strong promise as an effective and safe means for treating a variety of psychological conditions. This model of treatment, with its reliance on psychedelic medicines as a powerful assistance within a psychotherapy treatment provides a model of care that bridges the neurobiological effects of psychoactive medication with the relational healing of depth-oriented psychotherapy, a holistic treatment of body and mind as inseparable facets of human experience. 

Prohibitions on psychedelic medicines have had a significant impact on the field of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, profoundly limiting the development of research, theory, and technique. The psychotherapy training program at Alchemy aims to support the advancement of the field by facilitating the integration of what we know about psychedelic healing with the contemporary standards of practice within depth psychotherapy, trauma-informed care, and social justice theory. 

Trauma-informed care

The training model at Alchemy holds a more expansive view of psychological trauma than the current standard held by the American Psychiatric Association, as described in the DSM 5. Following the majority of contemporary trauma theorists, such as Janina Fisher, Bessel van der Kolk, Donald Kalsched, and Peter Levine, the Alchemy training program recognizes that trauma arrives in many different forms - not only acute experiences of shock trauma, but also the cumulative effects of such things as emotional neglect and abuse, the impact of systemic and cultural oppression, and household dysfunction. 

Psychological trauma can lead to a diverse and complicated set of symptoms, including addictive and compulsive behaviors, depression, anxiety, personality disorders, insecure attachment, suicide attempts, and poor physical health. The trauma-informed treatment model at Alchemy places primary importance on recognizing the patterns of a traumatized psyche and facilitating a holistic approach to treatment that can locate a variety of psychological difficulties a person may be experiencing at their root. Our training program teaches therapists how to help facilitate the patient’s development of various capacities that are impacted by trauma, including emotional regulation, body awareness, boundaries and limit setting, communication, emotional intimacy and interpersonal awareness, as well as self-care and the means by which one may live a more meaningful life. 

Our two-year model for the program is an acknowledgment that change takes time, especially when an individual has had to cope with symptoms for years and often decades. Healing from trauma, whether single incident or cumulative, requires a relationship that facilitates the growth of trust through consistency, genuine emotional engagement, and often multiple experiences of rupture and repair. We support our therapists in a long-term approach to psychotherapy, and when appropriate, we encourage them to take the patients they have worked with into private practice upon graduating from the training program.      

Social justice & harm reduction

The training program at Alchemy focuses on identifying how racism, sexism, heterosexism, transphobia, classism, ableism, and other -isms show up in psychedelic medicine and mental health. Education around diversity is woven into the curriculum as an essential part of our training. Our program aims to help educate practitioners to be adept at sensitively broaching issues of difference in the therapeutic relationship and holds representation of non-dominant groups as a primary aim in intern recruitment. 

We believe that making psychedelic medicine and psychotherapy more accessible to underserved populations can support the long-standing need for more equitable health care. In order to increase accessibility to quality treatments, Alchemy maintains practices of community-supported medicine, which includes a sliding scale.  

Program Overview

Associates are expected to build up to a caseload that averages out to 12 clinical hours per week. We require attendance at individual weekly supervision, weekly group supervision, ketamine consultation, community meetings, and trainings. Most meetings occur Fridays from 9:45am-1pm, with the exception of supervision groups. Meetings are usually offered as a hybrid model (virtual or in-person), but at least once a month attendance in-person is required for cohort community meetings (though some trainings will require in-person attendance as well).

First year associates at Alchemy are paid $18/hour. Alchemy aims to increase this rate in the second year as our financial resources allow. Associates are invited to continue working with clients after they’ve completed our two year training program, at which point they may shift to a 50/50 fee split model (plus minimum wage for admin hours) while they set their own client fees.

BIPOC therapists who need more financial support may be eligible to apply for our BIPOC fellowships, if funding is available. We will only be considering applicants who have finished their graduate program and are collecting hours as AMFTs, ACSWs, APCCs, or psychology associates. We will not be accepting BAPIC candidates, CAPIC candidates, or trainees still in school.

Associateship applicants should be aware of the fact that it takes on average a year to be trained enough in Alchemy's model to potentially begin to offer ketamine assisted therapy without a supervisor present, though the timeline is dependent on skill assessment and may take longer.