There’s no shortage of psychedelic trainings to sign up for, and they vary widely — in length, in clinical rigor, in cost, and in what they’re actually preparing you to do. From the outside, it can be hard to know whether a given program fits your license, your scope, and your practice, or whether you’re even ready to choose one. This session is built to help you ask better questions before you commit.

Over 90 minutes, Michael VanderWaal, LCSW, a ketamine-assisted psychotherapy practitioner and founder of Caring Practitioners Circle, walks through what the field actually looks like right now: what’s legal, what’s emerging, and what’s happening across clinical, ceremonial, and community contexts. He covers the practitioner pathways and what each one requires in terms of training, cost, and scope, including the ethical questions that preparation has to reckon with: harm in altered states, spiritual bypassing, and working at the edges of your license.

You'll experience a guided process to help you determine your next steps in the field. You’ll leave with a clearer sense of your next step, and your answers will help shape where the series goes from here. We'll close with a short survey to help us customize future talks.

Learning Objectives:

• Map the current legal and clinical landscape of psychedelic-assisted work, including what is currently legal and what is emerging.

• Distinguish between the major practitioner pathways, full facilitation versus preparation and integration support, and what each requires.

• Analyze the training, financial, and practical demands of entering psychedelic work.

• Examine key ethical considerations in this work, including harm in altered states, spiritual bypassing, and scope of practice.

• Evaluate training programs using a framework for comparing options across length, depth, and clinical scope.

• Assess your own readiness and fit through a guided discernment process.