Back to Psychedelic Assisted Therapy
This blog post is Part 1 in our series written by Dr. Alex Ertl that follows his educational journey of becoming a Natural Medicine Clinical Facilitator (providing psychedelic assisted therapy) in the state of Colorado through the Natural Medicine Health Act. The content is for educational purposes only. It does not constitute medical, legal, or mental health advice and does not promote or facilitate illegal activity.
Hello and welcome to my first post about my journey toward becoming a natural medicine clinical facilitator. If that term is unfamiliar to you, it means that I want to provide clients with psychedelic assisted therapy, which is the use of psychedelic substances in conjunction with talk-therapy.
It seems each year we deepen our scientific understanding of what profound impacts psychedelic assisted therapy can have on a broad array of individuals facing various challenges. But the more profound change appears to be the rapidly increasing cultural awareness and embracing that these substances have the power to ignite positive profound change in oneself.
And the public is right to move toward this stance. For instance, in recent years the FDA has designated psilocybin (aka “magic mushrooms”) assisted therapy as a breakthrough therapy for treatment resistant depression. Similarly, a specific compound of LSD has recently been given that same breakthrough designation for treating Generalized Anxiety Disorder.
These substances that have carried a reputation of just being street drugs that people use to get high are now being recognized as potentially more effective than the standard talk-based psychotherapies and psychopharmaceuticals that are the standard of care in our society.
As a clinical psychologist nearing the 10-year mark since I’ve received my degree, I have always held some level of awareness of the use of psychedelic substances in treating the same client population that I see in my office (or, more often, on my computer via telehealth). I learned about ketamine’s use in treating psychological conditions while in grad school, and I’ve had a longstanding curiosity about the ongoing research at Johns Hopkins investigating psilocybin. However, there have always been more treatments out there than I have the time to learn and/or master as a clinician, and these have fallen into the same back-burner pile of other therapies that are on my list of interests to pursue one day.
However, a few recent events brought psychedelics to the forefront for me, leading me to where I am now: three weeks away from undergoing intensive training for the next eight months in the use of psychedelic substances in therapy.
The first event was that my partner, also a clinical psychologist, underwent their own training to provide psychedelic assisted therapy, which became legal to provide in our home state of Colorado just this year.
The second, more impactful, event was a personal experience with psilocybin earlier this year (used legally and responsibly here in Colorado). After six hours of a psilocybin journey, I worked through personal struggles that would take months, if not years, of therapy to overcome. My immediate and sustained thought since this has been “why do we even bother with weekly talk therapy?”
I sometimes like to playfully think when in a meeting with my group of psychologist peers that, despite the immense collective knowledge and expertise in the room, we are no match for the therapeutic potential of a fungus. This is all said facetiously, but the sentiment has stood that I’m doing my clients and my communities a disservice by not offering psychedelic assisted therapy as an option for increasing their well-being. So here I am, on the cusp of learning what I need so that I can offer better avenues of healing to those around me.
During this learning process, I will be writing updates about my experience during the month. This is both a gift to others who may be curious about what this training entails or who want to know more about psychedelic assisted therapy in general. This is also a gift to myself, a way to hold myself accountable for being continuously reflective and intentional in this special time in my personal and professional life.
I will be writing, hopefully, in a personal and accessible voice, so that clinical professionals and those without a clinical background will hopefully gain something valuable from this.
As a short-ish summary, I’ve worked in Utah, and now Colorado, as a psychologist since 2016, primarily in out-patient settings. I’ve been a generalist practitioner, meaning that I’ve broadly worked with mostly adults who experience anxiety, depression, traumatic stress, and other experiences that make up a large swath of the population who commonly seek therapy.
I currently serve as the Program Director for the Trauma, Stress, and Resilience team at UCEBT, and in that role treating trauma has become an increasing proportion of the work that I do.
I use a wide range of therapeutic modalities, such as EMDR (eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing, commonly used for treating trauma), ACT, and others, mainly based on what a client’s needs may be. I’ve also moved toward doing more “intensive” half- or full-day sessions using EMDR where we aim to condense and accelerate the therapeutic process so that people can get back to thriving sooner.
To me, there’s obviously some underlying values and beliefs about healing that I hold which draw me both to intensive EMDR and psychedelic assisted therapy, both showcasing that I want people to get back to living fulfilling lives ASAP.
So, what am I getting myself into for the next eight months of facilitator training? Weekly live study, monthly day-long intensive trainings, bi-weekly small group learning circles, plenty of independent reading and other study, 40 hours of hands-on practicum experience, and then continued consultation once I finish those other duties in April 2026.
For anyone curious, I’ve chosen to receive my training through an organization named Innertrek, which has operated in Oregon (the first state to legalize psilocybin assisted therapy) for some time and has expanded to have a Colorado-based program. There are a number of institutions out there which offer somewhat similar programs. With most other things about the trainings being equal, my decision largely came down to trust, having heard firsthand negative experiences from facilitators from other institutions and positive experiences about Innertrek’s approach.
And my end goal? At the end of this process, I want to take whatever skill and wisdom I can accumulate and offer it to clients through our center. We have a large presence in Utah and a growing presence in Colorado under the name Colorado Center for Evidence Based Treatment.
I imagine being able to offer psychedelic assisted therapy as either a standalone or adjunctive treatment to our client base in Utah for those willing to make the one-hour flight for a psychedelic session in Colorado, as well as serve individuals locally here too.
Not to toot our own horn and turn this blog post into an ad, but out center already has a reputation for being able to make therapeutic gains with clients who may have been stuck in their progress elsewhere (by using RO-DBT, for example), so I wish to add to the base of available therapy options that we can offer.
More broadly, the same motivators that make me want to give my time to others in service of their well-being apply to my goal of providing psychedelic assisted therapy. If I’m dedicating my career to helping others, I might as well do it in a way that has the potential for greatest impact.
And honestly, there’s an element of fun in it for myself as well. I have not grown tired of providing therapy, but for me doing anything for 9 years (plus the half-decade in graduate school before that) leads to some small degree of stagnation. So if I’m going to pepper in something to my professional life that is new, why not go the extra spicy route and make that thing psychedelics?
I’ve yet to find a boring lecture, book, or other media on LSD and psilocybin. And the content that arises during people’s treatment is not only powerful, but often fascinating, creative, and so vibrant.
Who wouldn’t want to, for example, witness someone have a visceral experience that they are a part of a universe that is greater than themselves, and then help them incorporate this wisdom into a newfound sense of purpose and connection? Oh, and doing so can decrease their depressive symptoms more than any therapy did for them in the past? Count me in.
So, follow along with me in the coming months to get a live progression of one therapist’s dive into the professional world of psychedelics. I hope to make it educational for you, and I hope that some of you find it to be inspirational, whether that inspiration be to seek out psychedelic assisted therapy either as a client or to become a facilitator.
As a start, if you are beginning like me, I highly recommend reading How To Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan and Sacred Knowledge by Williams Richards, as these so far have been formative books for me thus far in my early stages.
And if you just want the end result, I’ll be providing a Continuing Education virtual event on psychedelic assisted therapy, co-presenting with my partner, in March 2026.
We’ll keep you posted on upcoming CE trainings and new services from our center.
The unique mission of UCEBT is to improve the quality of mental health care by enhancing access to comprehensive evidence-based treatments, evaluations, and testing.
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