Services

Our therapists are trained to work in a person-centered way, prioritizing each client’s needs, while also holding a social justice framework.

We believe in a model of community healing, where therapists can engage with clients in a collaborative relationship to help highlight patterns, process the past, and dream into the future.

We will do our best to connect you with someone with the identities, background, and theoretical orientation you are hoping to work with, including referring out if we’re full.

1. Talk Therapy

Individual

Individual weekly therapy gives you space to address deeply-rooted patterns, build skills, and move towards your mental health goals in a confidential space with support.

Relationship

Some of our clinicians are trained in couples/relationship therapy. We are affirming of all relationship structures, including non-monogamous partnerships and BDSM relationships.

Group

We offer various groups throughout the year depending on community interest. Please add your thoughts to our survey for future suggestions. Upcoming groups can be found here.

“If we carry intergenerational trauma (and we do), then we also carry intergenerational wisdom. It's in our genes and in our DNA.”

-Kazu Haga

2. Psychedelic Therapy

Ketamine

Ketamine-assisted therapy (KAT) is a unique method used to address a variety of mental health conditions, including depression, post-traumatic stress, chronic pain, addiction, and some forms of anxiety.

In low doses, ketamine can serve as a supportive adjunct to psychotherapy, while in moderate doses, ketamine has psychedelic effects, which can facilitate profound transpersonal experiences.

Read more in our Ketamine FAQ.

Integration

Mind-altering substances are powerful agents that can evoke peak experiences, deep insights, and sometimes spiritual crises.

Integration sessions help you to bridge those experiences with your daily life, including changes in your behavior, ways of thinking and perceiving, personality style, emotional patterns, relationships, as well as your values and worldview.

Note: We integrate experiences of all altered states, not just psychedelics.

Training

Alchemy also offers remote training for clinicians who would like to add ketamine-assisted therapy to their practice. This is open to therapists, psychologists, social workers, and other mental health providers.

In keeping with our mission to make this work accessible, we offer scholarships to low-income individuals.

We also keep our cohorts small so that trainees can have a more personal and connective learning experience.

Our Treatment Approach

Accessible

Alchemy is committed to offering psychotherapy that is accessible and equitable, especially to communities that face barriers to services. We have a sliding-scale model that lets those who can pay more subsidize the cost of lower-income clients. We take great care to adapt our services to the individuals we serve, working together to co-create the therapeutic space, listening carefully to your needs, and holding a culturally-responsive approach.

Holistic

Many aspects of our lives affect our mental health, including community, physical health, basic needs, sexuality, gender, class, disability, spirituality, experiences of marginalization, and more. Instead of seeing these issues as separate, our therapists consider all parts of your lived experience to be relevant to healing. At times, your therapist may refer you to resources to support your healing process, or help you navigate complex systems.

Trauma Informed

A trauma-informed approach aims to help you develop a sense of safety with your therapist through unconditional empathy and careful attention to your emotional experience. While we recognize many traumas are ongoing, we hope to provide you with some tools you can use when the world inside and outside feels overwhelming. Our therapists are trained to support you in processing traumatic material at a pace that feels right for your nervous system. 

Harm Reduction

Every relationship we’re a part of has risks and benefits, including our relationships to drugs. At Alchemy, we hold a harm reduction lens when working with clients around behaviors that may involve some risk. Instead of stigmatizing or shaming, we create space to explore with curiosity, and help you define for yourself what you want your life to look like and what might be getting in the way of making changes.

FAQ

Talk Therapy

  • Every therapist has a different style and theoretical orientation, and finding a good match is important. You will start out with a phone intake with one of our therapists. During this intake, they will ask questions to get a better sense of what you’re struggling with and whether or not our training clinic is the best fit for you. After the phone call, our clinician will let you know if we found someone who matches your needs, and you will set up your first session with them.

    Your therapist will first focus on getting to know you so they can help you collaboratively define clear goals for therapy while building safety in the relationship. During sessions, they will support you in moving toward the shifts you want to see by making space for the material that feels relevant to you while providing you with a different perspective, reflections, empathy, insight, and new skills.

    We ask that clients meet with their therapist weekly at a set day and time. This helps you save space every week to focus on yourself and gives you an opportunity to build momentum with what you’re working on. Individual sessions are typically 50mins long, while couples sessions may be longer.

  • Many of our sessions are still virtual, though some therapists are starting to return to in-person work. Masks are currently still mandated for in-person therapy in Oakland.

  • Our sliding scale ranges from $60-$300 for a 50-minute therapy session. During your initial intake, a therapist will talk to you about your financial situation and let you know where you land on our sliding scale. Therapists who are licensed or stay beyond our 2-year training program are able to set their own fees. If you are no longer able to pay the new fees your therapist sets, we will do our best to help find you a referral for alternative services.

    We are working on getting more of our therapists enrolled with Beacon Health Options, which will allow us to support clients with Medi-Cal insurance in SF and Alameda County to have the majority of their therapy costs covered. We can also send you a superbill after sessions for you to send to your private insurance company if they provide reimbursements.

    You legally have the right to a “Good Faith Estimate” before your first appointment, a document explaining how much your mental health care will cost. Under the law, healthcare providers need to give patients who don’t have insurance or who are not using insurance an estimate of the expected charges for medical services. If you receive a bill that is at least $400 more than your estimate, you can dispute the bill. Make sure to save a copy of your estimate.

  • Although we primarily work with adults, some clinicians work with teens ages 12 and up, which will also be noted in their bios.

Ketamine Therapy

  • Ketamine is a psychoactive drug that was first synthesized in 1962 and has been used in the United States as an anesthetic in medical settings since 1970. It is on the World Health Organization’s List of Essential Medicines.

    Ketamine has been used off-label in sub-anesthetic doses for the past 20 years to treat chronic pain, depression, and a variety of other mental health concerns, thanks to its rapid onset antidepressant effects, sometimes providing nearly immediate relief from emotional and physical pain. While the antidepressant effects tend to be temporary after a single ketamine treatment, multiple treatments have proven to have a cumulative effect, successfully alleviating symptoms in approximately 30 - 60% of individuals with treatment-resistant depression.

  • Ketamine-assisted therapy (KAT) is a unique therapeutic method used to address a variety of mental health conditions, including depression, post-traumatic stress, chronic pain, addiction, and some forms of anxiety. It involves the use of ketamine to enhance and deepen the therapeutic process, and the use of psychotherapy and other integrative forms of treatment to amplify and prolong the curative effects of ketamine.*

    In low doses, ketamine can serve as a supportive adjunct to psychotherapy, as it provides an opportunity for the temporary softening of the psychological defenses, allowing for deeper self reflection and psychotherapeutic processing.

    In moderate doses, ketamine has psychedelic effects, which have been shown to facilitate profound transpersonal experiences. These types of experiences can help people in a variety of ways, offering important clarity and insight into one’s struggles, adding a spiritual dimension to ongoing therapeutic work, and facilitating a sense of meaning and interconnectedness.

  • We will start with a written intake in which you describe your symptoms and determine whether ketamine-assisted therapy (KAT) might be of benefit to you. You will then meet with our prescriber for a psychiatric intake, where she will determine if you are medically-cleared for using this medicine. After the psychiatric intake, you will meet with one of our therapists for at least a few preparatory sessions, during which time you will be continuing to collaboratively assess if KAT is the right fit for you, while also building the relational safety necessary to do this work. There will be a minimum of three preparatory sessions before your first KAT session (8 prep sessions if you don’t have a current therapist), and it’s common to extend preparation time out for longer to ensure everything is thoroughly covered.

    The ketamine session itself typically lasts 3 hours. Your therapist will be with you throughout the ketamine session. While there are many possible routes of administration, we primarily work with sublingual lozenges. The effects begin to appear after about 15- 20 minutes, peak for about 40 minutes, and dissipate over the following 1-2 hours. It’s important to keep in mind that ketamine can sometimes encourage a positive shift in mood, while other times bring subconscious material to the surface to be processed. While ketamine is used as an off-label anti-depressant, sometimes more challenging emotions and experiences will surface, which you will work with your therapist to integrate.

    After your first KAT session, you will have at least 2 integration sessions in which we will help you integrate your experience during the ketamine session, discuss how you responded to the medicine, and determine an individualized course of treatment moving forward. We recommend a commitment to at least 3 ketamine sessions, as this medicine tends to have a cumulative effect and is most beneficial after multiple treatments. Please contact us directly for more detailed information and to answer any questions you might have.

  • Ketamine is used off-label for a variety of mental health disorders, including depression, chronic pain, anxiety, and post traumatic stress disorder.

    Some medical and psychiatric conditions need to be treated before you can safely work with ketamine. These conditions include active symptoms of psychosis, extreme dissociation, chaotic substance use, untreated mania, cardiovascular disease, uncontrolled hyperthyroidism, increased intracranial pressure, cystitis, or evidence of liver disease.

    For more info, read over our KAT info doc.

  • We are the only sliding-scale KAT clinic in the Bay Area. Services range from $60-$200 for 50-min preparation and integration sessions. The initial psychiatric intake is twice the cost of the prep and intake sessions, and follow-up psychiatric intakes are half the cost. Three-hour in-person KAT sessions are 4x the cost of prep and integration sessions, while virtual KAT sessions are 3x the cost.

    Our KAT sequence can vary per individual, but can look something like this:
    -pmedical intake
    -3 prep sessions
    -1 KAT session
    -2 integration sessions
    -1 KAT session
    -2 integration sessions
    -1 KAT
    -2 integration
    -psychiatric follow-up, and so on…

    At the rate of $200 for 50-min sessions, it comes out to $4,600 for three rounds of KAT.
    At the $60 rate, this would come out to $1,380.

    Please note that licensed therapists or interns who are in their 3rd year of our training program have flexibility to set their own rates.