Gerard Artesona, LMFT

Gerard Artesona is a licensed marriage and family therapist (LMFT) in Oakland, California, whose practice centres on psychedelic integration therapy. He also offers ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, talk therapy, outdoor ecotherapy in the East Bay and one-to-one mentorship for psychedelic guides.

Approach

He links psychology with entheogenic ritual, working in a humanistic, transpersonal and relational way and using cognitive behavioural and somatic therapy. His master’s in counselling psychology came from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, now Sofia University, in 2012. He later trained in psychedelic therapy at the California Institute of Integral Studies (2018), in ketamine-assisted psychotherapy at the Ketamine Training Center (2021) and in somatic trauma therapy (2022). He has worked with ayahuasca, or yajé, since 2010, often spending months in Ecuador, Peru and Colombia to learn from Amazonian healers. Earlier he worked at John Muir Behavioral Hospital, the Homeless Children’s Network and San Mateo County Jail.

Who it is for

He sees adults with complex trauma, depression or anxiety, and people who are neurodivergent, living with chronic illness, going through a major life change, facing existential questions or making sense of non-ordinary states of consciousness.

Practical details

Talk therapy and integration run on Zoom, ecotherapy sessions of about an hour take place outdoors in the East Bay, and psychedelic-assisted therapy is in person. A 50-minute session costs $180, with a sliding scale. He takes most major insurers, Aetna, Cigna and Kaiser among them, and can provide a superbill. A free 20-minute phone consultation comes first.

Care and safety

For ketamine-assisted psychotherapy he works with licensed psychiatrists, who approve the use of ketamine, while he prepares the client, stays through the session and leads the integration afterwards. A session takes about three hours, with effects lasting one to two, and clients need a safe ride home. Intake covers medical and psychiatric history.