If you are searching for a psilocybin retreat, you have probably found a confusing mix of results: overseas retreat centers, state-licensed centers in Oregon and Colorado, clinical trials that are not recruiting, and clinics like ours offering something adjacent but not the same. This is an attempt to lay out what is actually available in the United States right now, and where ketamine fits.
We provide ketamine-assisted psychotherapy. We do not provide psilocybin, MDMA, or any other psychedelic. That is worth saying plainly at the top so you can decide whether to keep reading.
The two substances are not interchangeable
Psilocybin is the active compound in what most people call magic mushrooms. A session typically runs four to six hours, sometimes longer, and the experience is usually described as immersive: perceptual changes, strong emotional content, and a sense of the session having its own arc that you follow rather than direct.
Ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic that has been used in medicine since the 1960s. At the low doses used in therapy it produces a shorter experience, commonly forty-five minutes to two hours, and a different quality: a sense of distance from your usual self-narrative, which is often what makes difficult material approachable.
That difference in duration and character matters more than it first appears. A shorter, more predictable window is what makes it practical to do the actual therapy in the same session, rather than treating the experience as the event and the therapy as follow-up.
Where the law currently stands
This is the part that decides what you can actually book.
Psilocybin remains a Schedule I controlled substance under federal law. Two states have built regulated access outside that framework. Oregon licenses psilocybin service centers, and Colorado has established healing centers. Both are worth understanding accurately: they are supervised-use programs, not medical treatment. You are not prescribed psilocybin, you do not need a diagnosis, and the facilitator is not necessarily a licensed therapist. Neither program bills insurance, and neither is designed to accept a clinical referral the way a treatment provider would.
Retreats in other countries operate under their own national laws. Some are long-established and careful. But you are traveling, the provider is outside US regulation, and if something goes wrong clinically there is no continuity with your care at home.
Ketamine sits differently. It is an approved medication, and prescribing it for mental health treatment is legal off-label use, which is ordinary medical practice. That means it can be delivered by licensed clinicians, inside a treatment relationship, with screening and follow-up.
What the evidence does and does not say
Both have real research behind them, and both have research that is younger and smaller than the enthusiasm around them.
Psilocybin has produced striking results in trials for treatment-resistant depression and end-of-life distress. Those trials are mostly small, conducted with intensive preparation and support, and their conditions are not what a commercial retreat reproduces.
Ketamine has a longer clinical track record for depression, including rapid reduction in suicidal ideation, and a growing body of work on pairing it with psychotherapy rather than giving it alone.
What we will not tell you is that one is better than the other. The honest position is that the comparison has not been settled by the evidence, and anyone claiming otherwise is ahead of the science. What we can say is which one we are able to deliver legally, inside a clinical relationship, today.
What a ketamine-assisted intensive actually involves
The version we run is not a single dosing session. It is three to five consecutive days of therapy, with ketamine used inside some of those sessions and trauma-focused work, EMDR, IFS and ART, carrying the rest.
A typical day pairs preparation, a dosing session, and integration work while the material is still close to the surface. That last part is the reason for the intensive format. Insight during a session is common. Insight that changes anything is usually a product of what happens afterwards, and doing it the same afternoon rather than a two weeks later is the whole design.
How to think about the choice
A few questions worth asking whichever direction you go.
Is there a licensed clinician responsible for your care? Not a facilitator, a guide, or a host, but someone licensed who can screen you, notice a contraindication, and be accountable afterwards.
What happens between sessions? If the answer is nothing structured, you are buying an experience rather than a course of treatment.
Are you being screened out of anything? A provider who never declines anyone is not screening. Ketamine is not appropriate for everyone, and neither is psilocybin.
What does aftercare look like? The weeks after are when the work either consolidates or fades.
If you came here looking for psilocybin
You may still conclude that a psilocybin program is what you want, and that is a legitimate choice to make with clear eyes about the regulatory picture above.
If what you actually want is the underlying thing, structured psychedelic-assisted work with licensed clinicians, inside a real treatment relationship, in New England rather than on another continent, then ketamine-assisted intensive retreats are the version of that which exists today.
The KAIR Program is designed for deep therapeutic work and is not appropriate for acute crisis situations. If you are in crisis, please contact your local emergency services or crisis hotline for immediate support.
