What it is
This was, from 2022 to 2025, the only psychedelic facilitator training run inside a top-tier American public research university. UC Berkeley's Center for the Science of Psychedelics incubated it in partnership with Berkeley's School of Education; the two graduating cohorts ran nine months each, 200 hours in total, and it was built for a specific and unusual audience — 'advanced religious, spiritual care, and healthcare professionals working in areas such as chaplaincy, ministry, medicine, nursing, midwifery, mental health counseling, psychiatry, and social work', plus people trained in traditional plant-medicine lineages who carried the support of their community. The center of gravity was spiritual care rather than clinical protocol: the nine curriculum domains put Spiritual Care, Ancestral Entheogenic Traditions, Reciprocity and Ecological Awareness and Contemplative Practice alongside Psychotherapeutic Methods and Clinical Science. That is not a marketing gloss — the program director, Moana Meadow, is an interfaith minister and hospice chaplain, and the program was run out of a School of Education as an explicit 'laboratory school' collecting research data on how to train facilitators.
The teaching was heavily in person, which is what made it expensive and what made alumni rate it. Of the 160 instructional hours, roughly 90% were face to face across seven modules of three to five days: five or six non-residential modules in Berkeley each year plus one residential retreat at a Northern California retreat center, supplemented by monthly online small groups and JEDI (justice, equity, diversity, inclusion) panels. Expect another ~160 hours of reading and written work — about four to five hours a week for nine months. A further optional 40-hour practicum (30 hours of direct facilitation or observation of non-ordinary states, 10 hours of professional consultation) was what actually unlocked Oregon or Colorado licensure, and it carried an extra fee on top of tuition. Cohorts were deliberately small: 25–30 in the first two years, expanded to 60 for 2024-25.
Enrollment is paused and has been since the 2025-26 academic year. BCSP's own explanation is unusually candid: 'In response to multiple factors, including changing policies and regulatory requirements at the campus, state, and federal levels; decreased demand for facilitation training; and decreased philanthropic support for University-based psychedelic education, enrollment is paused for 2025-2026.' The program became administratively independent from BCSP on 1 July 2025 and moved wholly into the School of Education; the BCSP pages are now a frozen archive that says so at the top of every page. Staff say they will spend the pause analyzing and publishing four years of program data, held a first alumni gathering in September 2025, and 'will also consider formats for continuing education' — but no restart date, no new site, and no new tuition figure has been published as of 6 August 2026.
The credential still does something, which is why it is worth understanding even paused. The certificate was an Oregon Health Authority approved Psilocybin Facilitator Training Program (ID #TP-b174a696), approved through Oregon's Higher Education Coordinating Commission 'until 2027', and Oregon's live approved-curriculum list still carried 'Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics - Psychedelic Facilitation Certificate Program' when checked on 6 August 2026. Holders of a 2023-2025 Certificate of Completion remain eligible to pursue Oregon licensure, and Colorado licensure on top of that with supplemental training and practicum hours. None of that changes anything about practicing in California. BCSP's other public offerings are still open and are education, not training: the free-to-audit online course 'Psychedelics and the Mind' with Professor David Presti (8 modules, 8+ hours of video, $85 for the verified certificate track, reduced from $135), plus The Microdose newsletter, the Altered States podcast, a state-by-state Law and Policy Map, a clinical trials map and a patent tracker.
What it lets you do
This is the section the program’s own marketing is least specific about, so it runs before everything else. It was established against the program’s own materials and against the two state registers that matter — Oregon’s approved-curriculum list and Colorado’s.
- Nothing about this certificate changes a California BBS license. A California LMFT, LCSW or LPCC holding it practices exactly the same scope they held before — psychotherapy — and the BBS neither recognizes nor requires the credential.
- Do preparation and integration work with California clients who obtain psychedelics elsewhere. This is ordinary psychotherapy and needs no special credential at all; the training makes you better at it, not more permitted.
- Practice ketamine-assisted psychotherapy in California — the one psychedelic modality legally available to a California therapist today. Ketamine is an FDA-approved anaesthetic prescribed off-label; the therapist does not prescribe or dispense it. A physician, NP or PA does. At least two of the program's own published alumni are California LMFTs doing exactly this.
- Apply for an Oregon psilocybin facilitator license, if you hold a 2023-2025 Certificate of Completion and completed the 40-hour practicum. The program was an OHA-approved training program (ID #TP-b174a696) and still appeared on Oregon's live approved-curriculum list when checked on 6 August 2026. Oregon requires you to be 21+, hold a high-school diploma, pass a criminal background check, complete an approved program including practicum and its exams, pass the OPS regulations exam, pay a $150 application fee and then a $2,000 annual license fee ($1,000 reduced for veterans, SSI, SNAP or Oregon Health Plan recipients). The Oregon residency requirement expired in January 2025, so a Californian can hold this license — but must physically facilitate in a licensed Oregon service center.
- Pursue Colorado facilitator licensure on top of Oregon licensure, per BCSP: holders of a 2023-2025 certificate 'are eligible to pursue licensure in Oregon as well as Colorado (the latter requires supplemental training and practicum hours)'.
- Be credible to a research team, a KAP clinic, or a future employer. The program is small, university-badged and unusually well documented, and its faculty roster (UCSF, MAPS/Lykos-adjacent, Paul Stamets as a guest lecturer) travels.
- Administer psilocybin or MDMA to anyone in California. Both remain Schedule I federally, and California has no regulated access program — SB 58 was vetoed by Governor Newsom in October 2023, and the 2025-26 California bills (AB 1103, SB 751, SB 1224, AB 2489) are research-funding and study measures, not access frameworks.
- Enroll. Enrollment has been paused since the 2025-26 academic year and no restart has been announced. The BCSP pages are an archive and stop being updated on 1 July 2025.
- Use it as a Colorado training credential on its own. BCSP does not appear on Colorado DORA's list of Approved Natural Medicine Training Programs (checked 6 August 2026), so it does not by itself satisfy Colorado's 150-hour didactic requirement — Colorado is reachable via the Oregon route or with supplemental training.
- Bill insurance for anything, prescribe anything, or supervise anyone in a psychedelic capacity in California.
- Claim to be a 'certified psychedelic therapist' in any regulated sense. The program's own FAQ is explicit that graduates were not licensed, certified or sanctioned to work where regulations did not permit it.
Trainees who completed the program were not licensed, certified, or otherwise sanctioned to provide psychedelic care in settings where regulations did not permit psychedelic work.— UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics (BCSP), in partnership with the UC Berkeley School of Education, in its own materials
Why the answer is this narrow →
Cost, length and who can apply
What you would study
- Spiritual Care
Developed and taught by program director Moana Meadow (MA, MDiv, interfaith minister, hospice chaplain) across all three years; addressed a range of orientations to spiritual faith and practice, including Indigenous perspectives.
source ↗ - Psychotherapeutic Methods
Directed 2022-2025 by Joseph Zamaria, PsyD, ABPP, board-certified clinical psychologist and associate clinical professor of psychiatry at UCSF, a therapist and researcher in psychedelic clinical trials.
source ↗ - Ancestral Entheogenic Traditions
Led 2022-2025 by Susana Bustos, PhD, a psychotherapist and music therapist and Holotropic Breathwork practitioner since 1999; framed as bridging anthropocentric healing systems with those based on human relationship to other sentiences in nature. Guest instructors included Dr Susana Bustos, Ariel Clark and Joe Tafur.
source ↗ - Clinical Science and Research
Directed 2023-2025 by Sylvestre (Sylver) Quevedo, MD, MPH, associate professor of medicine and psychiatry at UCSF and a principal investigator in FDA trials of MDMA for PTSD.
source ↗ - Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion
Directed 2022-2024 by Mary Sanders; covered historical and current systems of oppression, collective healing through an intersectional lens, and community-oriented infrastructures. Ran alongside a JEDI mentoring program pairing students with psychedelic professionals from marginalized backgrounds.
source ↗ - Contemplative Practice
Taught 2024-2025 by Angella Okawa, MA (Pacifica Graduate Institute), Hakomi- and MAPS-trained, an ordained Zen monk; framed around 'liminal fluency' — working skillfully with clients across cultures, identities and ways of knowing.
source ↗ - Ethics
Overseen and co-taught by Kristina Hunter alongside Kylea Taylor; Hunter also served as Practicum Supervisor in 2024-25 and tracked state legalisation developments with specialized expertise in Oregon's Measure 109 policy.
source ↗ - Reciprocity and Ecological Awareness
Directed 2023-2025 by Dr Sylver Quevedo, including perspectives from traditional lineages; ethnobotanist Kathleen Harrison also taught in this area.
source ↗ - Somatic Awareness
One of the nine named core domains of knowledge the program integrated and applied. The archived pages do not name a separate somatic instructor.
source ↗ - Practicum (optional, 40 hours)
30 hours of direct facilitation or observation of non-ordinary states of consciousness plus 10 hours of professional consultation. Designed by each student with instructional staff support. Some placements were provided by the program; all were optional and carried an additional cost. Required to pursue Oregon or Colorado licensure.
source ↗
Who teaches it
Faculty is a large part of what these programs actually sell, and it changes between cohorts — check the current list before you decide on this basis.
- Moana Meadow, MA, MDiv — Program Staff Director since 2022 and author of the spiritual care curriculum. Interfaith minister ordained at the Chaplaincy Institute, hospice chaplain, birth doula, former executive director of a plant-medicine church, advisory board of the Sacred Plant Alliance. She is the reason this program reads differently from every clinical-protocol training.
- Tina Trujillo — Faculty Director and Principal Investigator; associate professor at Berkeley's School of Education. She ran the ethnographic research and internal evaluation that make this the best-documented facilitator training in the US.
- Sylvestre (Sylver) Quevedo, MD, MPH — Senior Scholar; associate professor of medicine and psychiatry at UCSF and a principal investigator in FDA trials of MDMA for PTSD. Directed Clinical Science and Reciprocity/Ecological Awareness, 2023-2025.
- Joseph Zamaria, PsyD, ABPP — directed the psychotherapy curriculum 2022-2025; board-certified clinical psychologist, associate clinical professor at UCSF, fifteen-plus years researching psychedelics.
- Susana Bustos, PhD — led Ancestral Entheogenic Traditions 2022-2025; directed the US Spiritual Emergence Network 2016-2020; co-founder of the Escuela de Psicovegetalismo.
- Kathleen Harrison, MA — ethnobotanist, founder of Botanical Dimensions (1985), five decades of fieldwork in Indigenous cultures of the Americas.
- Angella Okawa, MA — Contemplative Practice and Culturally Informed Integration, 2024-2025; Pacifica MA, Hakomi- and MAPS-trained, ordained Zen monk.
- Kristina Hunter — Program Coordinator 2022-2024 and Practicum Supervisor 2024-25; co-taught ethics with Kylea Taylor; specialist in Oregon Measure 109 policy.
- Mary Sanders — directed the JEDI curriculum 2022-2024; trained at CIIS CPTR, MAPS and the Ketamine Training Center; founding board member of the People of Color Psychedelic Collective.
- Guest lecturers included mycologist Paul Stamets, Dr Pam Kryskow, Dr Gregory Cajete (Santa Clara Pueblo educator), and psychiatric NP Andrew Penn.
What people say about it
Quoted with the source attached in every case, including the program’s own claims about itself — which are labeled as such — and the critical ones.
Where it stands right now
Paused. Verified 6 August 2026 at https://psychedelics.berkeley.edu/facilitation-certificate-program/future-programming/, which states enrollment is paused for 2025-2026 and that the page has not been actively updated since 1 July 2025. No restart date, no new website, and no future tuition has been announced. The program's Oregon curriculum approval nonetheless still appears on the Oregon Health Authority's live approved-program list as of the same date (https://psilocybin.oregon.gov/training-approved).
What I could not establish
These are the things I looked for and could not establish. Take them to the program, and notice how quickly and precisely they answer.
- No restart date, and no indication whether the program will restart at all under the School of Education. Staff said they would build a new site; it had not appeared as of 6 August 2026.
- No published tuition or format for any future cohort.
- Whether Oregon curriculum approval (ID #TP-b174a696, approved 'until 2027') will be renewed, allowed to lapse, or formally surrendered under OAR 333-333-4280. It is still listed as approved today but nobody can currently enroll.
- No independent journalism or third-party review of the program was findable — every alumni account available is published by BCSP itself.
- No published employment or licensure outcomes: how many of the roughly 110+ graduates actually went on to hold an Oregon or Colorado facilitator license is not stated anywhere.
- No verified program-specific video. UC Berkeley channels host several psychedelics talks, but none could be confirmed as being about this certificate specifically, so none is listed.
- Colorado's precise 'supplemental training and practicum hours' for a Berkeley certificate holder are asserted by BCSP but not spelled out by BCSP or DORA.
- Could not verify any FDA action on MDMA-assisted therapy after the August 2024 complete response letter within the sources reachable here; the working assumption in this record is that there is still no FDA-approved MDMA product and psilocybin and MDMA remain Schedule I federally.
Sources for this page (12)
- Program overview (archived)
- Future Programming — the pause statement and the $14,000 fee
- FAQ — cost range, cohort size, scope disclaimer, Oregon program ID
- Curriculum — the three medicines, Oregon/HECC approval 'until 2027'
- Meet the Team — faculty
- Alumni Voices index
- Oregon Health Authority — live list of training programs with approved curriculum (BCSP present, 6 Aug 2026)
- Oregon Psilocybin Services — facilitator license fact sheet ($150 application, $2,000 annual, exam, no residency requirement)
- Colorado DORA Natural Medicine homepage — approved training program list (BCSP absent, 6 Aug 2026)
- BCSP 'Psychedelics and the Mind' online course — free audit, $85 verified track
- BCSP site-wide disclaimer
- BCSP Law and Policy Map — California status, 2026