What Is Psychedelic Integration? Why It Matters

Most of the attention in psychedelic-assisted therapy goes to the medicine session itself. That makes sense. It’s the part that feels new, and the part people wonder about most. But ask anyone who has been through it, and many will tell you the real work started afterwards, in the days and weeks when they tried to hold on to what they’d seen and actually live differently.

That’s what psychedelic integration is for. This guide explains what integration means, why it matters so much, what happens in a psychedelic integration therapy session, and how you can support the process on your own. At Field Trip, integration isn’t an optional extra. You meet with your therapist after each medicine session, in our clinics or online across Ontario, BC and Quebec, so the insight has somewhere to go.

In this guide:

• What is psychedelic integration?
• Why integration matters
• What happens in an integration therapy session
• How long integration takes
• How to integrate on your own
• Integration therapist or integration coach?
• Questions people ask

What is psychedelic integration?

There are a lot of definitions out there, which is part of why the word can feel vague. A 2022 review that pulled dozens of them together offered this one: integration is “a process in which a person revisits and actively engages in making sense of, working through, translating, and processing the content of their psychedelic experience”.

Put more simply: a session can show you something. Integration is how you figure out what it means, and what you want to do about it.

It helps to think of integration on two timescales:

• The near term. The hours and days right after a session, when feelings are fresh and you may want to talk, rest or just sit with things. This is where follow-up sessions with your therapist come in.
• The longer term. The weeks and months that follow, when you slowly test new ways of thinking, relating and living, and notice which ones stick.

Integration doesn’t mean every moment of a session has to be decoded. Some of it will stay a mystery, and that’s fine. The goal is to find the threads that matter to you and follow them.

Types of integration: the six areas it touches

The same 2022 review describes integration as moving toward greater balance and wholeness, both internally (mind, body and spirit) and externally (lifestyle, social relations and the natural world). In practice, that gives six areas where integration can happen:

• Mind. Making sense of the thoughts, beliefs and memories that came up, and noticing which old stories you might be ready to let go of.
• Body. Paying attention to what you felt physically, such as tension, release or exhaustion, and how your body responds in the days after. This is sometimes called somatic integration.
• Spirit. Meaning, values and a sense of connection to something larger than yourself, whatever that means to you, religious or not.
• Lifestyle. Your routines: sleep, work, food, alcohol, screens and how you spend your time.
• Relationships. How you show up with partners, family, friends and community, and which conversations you might want to have.
• The natural world. Time outside, and the steadying feeling many people describe when they reconnect with nature.

You don’t need to work on all six at once. Most people find one or two areas stand out after a session, and that’s where integration starts.

What integration can look like: an example

Here’s an illustration, not a real client, but a common shape. Imagine someone who started therapy for years of low mood and a habit of saying yes to everyone. During a session, they feel a wave of grief and a clear sense that they’ve been living to keep others comfortable.

In their integration session, they and their therapist trace that feeling back to where it started, and talk about what “living for myself” might actually mean. They choose one small experiment: saying no to one request that week, and noticing what happens. Over the next month, the experiments get a little braver. The insight from the session didn’t change their life on its own. The integration did.

Why integration matters

Insights fade without it

Almost every definition in that 2022 review shared one idea: integration is a process that takes time and effort, and without it, insights are likely to fade before they turn into real change. Anyone who has had a clear realization at 2 a.m. and forgotten it by lunch knows the feeling. A powerful session works the same way. The clarity is real, but daily life is loud, and old habits are well practised.

Integration is how you give a new insight a fighting chance against an old pattern.

What the research shows so far

Research on integration itself is still young, but the early signs point the same way: therapy after the medicine seems to help the benefits last. In a small 2021 randomized trial at Yale, adults with treatment-resistant depression who had responded to a course of six IV treatments with the medicine used in psychedelic-assisted therapy went on to either cognitive behavioural therapy or usual care for 14 weeks. On one of the two depression scales used, the therapy group kept more of their improvement. The researchers called the results preliminary and asked for larger studies, which is the honest place to leave it.

Clinicians also often describe the days after a session as a time when people feel unusually open to new perspectives. If you’re curious about the science behind that, we explain it in how psychedelic therapy affects the brain. Integration is about using that openness well, rather than letting it pass.

Hard moments need integration too

Not every session feels good. Some bring up grief, fear or memories you’ve kept at arm’s length for years. That doesn’t mean something went wrong. Often the difficult parts turn out to be the most important ones, but only once you’ve had help making sense of them. Integration gives those moments a safe place to land, so they become part of your healing rather than something you carry home alone. If you’d like to know more about what a session can feel like, read what psychedelic therapy actually feels like.

Integration starts with preparation

Good integration begins before the medicine session. In preparation, you and your therapist talk about what you’re hoping for and set intentions. Those intentions become a reference point afterwards: you can look back and ask what shifted, and what still needs attention. Our guide to the power of intention setting explains how to set them.

Wondering whether psychedelic-assisted therapy, with integration built in, could help you? Speak with our Care Team to see if it could be a fit.

What happens in a psychedelic integration therapy session

An integration session looks a lot like a regular therapy session. You sit down with your therapist, in person or online, and talk. What’s different is the focus. At Field Trip, after each medicine session, you meet with your therapist to explore the themes, insights and emotional patterns that came up, and to translate them into something you can use day to day.

Your therapist might ask things like:

• What stood out most, and what are you still thinking about?
• Was there an image, a feeling or a memory that surprised you?
• How does what came up connect to the reasons you started therapy?
• Was anything hard or confusing that you’d like to look at together?
• What is one small thing you’d like to do differently this week?

There are no right answers. Some people arrive with pages of notes. Others say, “I don’t really know what happened,” and that’s a perfectly good place to start. Your therapist has heard both many times.

Why it helps to have the same therapist

At Field Trip, the therapist who helps you prepare is the same person who supports your integration. You don’t have to retell your story to someone new, or explain the intentions you set. They already know what you were hoping for, which makes it much easier to see what has shifted. If you’re just starting out, our guide to setting intentions and preparing for psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy covers the steps that come before.

In words, the four steps are:

1. Prepare. Meet your therapist and set your intentions.
2. Medicine session. Medically supervised, with your therapist.
3. Integrate. Meet your therapist after each session.
4. Carry it forward. Small, steady changes in daily life.

How long does integration take?

The structured part is fairly short. Depending on your treatment plan, integration sessions are built in after your medicine sessions, and supplemental 50-minute integration sessions are available in clinic or virtually if you and your clinical team feel more support would help.

The personal part has no fixed end date. Many people find they keep noticing new connections for weeks or months, often in ordinary moments: a conversation that goes differently, a reaction that doesn’t take over the way it used to. That’s integration too. For a sense of how a full course of treatment is paced, see how long psychedelic therapy treatments last.

How to integrate a psychedelic experience on your own

Sessions with your therapist are the anchor, but much of integration happens in the rest of your week. The practices people use most often, according to that 2022 review, are surprisingly ordinary. That’s the point. Here are the ones we see help most:

• Write it down early. Details fade fast. A few lines in a journal on the same day, even fragments, give you and your therapist something to work with later.
• Protect some quiet time. Rest, and leave a little space in your calendar after a session rather than rushing back into a full day.
• Spend time outside. A walk, especially somewhere green, is one of the simplest ways to let things settle.
• Move your body. Gentle movement like walking, stretching or yoga can help you notice what you’re feeling, not just what you’re thinking.
• Talk to someone you trust. You don’t have to share everything. Telling one person what felt important can make it feel more real.
• Choose one small change. Pick one thing to try this week, rather than overhauling your whole life at once. Small changes are easier to keep.

Integration journaling prompts

If you’re not sure what to write, try one or two of these. There’s no need to answer them all:

• What is the first thing I remember when I think about the session?
• What surprised me most?
• Was there a moment that felt important, even if I don’t understand it yet?
• What did I feel in my body, and where?
• Is there something I want to say to someone, or to myself?
• What is one small thing I could do differently this week?
• What do I want to bring to my next integration session?

Many therapists also suggest holding off on major life decisions, like quitting a job or ending a relationship, until you’ve had time to talk them through. A strong feeling after a session can be an important signal. It’s still worth looking at it with some distance before acting.

Psychedelic integration therapist or integration coach?

If you search for help with integration, you’ll find both therapists and coaches. They’re not the same thing.

• An integration therapist is a regulated mental health professional, such as a registered psychotherapist, social worker or clinical counsellor. They can work with depression, anxiety, trauma and the other conditions that often bring people to psychedelic-assisted therapy in the first place.
• An integration coach may have useful experience, but coaching isn’t a regulated health profession in Canada, so training and standards vary widely.

If you’re working through a mental health condition, or something difficult came up in a session, a registered therapist is the safer choice. Whoever you see, it’s fair to ask about their training, their registration with a provincial college, and how much experience they have with psychedelic-assisted therapy. At Field Trip, integration is done by the same registered therapist who prepared you. If you’re new to therapy in general, our piece on the importance of talk therapy is a good place to start.

Psychedelic integration therapy in Ontario, BC and Quebec

Field Trip offers psychedelic-assisted therapy with integration in person at our clinics in Toronto, Ottawa, Hamilton, Kitchener-Waterloo, Thunder Bay and Sault Ste. Marie in Ontario, Vancouver in BC and Montreal in Quebec, and online across all three provinces.

You don’t have to live near a clinic to get integration support. In Field Trip’s at-home psychedelic-assisted therapy, a licensed nurse attends each medicine session in person, and your therapist joins virtually for preparation and integration. Integration sessions are available virtually across all participating provinces, and many people find it easier to reflect from their own couch.

Signs integration is working, and when to ask for more support

Integration rarely feels like a single breakthrough. More often it shows up quietly:

• an insight from a session still feels useful a few weeks later
• you catch an old reaction a little sooner than you used to
• a small change you chose is still there
• you can think about something hard without it taking over the whole day

Reach out to your therapist sooner rather than later if something from a session keeps coming back and unsettling you, your sleep is off for more than a few days, or you just feel stuck and unsure what any of it meant. That’s exactly what integration support is for, and asking for it is part of the process, not a sign it isn’t working. You can also read about side effects to know before starting psychedelic therapy.

Questions people ask

Sources

• Bathje, Majeski and Kudowor, Psychedelic integration: an analysis of the concept and its practice, Frontiers in Psychology (2022)
• Wilkinson et al., Cognitive behavioral therapy to sustain antidepressant effects in treatment-resistant depression: a randomized clinical trial, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics (2021)

About the Author

Dr. Mario Nucci MD CCFP is a licensed Family Physician with a passion for mental health and the development of new therapies. He is actively engaged in research with a faculty associate professorship at Northern Ontario School of Medicine, and research collaborations with the University of Ottawa, University of Calgary, Lakehead University, Concordia University and Vancouver Island University.

Dr. Nucci is the founder of Bay and Algoma Health Centre in 2019, a walk-in and addiction medicine clinic. He founded the Canadian Centre for Psychedelic Healing in 2019, now operating as Field Trip Health, providing cutting edge mental health care, including ketamine therapy, in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa, Hamilton, Kitchener-Waterloo, Thunder Bay and Sault Ste. Marie.

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