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SSRI Deprescribing & Psychedelic Readiness – a practitioner certification for therapists, clinicians, coaches & facilitators working with medicated clients

Get Your Clients Off Antidepressants Safely, and Ready for What Comes Next

Live sessions with David Rabin, M.D., Ph.D. on running the transition end to end, from the readiness assessment through the taper to the support stack that keeps clients off.

The presale ends on August 12 at midnight.

PROGRAM START: SEPTEMBER 16

Deprescribing SSRIs and Psychedelic Readiness – a practitioner certification for therapists, clinicians, coaches & facilitators working with medicated clients

Get Your Clients Off Antidepressants Safely, and Ready for What Comes Next

Six sessions with Dr. Dave Rabin on tapering, the ketamine bridge, and the nervous-system stack that keeps clients off.

PROGRAM START: APRIL 13

Know exactly when a client is ready. And also when it’s not quite time, using a clinical-grade assessment you can apply upon completion.

Learn the sequenced protocol directly from David Rabin, M.D., Ph.D., the psychiatrist who has spent 20 years deprescribing patients and researching what actually happens in the nervous system when they stop.

Stop referring these clients away. The people asking you this question are already in your practice. Right now, most practitioners have to send them somewhere else.

Format:

3-Month Live Online Training: 6 live 90-minute classes + 6 facilitated labs

Instructors:

David Rabin,  M.D., Ph.D. – main teaching faculty

Outcome:

Clients transitioned safely, in-scope, with prescriber alignment

Accreditation:

Certificate in SSRI Depresribing & Psychedelic Readiness + 7 CE credits

Integrated Tool:

Pre-publication access to Dr. Rabin’s clinical deprescribing material

Who This Training Is For

Therapists, clinicians, coaches, and practitioners already working with clients.

A client tells you they’ve been on an SSRI for six years. They don’t think it’s helping anymore and they’ve read about psychedelic therapy.

They’ve decided they want off their psychiatric medications, and have asked you for support in doing so. Immediately, a thought of doubt and trepidation comes to mind:

"I'm the person they trust with their mental health. Am I actually equipped to guide it?"

68% of Americans taking antidepressants have been on them for 2+ years. Roughly 1 in 4, for 10+ years. For most of them, no one has ever revisited the decision of going on an SSRI. Their prescriber writes the refill without question, and nobody supports them in safely tapering off.

So they bring it to you, because you’re the one they talk to about how their life is actually going. Now, here’s the part that keeps competent practitioners up at night:

Helping clients taper off SSRIs is the one area where doing nothing and doing something both carry real risk.

Say “talk to your doctor” and you’ve handed them back to the system that never revisited it.

Support them without knowing the pharmacology, and you’re improvising with a serotonergic taper, a discontinuation syndrome that mimics relapse, and – if psilocybin or ayahuasca enter the picture – a drug interaction you were never trained to assess.

This training is for you if:

You’re already working with clients as a therapist, coach, clinician, or facilitator and medicated clients are part of your caseload.

You’ve been asked about tapering, and you improvised. You gave a careful, hedged, responsible answer but knew it wasn’t the answer they needed.

You do psychedelic work, and you’re currently turning away or indefinitely delaying anyone on an SSRI, because “wait until you’re off” is the only protocol you have.

You want to be the practitioner in your region who handles this properly. Meaning, you have  a protocol, a prescriber relationship, and a credential, instead of referring every medicated patient out.

This Training Is NOT For Everyone

This is not for you if you’re looking for a way around the prescriber. Whatever your license or certification, the medication order belongs to the person who wrote it. This training makes you a competent, credible partner in that relationship, but it does not route around it.

This isn’t for you if you’re not working with clients yet. The labs are built on live cases, and without a caseload of your own to bring, you’ll get materially less out of the program. If you’re earlier in your path, start with one of our foundational practitioner trainings first.

This is not for you if you want the credential without changing the intake. What you learn here changes your assessment process, your consent forms, and your referral network. If those aren’t things you’re willing to revise, the certificate won’t do much for you.

(Limited spots available)

What This Qualifies You To Do

Nothing here asks you to work outside your license. It asks you to be far more useful inside it.

The most common reason practitioners hesitate on a training like this isn’t the price. It’s the worry that they’ll learn something they aren’t permitted to use, or that using it will expose their license, board standing, or insurance. So here’s the honest answer, by tier.

Your tier

Licensed prescribers (MD, DO, NP, PA)

What this protocol  lets you do

Run and co-manage tapers directly. The training adds the taper structure itself, the withdrawal-vs-relapse differential, and the psychedelic sequencing that likelywasn’t in your medical training.

Where your line sits

No new limit. You already hold this authority; however, this training makes you materially better at exercising it.

Your tier

Coaches & non-clinical practitioners

What this protocol  lets you do

Assess fit, recognize danger early, support the process competently, and know precisely when to hand off. Plus, learn how to build the prescriber relationships that let you stay involved rather than lose the client.

Where your line sits

No clinical assessment and no medication guidance. You support around the taper, never the taper itself.

Your tier

Licensed mental health professionals (therapist, psychologist, counselor,  social worker)

What this protocol  lets you do

Run and co-manage tapers directly. The training adds the taper structure itself, the withdrawal-vs-relapse differential, and the psychedelic sequencing that likelywasn’t in your medical training.

Where your line sits

No new limit. You already hold this authority; however, this training makes you materially better at exercising it.

Your tier

What this protocol  lets you do

Where your line sits

Licensed prescribers (MD, DO, NP, PA)

Run and co-manage tapers directly. The training adds the taper structure itself, the withdrawal-vs-relapse differential, and the psychedelic sequencing that likelywasn’t in your medical training.

No new limit. You already hold this authority; however, this training makes you materially better at exercising it.

Licensed mental health professionals (therapist, psychologist, counselor,  social worker)

Readiness assessment, risk stratification, symptom monitoring, the withdrawal-vs-relapse judgment, and co-management with the prescriber. You become a clinical peer in that conversation rather than a bystander waiting for updates.

The medication order stays with the prescriber. Everything around it becomes yours to hold competently.

Coaches & non-clinical practitioners

No clinical assessment and no medication guidance. You support around the taper, never the taper itself.

Every tier builds and peer-reviews a written scope-of-practice position during the program, so you finish with your line defined in writing and defensible to a board, an insurer, or a referring physician.

The Great Tapering Myth:

"Wait a few weeks for it to clear, then you're fine"

It’s the most common belief among practitioners in this field. But there’s a problem:

The psychiatric drug clearing the system is not the same event as the body adjusting to its absence. Clearance takes just a few days. But the adaptation that built up over years takes much longer to unwind, and that unwinding is what people feel.

In the largest analysis to date, covering 79 studies and over 21,000 patients:

1 in 3 people stopping an SSRI reported discontinuation symptoms
Roughly 1 in 6 experienced symptoms caused directly by stopping the drug,
About 1 in 35 experienced severe symptoms.

A separate 2024 meta-analysis reported a pooled incidence far higher: 45.6% for SSRIs and 51.4% for anyone treated for longer than 24 weeks.

The literature disagrees on the magnitude of impact, but it does not disagree that the risk rises the longer someone has been medicated, which likely describes most of the clients asking you for help.

The second problem is the much harder one to assess. Discontinuation symptoms often look like the original condition returning, with anxiety, insomnia, and emotional volatility all presenting once again.

Many practitioners are then left wondering:

Is this withdrawal, or is this relapse? It’s the most consequential call in the process, and very few clinicians have been taught how to properly make it

And then there’s psychedelic medicine. SSRIs blunt the psychedelic response, sometimes almost entirely, through receptor downregulation. So a client who tapers too fast, journeys too soon, and feels nothing concludes the medicine doesn’t work for them. A client who tapers off the wrong drug class and journeys carries a real interaction risk.

Timing is the intervention. It isn’t the taper, and it isn’t the medicine. It’s the sequence between them.

“Dave is a wellspring of information. I am a med student in Europe and the information he is sharing is very hard to come by here, and if you do find it you have to piece it together through a long process of trial and error.”

– Merlin, Safety & Harm Reduction Certification with Dr. Dave Rabin

This Deprescribing Protocol Doesn't Exist Publicly Yet.

You’ll learn it directly from the person who wrote it.

Dr. Rabin has spent two decades as a board-certified psychiatrist deprescribing patients and studying what chronic stress and chronic medication do to the human nervous system. The protocol he uses in his own clinic – the assessment, the taper structure, the readiness criteria, the sequencing into psychedelic work – has never been taught outside it.

In this cohort you get:

Direct mentorship from Dr. Rabin across six live sessions, as core teaching faculty. No rotating guest roster, no diluted protocol.

Pre-publication access to his clinical deprescribing material, which has the protocol as he uses it, not a summary written for a general audience.

A risk-stratification framework for deciding  which clients you can support, which need medical co-management, and which  you should not take on.

The withdrawal-vs-relapse differential, including the specific markers, timelines, and symptom patterns that distinguish them.

The interaction map across SSRIs, SNRIs, tricyclics, MAOIs, and serotonergic psychedelics, including what actually happens to psychedelic response after discontinuation, and how long it takes to return.

A prescriber collaboration script: how to open the conversation with a client’s physician so you’re a clinical asset rather than a liability.

A written scope-of-practice position you build during the program, so you know precisely where your line is and can defend it.

“Having taken all three major Psychedelic Coaching Institute’s courses, the Psychedelic Safety & Harm Reduction was the richest and most relatable to my actual practice. As a practitioner who facilitates ceremonies and healing journeys, Dr. Dave’s personal insights and teachings were immediately applicable to what I do and to doing it better and safer! So many questions were answered about providing a safe and expansive container without directing. I have learned, or had reinforced, so many aspects of working with intentional psychedelics over the course of the last several years with the Institute that it proves worthwhile on a daily basis. But this course brought it all together in terms of making the most of every journey; from the gentle novice traveller to the biggest, most challenging client experiences. Well done!”

– Uel G., Safety & Harm Reduction Certification with Dr. Dave Rabin

12 Weeks to Professional Certainty

Six Live 90-Minute Classes With Dr. Rabin

Six Facilitated Labs Between the Classes

Live classes with Dr. Rabin at 10:00 AM PT (mostly Wednesdays), 90 minutes each, every other week. On alternating Wednesdays, you meet at the same time in a facilitated lab to work live cases from your own practice against the protocol you have just learned. One to two additional lab times will be offered to accommodate other time zones and schedules. Every class is recorded.

Lab weeks: Sep 30 · Oct 14 · Oct 28 · Nov 11 · Nov 25 · Dec 9

– the final lab is the capstone, with participant case presentations and certification.

CLASS 1: The Case for Deprescribing & the Protocol

Wed, Sep 23

The SSRI landscape and the federal deprescribing shift, the serotonin-imbalance critique, why SSRIs and classic psychedelics never mix, and the full protocol walked end to end so everyone has the map before the detail.

CLASS 2: Screening, Candidacy & Red Flags

Wed, Oct 7

Who is and isn’t a candidate. Contraindications and exclusions, serotonin syndrome and key interactions, intake and documentation, and when to hand back to the prescriber.

CLASS 3: THE TAPER

Wed, Oct 21

Deliberate doctor-guided tapering, 4–12 week arcs, the hyperbolic method and when it’s indicated, recognizing and managing withdrawal, co-managing with prescribers.

CLASS 4: Ketamine as the BridgE

Wed, Nov 4

The glutamate rationale and why it’s SSRI-compatible. Dosing and routes, KAP session structure, the neuroplastic window, and starting transition work before the client is medication-free.

CLASS 5: Staying Off: Regulation & the Support Stack

Wed, Nov 18

Vagal-tone and polyvagal-informed somatic, breath, touch and sound tools; targeted supplementation; sleep, movement, light and nutrition; the relapse-prevention scaffold. This is where the course puts its deliberate emphasis: staying off is the harder, longer task, and it is the part almost no training addresses.

CLASS 6: Transitioning to Psychedelics, Integration & Scope

Tue, Dec 1

Readiness at ~4 weeks medication-free, dosing, strain, set and setting, microdosing, the integration frame, and ethics, consent and scope boundaries.

YOUR INSTRUCTOR

Led by Dave Rabin, M.D., Ph.D.

Dave Rabin, M.D., Ph.D. is a neuroscientist, board-certified psychiatrist, psychedelic researcher, and health tech inventor who has spent over 20 years studying the impact of chronic stress on the human nervous system. As co-founder and Chief Medical Officer at Apollo Neuroscience, he developed the first scientifically validated wearable that actively improves relaxation and focus using novel touch therapy.

His clinical work focuses on treatment-resistant conditions and on the responsible reduction of psychiatric medication where it is no longer serving the patient. As Executive Director of The Board of Medicine, he works to establish evidence-based clinical guidelines and quality-control standards for alternative medicines and psychedelic-assisted therapies.

“As someone coming from the medicine side I was a little worried I was out of my league with the academic level of the reading materials. But I am finding Dr. Rabin to be exceptional in his ability to walk in both the world of the clinician and the world of the medicine.”

— Sue B., Safety & Harm Reduction Certification

Why This Matters Now

Approval is coming, but most of the people who want psychedelic therapy are medicated.

In April 2026, the FDA issued National Priority Vouchers to psychedelic developers, compressing the review clock to a matter of weeks once an application is filed. Compass Pathways is completing a rolling submission for psilocybin in treatment-resistant depression, with a decision window that runs from late 2026 into 2027. An LSD-based treatment for generalized anxiety is in Phase 3 with Breakthrough Therapy designation behind it.

At the same time, the federal government has begun moving in the opposite direction on the prescription of psychiatric medication In May 2026, HHS launched an action plan on overprescribing that explicitly supports tapering and discontinuation for patients not experiencing clinical benefit. CMS issued guidance clarifying Medicare payment for deprescribing care. A technical expert panel convened in July to develop formal federal clinical guidance on tapering protocols.

Put those two together, and you get the problem this training exists for.

When the approvals come, millions of people are going to want psychedelic therapy. A very large share of them are already on an antidepressant, which blunts psychedelic response and sometimes flattens it almost entirely.

So most of them can’t start where they think they’re starting. They have to come off first, and coming off is the part nobody has planned for.

The prescriber writes the refill. The psychedelic practitioner says come back when you’re off it. The client is left to manage the hardest part alone.

The number of people asking “how do I taper off my SSRIs” is about to rise sharply, and the formal standards are being written right now.

To our knowledge, this is the first professional training built specifically on the transition itself rather than on what happens on either side of it. The practitioners who understand this material before the guidance lands will be the ones the referrals go to.

I spent a lot of time and energy researching psychedelic training programs because, frankly, anyone can call themselves an expert in this field without validation. […] I appreciated that the program was run efficiently with a great staff,  had expert mentors who guided us through the learning, and brought in the leading experts in the field.

— Sherry Platt

Psychedelic Coaching Institute

As a global consultant, coach and former event business owner, I’m a tough critic, but the team and content that PCI has developed is of the highest calibre.

— Chris Steely

Psychedelic Coaching Institute

Third Wave’s coaching program shifted me as a person and unlocked a new way of serving the clients I work with. […] It provided me with the tools to navigate this space with confidence and integrity.

— Nichelle Ryan

Psychedelic Coaching Institute

Why Practitioners Trust

the Psychedelic Coaching Institute

While the SSRI Deprescribing & Psychedelic Readiness is a new, upcoming program, the methodology behind it is built on the same rigorous standards and has been refined over the years through the Psychedelic Coaching Institute.

Here is what alumni from our other professional programs say about the depth of our training and how these frameworks have transformed their work with clients:

What the Psychedelic Coaching Institute has given me is a structure that helps all those threads come together. We’re not just learning techniques; we’re learning how to create true safety and how to attune to a client’s nervous system as much as their words.

- SUNALI S.

Microdosing Practitioner Certification

This program is one of those rare occasions where a participant with high expectations will find them exceeded. It is extremely informative for practicing coaches who wish to comfortably and confidently introduce psychedelic modalities into their practice.