Psychedelic Art Therapy is an evolving subdiscipline in the psychedelic world. It combines the psychological mechanisms of change shared by both modalities along with the unique benefits the creative process brings to PAT and stage-specific art therapy-informed interventions designed to prepare for, enhance, and transition out of the experience; capture ineffable elements of the encounter; enrich integration and the meaning-making process; and support lasting therapeutic change. We begin with outlining the structure of PAT which then serves as architecture for the psychedelic art therapy approach.

Rebecca Wilkinson and Alyssa Gursky, founders of PATN, will be publishing an in-depth article on this topic in early 2026 in the American Art Therapy Journal.

There are many ways that art and art therapy enhance psychedelic work.  Below We list a few that we think are most outstanding.

• Art gives us a way to express feelings, thoughts, sensations, and impressions that we experience before, during and after the psychedelic experience that can be so difficult to articulate in words.

  • Making a concrete form separate and outside of ourselves mirrors the detachment from the identified ego that psychedelics produce.

  • This lets us recognize, dialogue with, and move towards accepting ourselves–our shadow, True Self, our parts, etc.

  • Like with psychedelics, this distance also helps relax fixed beliefs, shifts perceptions, and generates alternative narratives.

• The images we make, even if they are only very simple sketches, are not only a personal signature, but they also give us transpersonal and archetypal metaphors.

• Art deepens our relationship with ourselves and with others–it gives us a way to be see and be seen, to know and be known.

• It helps us tap into, give voice to, and witness our Inner Healer, a source of innate intelligence that inherently knows how to guide us toward healing.

• It helps to capture the download, messages that our unconscious minds and/or perhaps even sources of higher consciousness are revealing to us.

• It makes the “ineffable” nature (impossible to express in words), effable!

• It can deepen our understanding of and help manage “bad” or challenging trips.

• Making art before and after a journey can give us a vivid contrast of changes we undergo as a result of the experience.

• It gives us a personalized roadmap of where we want to take insights we got from the journey into our lives.

• It can serve a visual  anchor that can evoke instant recall even years later.

• It can be woven into and support any number of other therapeutic orientations and approaches–Jungian, Archetypal, Depth Psychology, Transpersonal, Internal Family Systems, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Somatic work, Focusing, etc.