At-Home Ketamine Therapy Comes to California: What Patients Should Know

California is home to nearly 40 million people, world-class medical centers, and some of the longest waitlists and highest price tags in the country for ketamine treatment. In-office infusion clinics in Los Angeles and San Francisco typically charge $400 to $800 or more per session, a first course usually involves six sessions, and patients outside the major metros may face a multi-hour drive for every single treatment.

Today that changes. Tovani Health now serves California. The same physician-supervised, at-home sublingual ketamine therapy program we built in Florida and New Jersey is available throughout the Golden State, from San Francisco and Los Angeles to San Diego, Sacramento, and every community in between.

This post covers what the expansion means in practice: how at-home ketamine therapy works, what the clinical evidence shows, how California regulates this kind of care, and how to find out whether you qualify.

What is launching in California

Tovani Health's California program is the complete version of our platform, not a limited rollout:

• Physician-led telehealth care. Every patient is evaluated by Dr. Ben Soffer, D.O., who is licensed by the Osteopathic Medical Board of California and holds a California DEA registration. There is no handoff to a rotating cast of nurse practitioners you never see twice.
• California-compounded medication. Prescriptions are filled by Valor Compounding Pharmacy, a PCAB-accredited compounding pharmacy in Berkeley, California, and shipped directly to your home in discreet packaging.
• Statewide coverage. Because the program is delivered through telehealth, it reaches all 58 California counties. A patient in Fresno or Bakersfield gets the same access as a patient two blocks from a Beverly Hills clinic.
• The same safety protocols we use in Florida and New Jersey: structured screening, individualized dosing, required sitters for early sessions, and monitoring before and after every session. You can read the full framework in our overview of ketamine safety protocols.

Clinical services in California are provided by Tovani Health Medical Corporation.

A quick refresher: what at-home ketamine therapy is

Ketamine is an FDA-approved anesthetic that, at much lower doses, has shown rapid antidepressant effects in people whose depression has not responded to standard treatment. Unlike conventional antidepressants that take four to six weeks to work, ketamine's effects often appear within hours to days.

At-home programs use sublingual tablets or troches that dissolve under the tongue, rather than intravenous infusions. Sessions happen in your own living room: you take your prescribed dose, wear an eye mask, listen to music, and remain in a relaxed, dissociative state for roughly an hour while a trusted adult stays nearby. A full course typically involves multiple sessions over several weeks, paired with intention-setting before and integration afterward.

If you are new to the treatment itself, our complete medical guide to ketamine therapy covers the pharmacology, history, and treatment course in depth, and our at-home versus clinic comparison walks through how the two delivery models differ on cost, convenience, and monitoring.

What the evidence shows

At-home ketamine therapy is no longer a fringe experiment. Two large peer-reviewed studies are worth knowing:

• A 2022 study of 1,247 patients in the Journal of Affective Disorders found that at-home, telehealth-supported sublingual ketamine was a safe and effective treatment for moderate-to-severe anxiety and depression, with side effects that were generally mild and transient (Hull et al., 2022).
• A 2024 longitudinal analysis in the same journal, using machine-learning and symptom-network methods, reached similar conclusions about the effectiveness of at-home, telehealth-supported ketamine for depression (Mathai et al., 2024).

The honest caveats: ketamine is not a cure, response is not universal, and the durability of benefit varies from person to person. That is exactly why medical screening, dose titration, and follow-up matter, and why we built the program around a physician rather than around a subscription.

Is this legal in California?

Yes. Three layers of law and regulation govern what we do in California, and the program is built to satisfy all of them.

Medical licensing. Telehealth care for a California patient must come from a clinician licensed in California. Dr. Soffer is a D.O. licensed by the Osteopathic Medical Board of California, the state board that regulates osteopathic physicians. California law explicitly recognizes telehealth as an appropriate mode of delivering care, with the same standard of care as an in-person visit.

Controlled substance rules. Ketamine is a Schedule III controlled substance, so prescribing it requires a DEA registration in the state where the patient is located. Dr. Soffer holds a California DEA registration, and every California prescription is reported through CURES, the state's prescription drug monitoring program, which is checked as part of responsible prescribing.

Pharmacy regulation. Sublingual ketamine is prepared by compounding pharmacies. Our California partner is a 503A compounding pharmacy accredited by PCAB, the Pharmacy Compounding Accreditation Board, which is the compounding industry's most rigorous quality standard.

What remains illegal, in California and everywhere else, is buying ketamine without a prescription, using someone else's medication, or any recreational use. Medical supervision is not a formality; it is the thing that separates therapy from risk.

Who this is for, and who it is not for

The program treats four core conditions:

• Treatment-resistant depression, the indication with the deepest evidence base
• Anxiety disorders, particularly when they travel together with depression
• PTSD, where ketamine can reduce symptom intensity and open a window for trauma-focused work
• Chronic pain conditions with a central sensitization component

Ketamine is not appropriate for everyone. Screening will generally exclude patients with uncontrolled high blood pressure, unstable cardiovascular disease, active psychosis or schizophrenia, current mania, pregnancy, or an active substance use disorder, among other conditions. Not every applicant qualifies, and telling someone no is part of practicing medicine honestly.

Why telehealth matters in a state the size of California

California's mental health access problem is not primarily a Los Angeles or San Francisco problem. The state's major metros have dozens of ketamine clinics; the Central Valley, the far north, and the eastern deserts have almost none. A patient in Redding, Visalia, or El Centro can face a two-to-four-hour round trip per session, and a full course of treatment involves many sessions.

Telehealth collapses that distance. The evaluation happens over video, the medication ships to your door, and the sessions happen where you are most comfortable: at home. For the millions of Californians juggling work, caregiving, or simply living far from a metro, that is the difference between treatment being theoretical and treatment being possible.

We have published dedicated local pages for California's largest cities, including Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, San Francisco, Fresno, Sacramento, Oakland, Long Beach, and Anaheim. The full list lives on our California hub page.

How to get started in California

The path from reading this post to a first session has four steps:

1. Check your eligibility online. The free eligibility screening takes about five minutes and covers your mental health history, medical conditions, and current medications.
2. Meet with Dr. Soffer by video. If your screening looks appropriate, you will schedule a telehealth evaluation. This is a real medical visit: history, risk assessment, and a candid conversation about whether ketamine therapy fits your situation.
3. Receive your medication. Approved patients have their prescription compounded by our PCAB-accredited California pharmacy and shipped to their home.
4. Begin guided sessions. Your first sessions follow a structured protocol with pre-session preparation, a sitter present, and post-session check-ins, with your dose adjusted based on your response.

Most patients move from eligibility check to first session in days, not the weeks or months that clinic waitlists often require.

The bigger picture

Tovani Health now serves Florida, New Jersey, and California, three states with a combined population of over 70 million. The model is deliberately unfashionable in telehealth: one physician who knows his patients, individualized dosing rather than fixed subscription tiers, and safety protocols that occasionally mean turning revenue away. That model is exactly what we are bringing to California.

If you are a Californian who has cycled through antidepressants without relief, or a clinician looking for a referral partner who will actually evaluate your patient rather than rubber-stamp them, we would be glad to meet you.

Check your eligibility to get started, or explore the California program overview for details specific to your city.

Clinical services in California are provided by Tovani Health Medical Corporation. Dr. Ben Soffer, D.O. is licensed by the Osteopathic Medical Board of California (license 20A25771). This article is for educational purposes and is not medical advice; eligibility for ketamine therapy is determined only through medical evaluation.