A suspended pharmacist who covertly drugged a married female friend to punish her for refusing his sexual advances used to pray publicly for her health to improve, a court has heard.

Yan Chi Cheung, 34, who has pleaded guilty, was on Tuesday sentenced to at least ten months in jail after being sentenced over one charge of poisoning with intent to injure or cause distress or pain.

However he was granted conditional bail by the same magistrate who sentenced him after he lodged an appeal against the sentence.

Cheung refused to comment as he walked from Waverley police station, hours after being told the sentence could have been much worse.

Magistrate Michael Barko questioned why police had only laid one charge from the 23 instances of spiking to which Cheung in May pleaded guilty.

Cheung had become obsessed with his victim, Pamela Leung, after they met at a Surry Hills Chinese Presbyterian Church in 2010, Waverley Local Court heard on Tuesday.

The friends then began working together at a pharmacy at a Sydney UNSW campus in 2015.

Soon after, Cheung, who is married, made sexual advances and brushed Ms Leung's breasts and buttocks, the court heard.

But when Ms Leung asked Cheung to stop, he used his training to portion and secretly administer packages of strong chemicals designed to cause her suffering.

"He wanted her to suffer," the court heard.

His chemical revenge lasted for a year.

Sometimes he crushed pills and mixed them into her water and in another instance he slipped drugs into her tin of coffee.

And while systematically drugging Ms Leung with doses of drugs in the "therapeutic range" Cheung played the caring friend in their church group.

"What was he thinking when he prayed for my health in public," Ms Leung said in a victim impact statement, parts of which were read to the court.

The carefully crafted doses of antihistamine, anti psychotic and anti depressant medications would not cause Ms Leung any long-lasting effects, the court heard.

However, she said the "incomprehensible experience" of being spiked had caused her to lose trust in people and become depressed and anxious.

Cheung, whose adherence to Christian values was questioned by Mr Barko, has been suspended from practising as a pharmacist and it is unlikely he will ever find work in that field again, the court heard.

He will live at Maroubra with his wife until fronting Sydney's District Court to appeal his 10-month jail term at a hearing which is yet to be scheduled.