I had my eleventh ketamine infusion last week.
In the 10 months since my first ketamine infusion for treatment- resistant depression, I’ve returned for several booster infusions, I have remained free from pharmaceutical drugs aimed at mental health treatment, and I have a pretty unrecognizable life from when I began this journey last August.
I’ve made a lot of changes in the last year, so it’s hard to tell how much each change has resulted in the overall improvement of things. I only know the evidence I have collected that tells me that my life and my mental health are better today than they were a year ago.
I had a subarachnoid hemorrhage in August of 2020, and it scared me. My neurologist and care team were clear that they didn’t know what caused my stroke, but that I needed to be cautious because the consequences of it happening again could be fatal. They tossed around suspicions that my SSRI may have contributed to my brain bleed, as my acute and intense headaches had begun about eleven months prior to my stroke - around the same time I’d changed to a new SSRI. At one point, the religious-based hospital’s care team suggested my medical cannabis use had been a factor in my stroke. Ultimately, they didn’t know why I’d ended up unconscious, in the ICU, with a brain bleed, but I knew that my weight couldn’t have helped. At the time, I was over 350 pounds and everything was challenging. I was out of breath very easily. I was ashamed and I felt like I took up too much space in every social situation. I was ready to make a huge change. Over the course of the last two years, I have lost over 150 pounds, and that has definitely helped my depression, improved my disposition and opened a lot of doors for me that have resulted in a better life. When people ask if ketamine has changed my life, the answer is yes, but a lot of things have contributed to the positive changes in my life — my weight-loss being one of them, too. On its own, it’s tough to say how much the ketamine has helped. The biggest change I’ve experienced is that before the infusions, I described my mental health like this:
About two weeks after the sixth and final infusion in the initial series last August, I found myself relaxing into my typical thought processes. I’d think, “I’m so stupid. I’m not good at my job. I have no idea what I’m doing. They’re all going to realize it any second. It’s all going to come crashing down. I barely understand basic sentences when I read them.. This is hopeless.” However, where I’d normally keep spiraling and the thoughts and imposter syndrome would become repetitive and consume me, after the ketamine infusions, I’d find myself “exiting the roundabout” much faster and more easily. Instead, I’d start thinking, “I’m so stupid. I’m not good at my job, but who cares. It’s not that important anyway in the big scheme of things. There are so many things that are more important. My value is not in my career or even in my intelligence. Even if I am dumb, who the fuck cares.” I would seemingly shake-off my negative thoughts and my self-doubt and continue my day or task. After about three months post-infusions, I’d have more difficulty “exiting the roundabout” and would get stuck in my cyclical thinking very easily. That’s when I realized that was how I knew it was time for a booster infusion. When I returned for my first booster, they explained that sometimes the first booster doesn’t work so I may need a second booster. Their primary concern has always been that the treatments are working and that we stay on top of the boosters to ensure the optimal effectiveness of the medication treatment. Most of my boosters worked the first time. I believe there was only once I had to return the following week for a second booster, and that one took and worked well. Sometimes I’d need a booster after 3 months. Once, I was able to make it about 6 months before needing to return to the clinic.
When I’d originally found myself seeking ketamine infusion therapy, I was bouncing back (very slowly) from a devastating divorce following a traumatic, short marriage and toxic relationship. Additionally, I was grieving the unexpected, sudden death of my very best friend — the girl who’d held all of my secrets for the last several years and knew every single thing about me. I felt like I’d lost everyone who really knew me and in a matter of months, I’d lost everything. I’d lost my marriage, I’d been there to bury my best friend, I’d lost my sense of self and I’d ballooned to morbid obesity that was threatening my health. Now, ten months after my first ketamine infusion, I’m living with my girlfriend of several months, and things are going well in my life. I believe ketamine has played a critical role in these improvements and my personal growth, but describing how these psychedelic trips have made me easier to live with, is almost impossible. The trips are so intricate, there are so many parts to them, and it’s too complicated to put into words, but I’ll try.
The booster infusion I had earlier this week was the most intense drug experience of my entire life. Which, after years of living a pretty fast life and using a lot of substances over the span of about 25 years, is saying a lot.
As I slipped away in the recliner at the ketamine clinic last Monday, I felt like I was flying, feet-first through time and space. I was somewhere else, entirely. I was able to reach a state of nothingness twice before when I’d done ketamine infusions, and I wanted to achieve that again. Essentially, two other times, I was able to completely clear my mind. I didn’t see anything, picture anything, think about anything, or worry about anything. In fact, it made me realize that I’d never truly cleared my mind before. I didn’t realize that in human life, there’s a constant hum, of sorts. When I’d been able to clear my mind twice before during these infusions, the hum went silent briefly and everything was still. I thought I had moments of a clear mind during deep hypnotherapy or intense meditative exercises over the years, but it wasn’t until ketamine opened my eyes, that I realized I’d never been that void of thought before. I liked it. I wanted it again. I craved that brief moment of total relief from human brain life. The other two times I’d achieved this “nothingness”, I’d felt like following the experience of achieving the void, I’d get sort of sucked back to reality. I’d come shooting back into my body, and into the room, and back to normal thoughts and normal processing of the world around me after a few moments of the drug wearing off. However, this time, I felt myself getting closer and closer to the nothingness and I could almost feel myself saying, “I’m so close. I’m nearly there. I just need to empty out the last couple of thoughts and I can escape this again.” Right then, I started to open my eyes, but they weren’t my eyes. Rather, I became present in a space. It’s challenging to describe the room or space I was in, because there’s nothing like it to compare it to. I wasn’t in a chair, I was suspended, but I wasn’t floating or gliding or flying or hovering. I wasn’t a body, I was an energy. I wasn’t in a room, I was within a space. There were two other energies in the room. They weren’t bodies, but I knew there were two of them. I could sense them and I could tell they were communicating, but there was no language or speech. This is how the communication went:
Me: *Empties brain of all thoughts and becomes present in a space with two other energies*
1: *alarmed* They did it. They’re here. It’s okay.
2: Don’t be alarmed. This is okay. It happens.
Me: Help. Oh my god. Help me.
2: It’s okay. You’ll go right back. You were able to do it. That’s great!
1: You have to go back though. You’re usually able to make it the whole time.
(From this, I immediately knew that it meant, I was usually able to last in a human body for a whole human lifetime)
Me: I’m scared.
1: It’s okay. You can go right back. It’s almost instantaneous on their end, they won’t know. We’re almost ready. (meaning, on Earth, the human won’t be aware of what was happening)
Me: I don’t want to.
2: It won’t be very long. Not too much longer in this one. (meaning, not much longer in this human body and life)
1: Here we go. You have to finish the whole thing before you can complete this one. You’re doing great. (they were reminding me that I need to finish out the remainder of the human life I’m currently in)
Me: Is this place real?
1: You’ll be back again. You know it is now, so you’ll be back. We’ll be here and we’ll get you back there safely. Every time.
2: Here we go. You always like this feeling, this part.
I felt like I was falling from a great height, but super fast. Simultaneously, I also felt the gravitational pressure of rushing up from the ground into the sky at a rapid pace. The two opposing, intense sensations were overwhelming. Then, I felt like I sunk down into my body. I felt typical sensory processing returning. I could smell with my nose, I could taste with my mouth, I couldn’t move my fingers yet or hear anything other than the music in my earbuds, but I was becoming aware that I was in a chair and had a body.
I struggled but eventually, I opened my eyes and everything was blurry. I blinked a few times and the tech who always administers my ketamine infusions was seated next to me, tightly holding my hand. She’d never needed to hold my hand before. She said, “Are you alright? You called my name just now and sounded in distress so I gave you some Ativan. You’re back.”
I have been replaying this entire thing in my head for a week.
Again, there was no language and these weren’t people and we weren’t in a room. This wasn’t religious. This wasn’t spiritual. This was something else. It was so real. I could feel, I could hear, taste and smell in the space, but I also experienced other sensory things beyond the standard ones of those and sight and touch. It was indescribable but I was absorbing everything around me and also giving out my own energy to everything around me. I felt them. I could feel that there were others outside of the space that I couldn’t “see” or experience in front of me. It was the equivalent of sensing there are people in the hallway, on the other side of a door. I felt my energy get shot back into my body and into the room from something far away. This incredibly intense psychedelic trip showed me that as a result of completely clearing my mind of all thoughts, I was able to achieve a level of enlightenment where I saw a world where we are energies that are placed into human bodies here on earth for the duration of those bodies’ human lives. Are we humans simply skin suit avatars? Is this a technology thing? Is this an alien thing? Is this a different dimension thing? Did the energies create “time”? I feel like they created what we know as time and it’s super short. I’ve been thinking about how maybe this means that when we die here as humans, our brains become clear of all thoughts — usually for the very first time in that human’s life — then, when the mind is clear because it’s death, our energies return to that home base or space where I went, to move onto the next human life? Why did it feel like we’re tasked with these, with these human lives? Why are we working so hard to finish them? Are we learning something by doing these human lives? Am I doing it wrong? Is this for business or pleasure? Did I pay for this experience or am I being compensated for my time? That is pretty important. Is there a way to somehow communicate from the base as the energies? Is that what humans think ghosts are? I feel like someone experienced all of this and tried to re-tell it and did a bad job and now we have Christianity.
I decided I needed to back up a little to process the infusion, because the intensity of it was eclipsing the therapeutic nature of it. I’m always worrying, and I’m making an endless list of things I need to get done at all times. When we are falling asleep at night, I’ll randomly rattle off three or four things I want to try to remember to get done next weekend, or things I need to grab from Target on my lunch break tomorrow. I don’t sit still well and I don’t relax entirely. If we sit to play a video game, watch a show or start a movie, within ten minutes, I’m up and popping some confit garlic in the oven or putting together the bug zapper for the backyard. If we’re taking our makeup off and changing from hard pants into soft pants, I’ll stop and start ordering groceries online, because I have three working lists at all times of things we’re out of. The moment the ketamine and my subconscious ran into each other in my brain, they were like, “Let’s fucking chill. Let’s empty this whole thing out for a minute.” The point was to clear my mind. The trip was too intense for me to initially understand that clearing my mind was my freedom. What if the truth to my entire life, the purpose of all existence is to be able to stop, breathe and clear your mind sometimes? Embrace the peace in the nothingness. Try to relax into the beauty of the escape.
The trip was scary and alarming and I definitely bugged out, but I didn’t have a bad trip. I did feel very comforted when I was with 1 and 2 there at that home base, but I was also terrified. I didn’t want to return to this life. I didn’t want to come back. I belonged there and it felt safe. Nearly a year into these infusions, I still feel like I’m piecing it all together. I can really only deduce that somehow tripping my ass off in a medical clinic helps me not want to end it all. Perhaps even more importantly, I can feel when it isn’t working and I can be proactive before it’s too late and I end up in treatment again or with suicidal ideations.
I’m starting to believe that when used correctly, ketamine just gives some people a new perspective for a minute and sometimes that’s all it takes to start changing your whole world.
Whatever world this is.
For more from Ash, check out Ketamine Window.
