K Therapy For The Win
Welcome to the story of my journey to giving ketamine therapy a “shot”. Pun intended.
Disclaimer: I am discussing the use of ketamine in a safe and therapeutic environment supervised by a professional!
The wildest part of my little story is the fact that I had never done any other form of psychedelics prior to the injection of ketamine that had me (metaphorically) blasting off into outer space in a matter of minutes. So how did I go from never having even done mushrooms at a party or around a campfire to getting injected with a dissociative drug that (for me) causes full out-of-body experiences?
Let’s start from the beginning, shall we? I’ve been on some form of SSRI since 2018 and have tried many different versions over the years. Like a shocking amount of different versions. I’m really good at getting the negative side effects only 1 in 10,000 get (#lucky!) AND I’m also good at having the kind of depression that can power through medication over time, eventually making it unhelpful! Fun!
My first attempt in 2018 was Wellbutrin, but that shit heightened my anxiety and started causing tremors in my hands. Shaky hands are not exactly ideal when you’re a fucking tattoo artist. NEXT! After that I tried Lexapro, but it just didn’t really work on me. NEXT! Then, my psychiatrist at the time suggested we try ADHD meds to see if ADHD was actually the source of my anxiety and maybe if we conquered the ADHD, the depression would follow. But that just triggered my eating disorder and freaked me out, so it didn’t take long for me to say, “NEXT!” Then there was Prozac. It worked for a bit, but made me so fucking exhausted that no amount of coffee was too much. “Over-caffeinated” was no longer a term I could relate to. I stuck with that for a while, but when it eventually stopped helping me, I had to switch things up yet again. NEEEEXT!
After a couple more combos of shit I don’t even remember, I finally settled on Zoloft and have been on that since around 2021.
Now this is where I give ol’ sertraline (the generic name for Zoloft) and all the other SSRI’s out there some major credit and remind everyone reading that antidepressants are nothing to be ashamed or afraid of. When they are needed, they will help you.
Those tiny little pills helped me get through some of the darkest times I’ve ever experienced- emotional trauma from someone I considered a friend, my parent’s divorce after 38 years of marriage, COVID isolation, the loss of loved ones, etc. (2020-2023 was fucking rough, ok?) And I have no regrets being medicated during those years.
Anti-depressants have also been huge in helping me, from the very beginning, manage a chemical imbalance that can cause me to feel deeply depressed even when my life looks perfect from the outside…and even when it looks perfect from the inside. I am forever grateful for them and have, I REPEAT, no regrets taking SSRI’s over these last 7 years.
However, the night sweats they can cause are fucking hell. Absolute hell.
Back to the now! After a number of years on medication and hours spent in therapy focused on healing, I started to notice that though my depression and anxiety had been subdued by the medication, so had my ability to feel joy, gratitude, and that beautiful bone-deep happiness that can only come from raw dawgin’ life. Thanks to the healing I’d found through said therapy, I had the awareness to see that the barriers medication had placed on my emotions had become too tight. Too limiting. Sure, I didn’t feel depressed, but I deeply missed the feeling of overwhelming gratitude that comes from even the little moments in life. Like seeing a beautiful sunset on the drive home or looking at an alpine lake with mountain peaks reflected in the still water or seeing my sweet angel of a dog after 2 weeks away. I missed feeling it all. I even missed feeling deep sadness and grief- feelings that I had gotten very good at compartmentalizing and shoving away. I genuinely missed the true depth of being alive.
This realization also happened to coincide with the fact that even ol’ sertraline was starting to lose her potency. It was happening again. The medication’s efficacy was dwindling, my depression was creeping in through the cracks, and I was either going to have to up my dosage to the maximum 200mg and risk numbing myself even further or something had to change.
*Reminder- ANTIDEPRESSANTS ARE FUCKING AWESOME AND NECESSARY AT CERTAIN STAGES OF LIFE. I was just coming to the realization that I wanted to see if there was another way for me to deal with the chemical imbalance I have no control over. THIS IS NOT AN OPTION FOR SOME PEOPLE AND THAT IS ABSOLUTELY OK!!
I had never even considered ketamine therapy prior to this. I had heard of it before and been very skeptical. “Oh, you want me to (imagine air quotes and an eye roll here) ‘therapeutically’ do this party drug/ horse tranquilizer that people talk about getting into ‘k holes’ doing? Yeah, no fucking thanks.”
You can call me a prude all you want, but I’ve always been scared shitless of party drugs. (Maybe D.A.R.E worked on me? Ugh. Lame. I blame growing up with an addict brother…Thanks a lot, Paul!) Your girl has never touched cocaine (besides that time I wanted to feel included at a bachelorette party and asked if I could just do the thing where you cut the lines with a credit card and got it ready for everyone else to enjoy). I’ve never really had a great time with weed. I also haven’t done mushrooms or any other form of psychedelics because I was always told they’re no good with SSRI’s. So…I was intimidated as fuck to say the least.
However, the universe sends you signs when you need them most and suddenly I had all sorts of people coming into my life, telling me all about their incredible experiences with ketamine therapy. I hadn’t met a single person who had used the drug therapeutically and had a bad thing to say about it. The final cherry on the ketamine cake was when a friend of mine, who was also a prude about drugs and had never done anything prior, gave it a shot and had a beautiful experience too. That’s when I was like, “Ok universe, I GET IT! I get it! I’ll give it a go! Yeesh!” And the universe was like, “Well, bitch, you said you wanted to try something other than anti-depressants so here you go! Time to do that thing you love to do- leap and the net will appear!”
I was very lucky that my aforementioned fellow drug-prude-friend gladly recommended I go see the woman who introduced her to the beauty of ketamine therapy. She’s an incredibly thoughtful and all around wonderful person and for those reading this in Boulder, Colorado her name is Kelly Buisseret and she works out of Sage Space inside PR Sports Labs and you should absolutely go see her and tell her I sent you and then high five over how awesome we all are…
I’m so grateful because Kelly makes each session feel extremely personalized and has cultivated an experience that is based in trust and feeling deeply safe. It’s fucking awesome and I love her.
Reality: Ketamine therapy is extremely expensive and I’m beyond grateful that I’m financially capable of even doing this. I am hopeful that more therapies like this will become available to those who are not as privileged as myself.
Now! What the fuck does doing ketamine feel like?? Well….it’s hard to explain.
Each session has been different and with each person I talk to about their experiences, everything about it can be different. I receive the medicine through an intramuscular shot in my arm. Other people I know get it through an IV drip at local ketamine clinics, some get it in pill form to do at home, and one person told me they get one shot to start and then another shot 30 minutes in. It’s all different!
I’ve only ever done it this one way with Kelly. She injects me while I’m laying on a very comfortable acoustic bed that can vibrate with the music she’s playing in the noise cancelling headphones she gives me, while I wear a black-out eye mask that creates complete darkness while also allowing my eyes to be open or closed. Add in the weighted blanket and the soothing “lift off” instructions she reads after the injection, and I’m ready to blast into the stars.
I’m not sure I’ll be able to describe what it feels like during the medicine session itself, but I can at least try and capture how it’s affected my life after. Because for me personally, the sessions themselves are not the moments of instant growth that some people experience. I don’t get distinct visuals like in a dream and then come out with a new understanding on life. I mostly see some colors (particularly bright purple and neon green - hilariously and ironically 2 of my least favorite colors) and experience a feeling of opening or sinking, then a feeling of leaving this plane of existence all together. It’s hard to explain.
For me it feels like I am no longer in my body. In a way that makes me feel free of my…for lack of a better term…flesh prison. In those moments I’m no longer a human being with a body that’s been put through hell by an eating disorder. I’m no longer in a body that creates and receives art in the form of pain. I’m no longer in a body that used to train and race in triathlons and now struggles to be strong. I’m no longer in a body that I’ve hated and loved for 35 years.
In those moments, I’m just a soul. And for me…that feels like pure, beautiful, terrifying, overwhelmingly blissful freedom.
Lots of people ask me if it’s scary. In some ways, absolutely. In other ways, not at all. There have been moments where I’m so beyond my own existence I have the fear that I’ll never come back…but the beauty of that is when I do come back to myself, the gratitude I feel for my body and being alive is all consuming. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.
During my sessions, we use an amount of medicine that makes it where I can not and have no desire to speak. I am also unable to move. This can feel quite scary to some, but for me, I’m able to handle the sensation. Kelly is also always there, in the room with me, monitoring me and keeping me safe. If there is a problem for some reason, I trust that she will help me.
The best way I can describe my ketamine journey is this: The medicine has given me the opportunity to “zoom out” and change my perspective in a way that I’ve never been capable of. My anxiety and depression send me into hyper-focused doom spirals that are damn near impossible for me to escape. I’ll relive something I did over and over, dwell on every mistake I’ve ever made, hate myself for not being “perfect”, dissect my body for every flaw, the list could go on for ever. But the ketamine has helped me slow that spiral and take a step back.
For the first time in my life, I’m able to look at the spiral with a perspective that helps me feel compassion and understanding instead of overwhelm, dread, and fear. Ketamine has helped me fully comprehend some of the things I’ve been doing in therapy for years, but never really been able to apply to daily life. I believe the medicine helped open a part of my psyche that I had never been able to access. A part of me that is more forgiving of myself, more open to what life brings, and more willing to feel every feeling to its absolute- good and bad. Which, holy shit with the news lately, there’s been plenty of bad to be felt. But instead of avoiding how bad I feel about the world, I sit with it and even let myself cry about it all.
Obviously, ketamine won’t be for everyone. But if sharing my experience can give someone the courage to give it a shot and it changes their life too, then I’m glad I’m here writing another blog that like 6 people might read. :]