Whew. I have to say, first off, that the Ketamine therapy was intense AF. Mind you, I haven’t tried many “recreational” drugs to compare: pot when I was young for a few years (it makes me sick), mushrooms twice (without much effect), and Ketamine was experienced for the first and only time during a surgery (for anesthesia).

All the same, it’s been really difficult for me to find the words to describe exactly how it all went. I was very intrigued by the office itself, the staff (super comforting and friendly), and the private rooms they have set up specifically for this treatment. It’s like a small office, but has a big, comfy chair, a TV if you want to watch nature videos, a “star light” thing that makes wavy, colored lines everywhere, and a small table for the doctor and nurse to use.

I brought a really soft throw blanket, a smol stuffy my son gave me, my worry stone, ear buds, eye mask, and water.

The procedure itself was intramuscular injections. They start you off with one in the left arm and 10-15 minutes later they give you a second dose in the right arm. The first dose is to “get you up there” and the 2nd is “to keep you there.” They have you stay for 90 minutes from the first injection, checking your vitals between doses, halfway through, and at the end – just to make sure everything is going smoothly.

Now… the hard part. Describing how it went. I’m not a fan of needles, but it wasn’t nearly as bad of a stick as drawing blood, so there’s that. I’m not sure how much time passed after that first dose before they came in for the 2nd, but I’ll say that I was already “out of it” by that point. If I had a bar graph on that, it would show that it went up 5 notches in 5-10 minutes and stayed at 5 for the majority of the time, going down one notch every 5 minutes nearing the end. I was not completely out of it until a couple hours later, but by then I was home and taking a nap.

During it, I felt like I’d completely sunk inside myself. All my pain went away and I felt super heavy. I could not feel anything unless I actively and consciously made an attempt to move some part of myself, and that was a slow moving signal from my brain to the actual movement of whatever I wanted to do. The movements also felt kinda “choppy” – I guess? I remember flipping my worry stone over in my hand and it was as though my brain felt it in rapid still pictures, rather than a consistent flow.

The key component in all of this was the music mix The Boyfriend had made for me specifically for these treatments. I had the volume on the lowest setting it could go, but it completely drove the bus and was like I was the music, permeating every cell of me and taking my brain and body on a vacation. There were no visuals, I had my eyes closed and the eye mask blocked all the light beyond (not that there was much anyway). I felt like I was flowing through a black tunnel and feeling a kaleidoscope of shapes, while the music took me to whatever thoughts my brain wanted to have. I did not think in words, as I usually do, either. There wasn’t anything emotional during all this either. Because I’d set the intention to just see how it went, that’s what happened. No positive or negative, just existing in the vacuum of dark space, feeling the music and shapes and thoughts.

Last night, when describing this to The Boyfriend, he had asked me how I felt now, given that for a couple weeks after he’s done shrooms or whatever, it’s like nothing really matters and just flows on by, not in a bad or uncaring way, either. So, I put my arm up horizontally and said, “If this is a normal person’s level of mental health, and I’m down here,” (pretty far down, bc TRMDD/Anhedonia), “Then, this session bumped me up a single step. It isn’t a significant improvement, by any means, but it is something I am noticing.” I’m flowing a single step higher than I was before. My Anhedonia may or may not be on the mend, but I don’t want to test it out or even look at it, just yet.

Anyway, I have EMDR today and will most likely be reviewing a lot of what’s happened the past week, plus the Ketamine therapy, and then possibly working on some sort of “let’s bust the Anhedonia door wide open” plan for the rest of my treatments.

I know I’m not doing the therapy justice with my description, but… it really is something that needs to be experienced to understand. I’ll do my best to post more about how the others go and the effects they have on me. 🙂