Ketamine: Caress Me/Suppress Me

Do we need another substance to feel better?

Wow! This. Is. Incredible. When I first tried Ketamine in 2019, I was blown away with its beauty. I was not necessarily looking to lose myself, which would be expected with a dissociative compound; I desperately wanted to be found. I was stuck on a deep existential level. A new mother the year prior (what greater transition can one go through in life?), I was still in the throes of postpartum adjustment, mood disorder, and family health issues.

My friend ‘Adam’ had recently turned me on to this new therapy touted for depression, anxiety, and PTSD. A practicing shaman experienced in many entheogens, he offered to do a session with me and see if it shed light on my situation. I trusted him completely after a life changing ayahuasca ceremony years prior and didn’t feel I had much to lose; any experimental thing seemed better than where I was stuck in inner turmoil, again. After some research into the compound, I scheduled the session, eager and without fear despite a few intense trip reports.

Here is what I wrote about my experience at the time:

I started to feel disconnected from my body, heady, a change in space like being on an escalator. Adam was sitting next to me, but it felt like he was across the room. Outside, my body felt colder, but inside it felt hotter. It was like I was in an animal burrow, cozy and protected. Then I was suddenly intruded upon with the acute memory and sense of how it felt to be around my father. Dread and anxiety smothered me. Stuck in his dark haze for decades. He was never “ok” and I took this on as blame and the sense that I too was not “ok”. I started to cry. I asked out loud “am I ok?” “Am I enough?” I wanted to explore the question.