Read Sober Psychonaut disclaimer for people in sobriety exploring psychedelic medicine
At the moment, I am:
- Tired
- Weary
- Resigned
- In pain
- Anxious
- Resistant
I can accept that all of that is just “life” creeping in, as it does. But I’ve been feeling it for a few weeks and questioning whether ketamine for depression is really going to do it for me.
This is me without antidepressants.
Or is this how everybody feels on Life? (Go figure⏤everybody’s on antidepressants.)
Throw in a wild card:
The pain
The pain
The pain
The pain
What started with a car accident has accelerated to severe osteoarthritis and now knee pain. Pain is what started this whole fucking depression thing with me in the first place.
Mama’s upstairs trippin’ her ass off on Special K
Swirl, swish went the medicine (nowadays I hold this shit in my cheeks and practically gargle before I spit it out).
All I remember of my fifth ketamine session was the vibration. I was the vibration. It was me. I was inseparable from it and could feel no pain, no legs, no body, nothing—no sense of Self, only that I was vibration, sound and darkness. The Mindbloom music track took me there.
It was, as I’ve noted in past entries, blessed relief to feel Nothing-ness.
I had very few visuals because it was so dark but when I could see it was just the most exquisite, satisfying sense of Self; Self as Everything, moving as one through all of it—a black, pillowy sky with dim stars and no physical heaviness to contend with. I experienced the greatest comfort being cradled by All-ness. By Being All-ness.
I was tripped out, man!
It was all vibratory and humming—the audio—and when I finally noticed my body again, it was like being buried up to your neck in sand at the beach. Maybe a toe could be sensed somewhere. Perhaps more like being a melted chunk of chocolate, stuck and half-absorbed into the earth for good.
Things became more landscape-y, the music more harmonious, ethereal, and then it seemed to go on forever, making me wonder if that intense part happens for barely 15 to 30 minutes and the rest of the hour I’m just cruising, wandering, waiting for the clock. Time gets lost in down in a K-hole—and I was there for sure.
(Mindbloom and psychedelic therapists who practice ketamine therapy for depression probably prefer not to use the term K-hole as that’s more associated with dance party drug trips on ketamine and with ketamine abuse.
I’m just sayin’, the K train came and it was the express. I got on and went all the way.
Tip: Open the ketamine pill packages so the tablets are easy to extract and you’re not fumbling once the music starts.
What about my intentions for my ketamine session?
Here’s how it shook out on each intention I created:
Trust – I trusted the medicine and the journey
Hope – I experienced painlessness, thus a glimmer of hope
Vitality – I was sparked because of the adventure I had just returned from.
The real work, however, still happens in real life; that is, in between sessions. My friend Cory reminded of the importance of doing the integration work so I’ll be writing more about that soon.
