The Ketamine Chronicles

In mid March I had a few bad nights with very intense nightmares.  This is pretty normal for me but these 2 were really intense and rattled me.  When I woke up I thought about them and I see they are very deep issues I am unwilling to deal with or even had on my radar.  I read an article (I am reading a lot on the ketamine either from other clinics or the Major medical centers like Johns Hopkins and Mayo Clinic) that gave suggestions on how to get the most out of the treatments and one suggested journaling 4 questions in the time prior to your treatments so you can gain some focus.  The questions lead you to see what things you want to work on.  For me there are obvious things.  My weight. My career issues. My anxiety.  My social issues that came about due to the pandemic.  But these nightmares are showing me that my issues are so much deeper.  I read that you have to do the hard therapy work to get the most out of this and I...

Just went to the grocery store and driving home remembered I forgot...FOOD. I just sat in my car at the red light and cried.   I feel like on a basic level I am not even functioning. I know I've said I'm broken before but I need to clarify. I'm like a ceramic pot. But not just chipped. It's like I fell off a balcony onto the street and as I'm trying to just gather the pieces to figure out how to put them back together again, people are kicking them and stepping on them, pulverizing them to powder. I just don't see a way that I will ever put any of this together again.   This is the way that depression and anxiety speak to me.   It is the hopelessness and the dialogue I have in my head. I honestly do not know how I manage this for the next few months.   I am probably worse now than I have ever been across the breadth of this disease and that is a LONG almost 40 years.   Most days I feel beyond helpless.   I have found myself staring off the balcony i...

While I await my actual treatment I am filling the void between the psychiatrist and the actual drug partly with nursing my depression and anxiety and partly with finding ways that I can navigate a better experience to come.  I have done some online research and one of the things they recommend is engaging in talk therapy before and during the months of treatment.  I have decided to supplement the talk therapy from the clinic with therapy which my insurance covers so I made an appointment with a new therapist and hoped for the best. I waited several weeks to do this although I knew it was something I needed and wanted to do.   But finding a therapist you can trust and connect with is HARD.   I actually had one apt with a woman who I loved but she quit and so I had to go with her replacement. I am not finding my connection yet with her as strong and I am not sure that this is the right path for me.   But I was grateful for some of the suggestions she made of al...

 A few days ago I took the first official step toward my own personal Ketamine journey with the full psychiatric and medical evaluation.  I logged on and did my check in paperwork, checked my camera and lighting on my video chat and then sat and waited.  The last time I sat face-to-face with a psychiatrist it was many years ago when I was being filled full of pharmaceuticals.  I was unheard and unseen.  I was nothing more than money in his pocket.  I knew that then and I remember it vividly now.  Just thinking about it made tears well up in my eyes as I watched the flashing “waiting for doctor” message on the empty camera hole on my laptop screen. I could feel the anxiety welling up inside me. I also feared what she would say.  Would my insurance be a problem? Would she be understanding or sympathetic to my journey?  Then at 10 on the dot the Doctor appeared on the screen.  Right away she was so kind and welcoming to me.  I felt...

Living in Florida I suspected there would be no clinics providing Ketamine therapy.  We had enough trouble getting medical marijuana despite voting resoundingly for it.  Even then they dumbed it all down resulting in years of battles to even get the basics.  So when my friend suggested I seek a clinic I imagined it would not be “near me” as the google search suggests. To my shock, there were actually several!  None under 45 minutes from my house but they were there nonetheless.  I honed in on one in an area I am relatively familiar with as I guess that gave me some small comfort and I scrolled thru every review.  It shocked me that there were really no negative reviews and so I went ahead and read every tab on their website to learn about what they offered and what my options would be.  Although it did not list financial costs it did mention accepting insurance so I decided to make the official call. Although all clinics are different I can give yo...

Who am I? Who have I become? I don’t even know the answer to that question anymore. For over a year I have been unable to write anything meaningful.  It is yet another thing that depression and anxiety have stolen from me. I lack the energy or will to allow words to pour from my thoughts into my fingers.  There is a wall there. Not only the one I place firmly between me and those around me, but a wall inside me, a dam if you will, attempting to hold back the millions of tiny drops of anguish that seek to pour over the top. Lately I am adrift on the raging sea with nothing but a flimsy life vest of the herbs and potions designed only to keep my head from falling below the surface into the darkness of the abyss beneath me. For those of you who don’t know me, and for those who think they do but don’t really know the whole of me, this is not new to my life. It is a path I have long walked, stumbled, crawled the entirety of my adult life and started even in my childhood. I ha...