Success story

 The administrator of Spravato group I am on on Facebook asked if I could write a success story to post on the page for prospective Spravato patients and people who are struggling in their journey to give them hope.  Since I joined the group it has been my goal to be a positive influence on people and share the experience with people in the same boat as me so this was a perfect thing for me to do.  This is what I wrote…

I am a 52-year-old woman who has struggled with treatment resistant depression and suicidal ideation since I was a teenager.  As an adult I found myself trapped in a cycle of daily pharmaceuticals always requiring higher doses, additional pills all with their own side effects. At my worst I was juggling 8 different meds for depression and anxiety, none of them working and all of them barely keeping my head above water.  It was, in the attempted addition of a 9^th drug, that I told my psychiatrist I needed to find a better way.  He refused. 

On my own, I sought out a highly skilled acupuncturist who helped me detox from all the drugs and over many months clear my system of all 8 of them.  Then over the months to come, through eastern medicine techniques, I found my first remission, something I never even imagined possible. For the first time in my life, I was free of the imposing dark cloud of depression requiring only an occasional “booster” of treatment.  In my remission, I was able to advance my career, lose 100 pounds and summit a mountain. I felt in control of my life for the first time, my mind not clouded by the drugs.  But after 6 years of that remission, I lost my acupuncturist and was unable to find someone of her quality to receive treatment and eventually I began my slide back deep into the well of depression with nothing to catch me. 

For 7 desperate years I searched again for relief, gaining back half the weight I had lost and my entire life falling into oblivion.  I was hopeless, suicidal, lost and plummeted back into the abyss with no way out.

After accidentally starting my car in a closed garage and pausing for a moment to consider how easy it would be to just not press that button, I knew I needed help before I followed through with my suicidal thoughts. But I refused to go back to a place where I was just masking symptoms, often unsuccessfully, and to no end. I desired the warm light of the remission I had once before. 

After breaking down sobbing in my doctor’s office, I ended up in the parking lot holding 2 new bottles of pills she prescribed for my depression and I was unable to take them.  I was determined to not go back to that place again.

After much research, I saw a lot of promise in the potential of psilocybin therapy and its ability to actually heal and not just treat.  But sadly, there were no trials in my area.  That is when a friend suggested Spravato. At first, I was hesitant and skeptical but I had no other real options in front of me with the possibility of remission, so I decided to look into it.

In addition to the hurdle of finding a clinic, a driver and space to maneuver thru the rigid protocol while still working, there was also the challenge of convincing the people I loved that a psychedelic with a bit of a negative stigma attached had the potential to heal me.  But I decided early on in the process to be open and honest about my entire journey with everyone in my life, the ups and the downs. I was going all in.

I started my journey with my first treatment at the end of May 2023.  At first, I saw no change at all, and I was getting discouraged and panicked.  I had read success stories that made it seem like it was fast and for me being treatment resistant for so long I knew that often I was the one that things did not work for.  I feared that. It was a weight on me in those early days of treatment.  I was almost certain that I would come out of this no better off than I was when I started.

Session 3 I melted down entirely sobbing by the end of the session feeling no change.  In addition, my trips were not always the best.  People would mention wonderful things like embracing their dead loved ones and skipping through fields of daisies and in the end feeling a sense of peace and clarity.  I felt none of that.  There were no daisies and no sense of calm or peace.  Just the crushing hopelessness.  I would cry my way through the surveys every week checking off “every day”, no where near “not at all”, for every question. 

But my clinic psychiatrist said something very powerful to me that changed the way I was thinking.  She reminded me that I was not going to cure 40 years of depression in a few sessions.  She was kind and thoughtful in her approach and I decided to give myself the grace I had so long denied.  I settled into the large leather recliner for the first time and just let myself go.  I decided that Spravato would either work or it would not.  But either way I had to give it the full try and not bail before it had time to work. 

When I started treatment, they told me to trust my mind and body to heal me.  I remember thinking that was impossible because it was my mind and body that got me into this mess. LOL. But the truth is that once I was able to let it all go and just trust the process that I started to see small changes. 

At first, they were almost unnoticeable but eventually my symptom scores started to go up as I found myself being able to answer the questions in a more middle ground.  Over the months to come I had a lot of ups and downs, once even plummeting into a suicidal place where I was as bad, if not worse than when I started.  That was the second time I considered quitting.  At that point I was well through the protocol.  I felt broken and unable to heal.  But my next session I had a small break through and decided to just keep trying. 

I stayed at once a week for months with some up days and down days, but I plodded along the path deciding that I was going to just do as many sessions as I could before my job and my husband’s job took me away from treatment.  I knew that I could not keep up the weekly pace forever and in the fall of 2023 I had some serious setbacks in my life adding to the pressure to quit or continue.  

I approached the new year contemplating pulling the plug for the 3^rd time.  But I had a really good session in late December and after a long talk with my husband we decided to just keep going.  I am glad I did.  Because my healing was right around the corner.  In January I had a series of treatments with very powerful “trips” that brought me some “bonus healing” and clarity. I had added magnesium L-Threonate to my regimen, taking it an hour before my treatment.  It seemed to help me turn the corner.   Session by session I began to have a steady series of breakthroughs. 

And then treatment #30.  My husband said it was the first time I left the clinic smiling.  I felt like a weight had been lifted from my soul, the dark cloud hovering over me dissipated and for the first time in 7 years I felt hope.  Genuine hope.  I was healing and I felt it throughout my entire body. In the days to come, that feeling did not diminish but only got stronger.  During that time I suffered loss, setbacks, trials but always felt able to cope and see solutions and ways to move forward in all aspects of my life. 

I also felt joy again.  For years the few things in my life that did bring me peace and joy had stopped doing so.  I would go through the motions, but I felt nothing.  But after session 30 that joy had returned.  Fully and wholly I was able to experience the things I used to love again with that same passion. 

I have also had to cut down my sessions to twice a month but the last 2 have had 3 weeks between due to work obligations and instead of regression I have found only a solid path forward.  My plan is to try to get in 2 a month and then in May reduce to once a month and eventually hopefully transition to a maintenance regimen. 

I am not without sadness or challenges in my life.  All of those are still there.  The difference is that now I see a way out, a path beyond.  I have a peace in my soul that allows me to navigate all of the challenges before me, some of them, like my weight gain, assisted by my depression and my inability to cope for so long.  But now, no longer in the darkness of depression, I can find the path again back to the summit of that mountain. 

I am grateful that I found the grace to give Spravato the time it needed to work.  I am thankful that my spirit endured and did not give up even when the road was rocky and my feet unsteady.  I am relieved that I did not quit even when every fiber of my being wanted to.  Because now, for the first time in 7 long and painful years I stand again in my own power, not drugged, but truly healed.