Imagine being trapped inside your head. Imagine feeling like nothing will be able to change how you feel or who you even see yourself as. Imagine feeling like something is wrong with you every day you wake up, to the point where anything could be the problem, so everything becomes the problem. That and more is what I’ve dealt with for over 20 years.
My name is Mike. I’m 36 years old, and this is my first-hand experience with Ketamine and its healing ability. I can only offer you what I’ve experienced and urge anyone who has questions or is facing issues to use the support of our community both here and on Reddit to find like-minded people as I did, to help guide you through this journey and my hope is by reading this post, it gives people like me the ability to see that, with some work, there is light at the end of the tunnel, and that you aren’t stuck forever.
A bit of background on where I am and how I began: as mentioned above, I struggle with Generalized Anxiety Disorder/Panic Disorder/Major Anger Issues/Depression/CPTSD and, in all honesty, a bit of hypochondria. I would attach different experiences to panic and anxiety that would range from driving in the car down to eating food and anywhere in between. It affected relationships, social interactions, and honestly, just wanting to be alive and awake each day.
I reached a point after taking Xanax for 10 years on and off that I didn’t want to keep taking Xanax as it just masked the fear/anxiety/anger/panic, and when they would bubble up, it was just there to hide it. At the time, I was also smoking medical cannabis, as this had helped me in the past, and honestly, it helped to distract me from how depressed I was. I hit a dead-end as I felt like nothing was going to change, and I was just this mindset, this anxious person forever, and that was not a person I wanted to be anymore, and I didn’t see a way out other than something that I would regret.
So my partner suggested I try other options, to see if anything else outside of what we have tried would help, it was a last ditch effort in my eyes, but I knew she loves me, and wants to see me happy again. So we began looking into Ketamine and the different at-home options as I knew if I were going to do it, I would want it to be done from my home, as it’s the place I feel most comfortable. So we searched and read reviews, and that is how I first found the Ketamine subreddit and began looking at people’s thoughts on different options. I eventually settled on Better U as my provider. I signed up and had an appointment with a provider within a few days, and to say I was anxious was an understatement.
After I met with the provider, the medication was on the way. In my head, I’ve tried so many things, and it was hard for me to believe something like this could work. The self-doubt that I’d carried with me was overwhelmingly in full swing and dominated my thoughts for a good week as I waited. I kept dreaming about what it would be like to be free of this weight, to be “cured” of my anxiety and panic. It was too good to be true.
When my script came, and it was time to do it, I felt so scared; what If I couldn’t handle this? I had done psychedelics before, so I wasn’t new to it, but it was scary for me nonetheless. My partner helped calm me down, and I did the suggested setting of intentions, picturing what I wanted from this experience. At the time, this was hippy-dippy and out of the norm for me, as I’ve tried meditation and envisioning goals before to no avail. So, I set my intentions. I got myself comfortable in my bed, where I felt most safe, and I popped the troche into my mouth and under my tongue and waited for it to start.
I had no idea what I was looking for or looking to feel as this was all very new to me, and so I couldn’t tell if a feeling was my anxious mind making me panic or if it was a feeling of ketamine. I held the troche under my tongue as long as I could (which worked out to be about 10 mins only my first time.) and spit the dissolved troche into my cup, I kissed my partner and told her I loved her and slipped my eye mask on and laid down. I was not at all ready for what happened next.
The following are a few journal entries from my very first experience after taking Ketamine:
“Fear isn’t born with us. We receive fear from those around us, both as children and adults. We do not have to carry that. We control how we feel.”
“I talked to my younger self and helped him to remove himself or give him comfort from these past situations that we suffered through.”
“We don’t have to live up to the potential that others told us we would/had to live up to. We are free to be us.”
I had read previously on a Reddit post about how someone much like me who suffered from severe anxiety and panic disorders and was overall depressed took ketamine, and the next day, they were this changed person, back to their “normal” self, and I held onto this expectation for myself during my first trip. I so desperately wanted to take Ketamine, experience what I would experience, and then be “better,” so I was extremely excited to go to sleep, as the experience of my first session that night was intense; it was impactful. I felt pretty blown away by what it had allowed me to think about.
I try to describe a Ketamine treatment as the ability for you to view your thoughts, memories, and current life from a 3rd party perspective, with a fully developed adult brain, and see these things you have held onto for your whole life sometimes, from a neutral perspective. My first session allowed me to do just that. I felt refreshed, but still had anxiety shortly after, I still felt slightly panicked that evening after I had finished, but as mentioned above I had hopes that i would go to sleep and wake up a new man.
Sadly this was not the case, as the morning I woke up, I felt like shit in all honesty, I felt like I had a hangover, there was no complete reset of my brain and I wasn’t magically cured. To say I was disappointed would be an understatement. This started to feel like everything else I had tried and failed at. The self-doubt came creeping back in as it always had. I jumped to Reddit to see if the things I was feeling, like the headache I had, were normal the day after, and to my relief, they were. However, I received a link from that post to check out this website, the guide, more specifically. I wasn’t all that interested at that moment, to be honest, because I was too busy feeling sorry for myself, not feeling good, and upset that I had fallen short again. Something in my head, however, poked me enough and prodded me slightly to read it. So I took 10 mins or so to read it, and the more I read, the calmer I became. It helped explain what I was feeling and what I should expect.
I finished reading it and laid back on my couch to think about what I had experienced the night before and what was happening. I realized that my mind was quieter, my racing thoughts weren’t as present as the day before, and I could hear things in my environment that I had never really paid attention to. Overall, though my anxiety was still there, it was less, and for the first time in a long time, I didn’t have this sense of dread about me. Maybe there was something to this after all, maybe I was starting to heal and was just impatient just like I had been my entire life.
I’d love to share more about my next few sessions. If anyone is interested, please feel free to comment below, and I would be happy to. I hope that someone out there will see this and my other posts to come and feel a little bit of hope that this medicine can genuinely make a difference in your life, but that it is not a one-trick pony and that there is work to be done on your part, and though it’s hard, it can be extremely worth it in the long run. I am nowhere near done with my journey, but I am leaps and bounds from that first day, and I will never go back.