Ketamine Therapy, Session 1
Is music actually magic? Opening the door to the subconscious abyss.
Last week started with my intake appointment at the clinic. A nurse practitioner went over my medical history and explained everything to me before showing me around the space. Each treatment room is painted a comforting warm pink and equipped with soft lighting and a big white leather zero gravity chair. The hallways don’t have the ominous quality that they do in hospitals, where it feels like there’s a nightmare behind each door. Instead, they’re well-lit and quiet. A long bar houses a coffee maker and snack platters laid out for patients about to finish treatment. There are books on alternative therapies and spiritual modalities decorating surfaces in a way that makes you wonder if anyone ever actually reads them. Before leaving, I visited the front desk to schedule all 6 treatments — 2 per week for 3 weeks. I paid for the whole round on a credit card because I figured I might as well at least get points out of it. The grand total, all-in was $4,450.00, which is not payable by insurance but for which the patient is at least given the option to pay in installments. An exorbitant sum to pay for a therapy that could be classified as “experimental” but the frustration of feeling as though I’ve tried everything else is more than enough to justify any expense to keep myself alive.
On a whole, last week was a strange one. In the days prior, I’d acted in a moment of true insanity and purchased 3rd row floor seats for a Tuesday night John Mayer concert, even though I already had tickets for the Wednesday night show. Anyone who’s been in my state of desperation can certainly understand — when you’re in the dark, you’ll do anything to see the light, even if it’s just for a couple of hours. My relationship with music in general, but specifically that of John Mayer is a specific one. I often refer to it as “the most embarrassing thing about me” but in truth, I’m not at all embarrassed. In middle school, I took my mom’s copy of Room for Squares up to my attic bedroom to play on my Sony 3-piece stereo and never looked back. It’s not just music to me, it’s works of writing that I find deeply, sometimes painfully relatable. It’s a rare common thread throughout my life thus far — comforting me, and reminding me that to feel things is not enough, but to feel them deeply is when the healing happens. It’s funny to me that in the past several years, John Mayer has played in New York just at the moments I needed him. Once, it was right after a big breakup, earlier this year it was in the midst of my first bad wave and during a time when I really really realized I needed to end my relationship, and this time, it was at a moment when I felt like I was really in it while simultaneously being on the cusp of something that felt profound. On Tuesday, when I arrived at MSG to meet my friend Ed, also a superfan, and realized just how close our seats were — mere feet from the stage and directly facing the central microphone, I felt like not just John Mayer was close, but it all was — the things I’ve been longing for, material and mental. The end of the debilitating block I’ve been paralyzed by. For two hours I got to escape my own body and connect to something that wasn’t mine. And I got to do the whole thing all over again the night after. The reverberations of these experiences, which felt like therapy in their own rite stuck with me for days and in ways I’m only now realizing, helped prepare me for this next step on my journey. There’s one song in particular that I’ve had stuck in my head because it’s so deeply relatable. It’s a deep cut called War of My Life, part of which goes:
I'm in the war of my life
At the door of my life
Out of time and there's nowhere to runI'm in the war of my life
At the core of my life
Got no choice but to fight 'til it's done
I made a playlist called “Caroline’s Essential John Mayer” and listened to it as I walked the 40 blocks north to the clinic yesterday. It was an afternoon to make a cashmere-craving New Yorker cry. In fact, I almost did. Dressed in sneakers, comfy clothes and a giant orange wool coat, I walked to a familiar beat and felt invigorated by possibility by the time I emerged from the gilt elevator on the 21st floor. Before these appointments you’re told not to eat for 4 hours and not to consume any liquids for 2, which is something I didn’t think about before choosing to walk a distance. Wound up and dehydrated, I was settled into a room. Even after all of the prep, I didn’t really understand what was going to happen. A nurse came in to take my vitals, followed by another one to get my IV hooked up. Then, the doctor came in to talk me through the whole experience. His emphasis on the safety of it all made me wonder about the mindset of most of the patients he encounters. I assured him that nothing was as scary as what was already happening in my mind, and that I had no concerns at all. Before shooting the drugs into my IV bag the “integration coach” came to see me. She’s the kind of person you’d encounter hosting a yoga retreat in the desert — woo-woo to a degree that’s only appreciated if you’re willing to go along with the bit. We talked about my intentions for my “journey” and something happened that I didn’t expect — I started to cry. Not because I was feeling a sudden burst of sadness, as one who is clinically depressed is used to, but because I couldn’t really make sense of my intentions because they were all buried so deep in the fog of my brain that I could no longer access them. As a decidedly “woo-woo” person, I also felt the pressure to understand all of this because of course I, a person who journals almost every day and spends a cumulative 5+ hours/week at a wellness center should know. I think I said something like “I want to get back to the core of who I am”, which is not untrue, but is also something that I don’t fully understand. Satisfied with this answer, she had me put my eye mask on and led me through a guided meditation before headphones were placed on my head and I was left alone in the room.
I wish I could remember exactly what I heard, because it came as a shock. The whole vibe of the clinic is confusing because it is undoubtedly “medical” but with a gentleness that’s decidedly not. The design choices feel as though they were made by someone who was paid a lot of money to understand the psychology of how patients experience a medical space. Apart from the conversation with the integration coach, there was little to remind me that in the end, this is psychedelic experience. What I do recall from the sound at the beginning of the recording was something like a man’s voice saying “imagine being surrounded by angels” and “there’s a love so great that you can’t understand it” before a big, emotional swell in the music led into a rather beautiful, all-encompassing church choir. None of this is what I expected and as I waited for the drugs to kick in and the music kept transitioning into other, equally perplexing types, I kept thinking of the experience of being in a science museum planetarium. Granted, I’ve not been to a planetarium since the early aughts, but what I remember feeling is an overwhelming sense of the universe. Being small and being surrounded by something so great you can’t possibly fathom it. It’s dark, and the soundtrack sounds both scientific and mystical at the same time. Synth-y and classical and designed as if it’s meant to make you feel safety and curiosity in the unknown. And BOOM, it hits. Similar to the psilocybin, all of a sudden I felt as though the music was inside by brain and like my entire body was a big, breathing membrane. It’s difficult to explain the physical experience of being on an ample dose of psychedelic drugs, but if I’m to try: it’s like your body is floating in the air. You’re aware of its physicality, but it’s also weightless. Your mind feels somewhere between life and death, or your conscious and subconscious. You don’t know where you are, but it also doesn’t matter. As I fell deeper and my psyche became completely synced with the music, I felt like I was floating down a river, and as I floated further and further, the fog surrounding me washed away as I picked up new tidbits of information. Those tidbits were quick blips of wisdom like: I already have all of the tools I need to have the life that I want. There is no reason for me to feel shame and guilt. Everything is within reach, I just have to reach for it. And most importantly: I am enough, as I am right now.
The mental visuals changed as the music did. The river turned into an endless hallway in what looked like a 17th century palace. Even though I was deep into an experience on a different plane, my consciousness was still even so slightly present. I kept thinking “I don’t want this to end” and was able to register the gentle breeze that occurred every time someone opened the door to check on me, which I was told would be every 10 minutes. That tiny bit of consciousness knew that I’d be under for about 60 minutes and though it felt like I was floating forever, I knew every time I felt the breeze that I was 10 minutes closer to being pushed back into the abyss of the real world, which felt much scarier than this the unexplainable astral plane of the ketamine journey. When it was over, the music came to a gentle stop and I was nudged back to reality.
One of my greatest takeaways, one that moved me to tears when then integration coach came back in the room, was the mysterious power of the music. How it it possible for my brain to sync with it in a way that guides a whole subconscious experience? What happens that allows the swells and changes to completely alter my state of mind? I realized that this isn’t just something that happens on a guided trip, but also in the conscious experience. That’s what happened earlier in the week when I felt so revived by watching John Mayer perform. It’s not at all about being a crazed fangirl, it’s that the music does something to reprogram my brain, even if temporarily. What I felt was an newly realized appreciation for the power of music and deep gratitude for the ability to understand and manipulate words to express myself, even if not musically.
What’s unbelievable to me is that this access into one’s mind is made possible by these drugs, which have been proven to be not only effective but also safe. And yet, this still isn’t a treatment that most know about or have access to. It’s not lost on me that because of the stigma of these drugs and how Western medicine is understood that the idea of losing control and giving in to the unconscious mind is something that is absolutely terrifying to many. Sometimes it’s absolute desperation that allows us to take enormous risks. So much of my life has been defined by the risks I’ve taken, and my willingness to chart my own path and I wonder if some of that is because I’ve been living with a complicated brain chemistry that has allowed me to devalue my life enough to not worry about the consequences of my actions. At the end of my first ketamine journey, the integration coach reminded me that it takes courage to give in to an experience like this and surrender myself to the unknown.
This first session was by no means life-changing, but what it did do was open my mind and ground me in a sense of calm and safety. I’ve opened the door and can’t believe I still have 5 more sessions to figure out what’s on the other side. One thing I can’t help but wonder is: what would happen if we all allowed ourselves to open the door?