When I started this series, I promised to be as honest as possible for anyone looking for information about ketamine and depression. So, what can I say? I’m depressed again.

I’m sluggish, I’m sad, and I’m hard on myself. I’m really struggling to get through work, to the point where I actually get pretty behind on some tasks. When that happens and I refuse to let myself nap in favor of catching up, I take frequent breaks. Want to know what those breaks consist of? Sitting with my eyes closed. Forcing myself to keep working is so draining that I have to just stop and close my eyes for a few minutes. And then I get frustrated because why can’t I just bang out this edit or work through the day like other people can? Because I’m depressed again.

To be honest, I’m finding this hard to write. Just from a purely functional level, gathering my thoughts is proving to be challenging. I have a sense of the kind of message I’m trying to convey, but the words for that are slow to appear.

Here’s what I’m thinking:

• I really want to stress that this kind of decline in progress with ketamine is not common. Don’t let my weird experience deter you. You deserve optimism.
• Some words I want to include about how to treat yourself when you’re faced with a setback:
  patience, kindness, honesty, determination
• I feel the need to express that I’m kind of nervous about this post. I don’t want it to seem like as much of a failure as it feels like. I guess I should practice the previous bullet point.

My last ketamine infusion seemed no different from any other (in how it felt, at least), but hasn’t seemed to have much of an effect on me. In trying to figure out why, we considered whether any of these applied:

• illness (like a cold or the flu)
• not going to therapy
• not sleeping enough
• not exercising
• life stresses
• medication changes

It was this last one that checked a box. Initially, I said “nope, they’re all the same,” but we later remembered that I recently had an issue with my birth control and stopped taking it. (Sorry if this is a weird topic, but really, it shouldn’t be. No biggie.) Everything else seems like it’s been the same, so I guess that looks like the explanation.

I’m working on figuring out my prescription issue with my pharmacy, and I’m going to go in for a booster infusion sooner than we had scheduled. I didn’t want the post that will go with that infusion to be super long, so I thought I’d dedicate an extra one to explain myself.

So, that’s the update. I’m hoping that we figured it out and getting back on birth control will even things out. I’m also trying not to let my brain bully me into believing that it’s my fault and that this is a repeat of all those medications that didn’t work out. Catastrophizing is not allowed, brain!