An abstract blue and red painting with wide brush strokes and vertical red lines

What Noise Sounds Like in IV Ketamine Treatment: The Ketamine Chronicles (Part 14)

March 1, 2020May 5, 2022 GenevieveLeave a comment

Yesterday, I had another ketamine infusion for my treatment-resistant depression. It had been almost five weeks since my previous infusion, and while three weeks was our best guess for my interval, it seems like now I can actually go something like four weeks before really noticing it wearing off. I’m hoping that if I keep doing the behavioral things that help my depression (running, volunteering, therapy, etc.), I can at least maintain this amount of time between IV ketamine treatment appointments.

Linguistic Confusion During IV Ketamine Treatment for Depression

Most of my ketamine infusions have been visually focused, and usually what stands out to me are snapshots of images and colors. However, some of my ketamine infusions are much more auditory-heavy. Throughout it, conversations in the hallway and the other room sounded loud and close, and I felt as if I were being crowded around in the room I was in. Strangely, conversations outside the room sounded loud but were completely unintelligible. The boundaries of words and sentences disappeared and I was washed in streams of unending verbal noise. Nothing made sense, but I still strained to understand. The sounds of English words were familiar, but I just couldn’t parse them enough to grasp their meaning.

A messy spread of wooden typography letters in dark and light wood. — *Photo by Raphael Schaller on Unsplash*

This theme of linguistic confusion stretched throughout the infusion. I remember a filing cabinet stuffed with folders that I couldn’t read. The letters were there; I could pick them out, but putting them together and reading them as words eluded me. Later, messy papers with gibberish words filled my internal vision. I felt confused, I was upsidedown, my arm with the IV ached. The room seemed loud, and I saw stampedes of paper animals painted with pastel watercolors. They piled up and tumbled around me, threatening to knock me over and crush me. The fan in the room added noise that pushed it all to an intolerable volume, so I asked Erin to turn it off. I got ready to speak, opened my mouth, and seemed to just think the words out loud.

Did I Say That?

I notice this feeling often during my IV ketamine treatments, and it’s interesting to note how little deliberate control over our mouths’ movements we need in order to make coherent sounds. All I do is form an intention to say something, and it just…happens. It feels a little like I’m inhabiting my body separately from its direct controls.

A distorted glass with yellow and blue fractals approximating the experience of ketamine for depression — *Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash*

Ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic, meaning it creates a state of perceived separation from the self. Altered senses and seemingly “out-of-body” experiences are common when receiving treatments of ketamine for mental health conditions like depression and PTSD. In my experience, I can still talk during a ketamine infusion, but it feels like someone else is doing the talking.

In any case, my request apparently worked, as Erin then got up and switched the fan off. That lowered the ambient volume enough that I could focus again on my music.

I remember there being more visual scenes after that, but I don’t recall them very well. The only one I have much memory of is a scene set in a grocery store with a broken jam jar, shards of glass glinting under the fluorescent lights, and wine-red jam splattered on the linoleum.

IV Ketamine Treatment for Depression in Combination with Other Strategies

The rest of the day is a blur. I slept off and on, interrupted by Stella periodically. It wasn’t until about 6 P.M. that I started to feel more like a person, but I was still glad to crawl into bed at night and sink into sleep. This morning, I’m tired. I’d like nothing more than to go back to bed for the rest of the day, but I know it’s important to get myself up and moving. I do best with routine, so in the interest of helping my brain repair itself through the effects of ketamine therapy, I’ve already had coffee and been to the dog park. So far, so good.

If you’d like to read more about my experience with ketamine for depression, start from the beginning of The Ketamine Chronicles or visit the archives. Click here for mobile-optimized archives of The Ketamine Chronicles.

A hand with red nail polish holding a live shrimp in the air by the ocean

A Tower of Shrimp and Absurdity in IV Ketamine Therapy: The Ketamine Chronicles (Part 13)

January 28, 2020November 20, 2021 Genevieve1 Comment

Having IV ketamine therapy for treatment-resistant depression is always a fascinating experience. This edition of The Ketamine Chronicles features a crime scene, a tower of shrimp, and a painting of a carnivorous giraffe. Folks, I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.

I remember feeling the ketamine almost immediately, and I closed my eyes as I lost track of my limbs. The music I was listening to was a lively classical piece, and my mind created intersecting lines to the notes that formed long evolutionary trees. There were noises around me that distracted me at first; something that sounded like hammering from the floor above us, then quiet conversation in the room, and a door opening and closing. Soon, though, the ketamine pulled me away, and I wasn’t concerned with anything outside my mind.

Absurdity in Ketamine Therapy Imagery

Silhouettes of a human face and a bull in profile, carefully stretched-out tape measures arranged in rows, and thousands of old family photos being sent on a conveyor belt to be turned into decorative pebbles were just some of the odd things I saw this time.

The Crime Scene

The crime scene was set in an arid landscape. There were shrubby bushes and reddish-brown caked dirt as far as the eye could see. Two or three people stood around a small body of water – what seemed like the only one for miles and miles. I got the sense that they were pondering something, as a detective would do when a puzzling scene presents itself. As I tried to read more of the scenario, my perspective began to shift. I zoomed out smoothly but quickly, like I had scrolled down on Google Maps with intention. Perhaps I’ve been watching too many police procedurals and true crime shows lately.

A desert landscape with red rock outcroppings and shrubs. — *Photo by Agnieszka Mordaunt on Unsplash*

A Tower of Shrimp

The shrimp tower stretched higher and higher, eventually reaching the edge of the atmosphere. The singular shrimp at the very top swayed back and forth, pondering the shrimps holding it aloft and balancing in the wind. Each shrimp interlocked with the shrimp around it, like that barrel of monkeys in Toy Story. I don’t know if you know this, but the sensation of perching on top of a stack of shrimps that stretches all the way to the edge of the atmosphere produces some stomach-dropping vertigo. If you’ve ever read the Dr. Seuss Book, Yertle the Turtle, the shrimp tower may remind you of that. Instead of an incredibly arrogant shrimp forcing the others to form the tower so that it could sit at the top, this was the reverse. The top shrimp wasn’t entirely sure how it got there and was not very comfortable with it.

Mixing of Identity and Observation During Ketamine Therapy for Depression

There are some interesting parts of my IV ketamine treatments that seem to blend my identity with strange scenarios and characters. For instance, how did I know that the shrimp at the top of the tower didn’t know how it got there? Was I the shrimp? Similarly, the funeral scene in the seventh part of The Ketamine Chronicles also evoked a sudden understanding. I was watching the scene, but when the coffin was set down, I felt like I was being pressed into the ground. Was I watching, or was I in the coffin?

Carnivorous Giraffe

The day before this IV ketamine infusion, my aunt and I did one of those paint-n-sip classes. The painting to emulate was a cute, cartoonish giraffe with multi-colored spots. We noticed that there were two kids in the back who had really taken their paintings to the next level. Their giraffes had blood-red eyes, thick, metal earrings, and gaping smiles filled with pointed teeth. One also had thick blue stripes rather than spots, but that’s neither here nor there. We got a big kick out of these kids’ creativity and confidence to go off-book.

Now, imagine that painting in the style of a ten-year-old’s artistic skills, and then imagine how taken aback I was when a dark silhouette in my ketamine dream revealed itself to have that giraffe’s face. It was both unsettling and hilarious at the same time.

A Mildly Creepy Scene

After the carnivorous giraffe, my brain may have opened the door to where the creepy images are held. I remember seeing dark forms standing over me, laughing. Thankfully, something in the room beeped, and I reoriented myself to my surroundings. That was probably the most disturbing thing I’ve experienced during IV ketamine therapy so far, and even that was not bad. I knew that it was creepy but didn’t feel especially scared.

Most of the time while I get ketamine infusions for my depression, I just see bizarre scenes like the tower of shrimp, marvel at how much my teeth feel like stale marshmallows, and wonder if I’m slowly tilting in one direction or another.

A woman wearing a black one-piece swimsuit floating in dark water with her knees bent and her arms outstretched to the sides

Underwater: The Ketamine Chronicles (Part 12)

January 5, 2020November 19, 2021 Genevieve1 Comment

Breaking through the thin boundary between water and air is easy, but the farther down you are, the harder it is to swim to the surface. Higher doses during IV ketamine infusions for depression make me feel like I’m sinking beneath vast volumes of water, and the barrier between my mind and the outside world is very far away.

I don’t remember much from this IV ketamine infusion, which I have every few weeks as a treatment for my severe, treatment-resistant depression. I remember sitting in the chair and closing my eyes. Then, a minute later, the machine beeped and the nurse reached over to me. She fiddled with the IV, smiled wryly, then said, “We have to have the clamp open.”

“That helps,” I replied with a smile.

After that, I remember very little. I was listening to classical music in my earbuds, which seems to create (for me) more memorable images than meditation music, but apparently not memorable enough to outweigh the sack of bricks that hit me when the ketamine kicked in. I do remember bursts of thin lines that became ripples on water, and finger painting a nature scene with varying shades of pink. I remember a crocodile, a puffy dress, and watching my inner set of eyelids close to darkness.

It always takes some work for me to come back to the room when a ketamine infusion is over. This time, I kept thinking that people were waiting on me to come out of it, so I thought I should hurry up and return to my body. But, when I dragged my real eyelids open and looked around, somebody said, “Just a couple more minutes.” Oh. That’s why it was so hard to pull myself back. It wasn’t even over yet.

Slow to Return to My Body and Mind

At lower doses of ketamine treatments, I generally feel normal within 30 minutes of the infusion ending, if a little tired. This time, though, it’s all a blur. I remember the rest of the day in jumbled snapshots. Returning to the room around me and talking to Sarah, who mysteriously took the place of the nurse at some point; telling Dr. G that I didn’t remember what I saw; pushing the footrest down with my heels, then walking to the car with my mom. Two kids sprinted past us, almost colliding– wait– was that before the infusion or after? That was before. When I woke up on my bed hours later, I was mildly unsettled that I could remember so little of the day. I know that I wouldn’t have said that I felt weird in the moment, but my memory of it all is so broken that I clearly was pretty impaired.

Four or five hours after getting home, I pushed myself out of bed and tottered to the kitchen for some food. When I turned or bent, mild vertigo briefly grabbed me. A can of soup and a clementine later, I pulled out my laptop to jot down some notes about the infusion, only to sit, stumped by my lack of memory. Listening to the music I chose over again prompted flashes of scenes and images, but I still have the sense that there are some rich plots that I’m missing. It’s like when you know you had a bizarre dream, but you just can’t quite remember what it was about. Ah, well. It’s entertaining to remember my ketamine dreams, but the important part is that it’s getting to work in my noggin to treat my depression as we speak.

A male lion stretching in the downward dog pose in a field of tall grass

Backyard Lion: The Ketamine Chronicles (Part 11)

December 22, 2019May 5, 2022 Genevieve2 Comments

I awoke to darkness. And barking. Whipping the blanket off of me, I thought what I always think in this situation, which is: Stella, don’t wake the neighbors up! And then I thought:

Wait a minute, I didn’t let her out this morning, followed by, wAiT a minute, IS it morning?

It was not. It was 5:30 P.M., the same day as my latest ketamine infusion. I napped hard after this infusion, which was a higher dose than normal. I went in earlier than scheduled because a change in my birth control threw things out of whack (see Part 10 of The Ketamine Chronicles) and my depression made an appearance sooner than we had hoped. This ketamine infusion was longer and felt pretty different compared to my normal dose. I still saw vivid images and scenes, but they felt more immersive, somehow. They were more like realistic, sometimes-lucid dreams rather than IMAX movies.

There always seems to be a lot of water in my ketamine imagery, but this one was especially saturated (pun intended). I remember a lot of ocean waves, people walking on mostly-empty beaches, and the gentle rocking of the tide. It’s odd to have a relaxing experience of being on water. One aspect of my sensory processing disorder means I get motion sickness so easily that escalators can set it off, so I usually dislike any tilting or bobbing motions. The movement of water during this ketamine infusion, however, was very calming. At one point, I was on a boat where I watched water come up through a square hole in the deck, then recede, then repeat. At a different time, I saw foamy waves that I could stop at will, perfect dollops of whipped-cream water, frozen in place.

There were several dream-like plots this time, but I only remember one.

Why is This in My Brain?

This is the “We Bought a Zoo” bootleg knockoff of ketamine dreams. In the actual movie, Matt Damon plays a recently widowed father who purchases a defunct zoo and moves in with his children. They have to earn the trust of the animals and the people who work there in order to save the zoo and reconnect with each other. It’s heartwarming, at times dramatic, and funny. The bootleg ketamine version was like putting the whole script through several layers of Google Translate and getting rid of 90% of the characters.

In a mundane twist of fantasy, my ketamine protagonist buys a house. He moves in, but later learns that there’s a lion living in the backyard (seems like something the inspection should have caught, but oh, well). At first, he throws food into the far corner of the yard to keep it away. Over time, though, he and the lion start to trust each other, eventually becoming friends. The man even goes so far as to buy a puppy for the lion to bond with (à la cheetahs with emotional support dogs). This seems like a supremely bad idea, as the lion is already fully grown, but the protagonist is confident.

(Un)fortunately, I will never know how that turned out because I either “woke up” or simply moved on to some other surreal, mental drama. By “woke up” I mean that some change around me brought my attention back to the real world, not that I opened my eyes and was back to normal. What pulled me back may have been movement in the room, a new song in my earbuds, or the sudden realization that I wasn’t actually in a bizarre plot about a backyard lion (which is, of course, horribly cruel and irresponsible).

Illusions of Ketamine Infusions

I prefer to not wear an eye mask during ketamine infusions, just because I like to have the option to open my eyes, and I’m not a fan of having stuff on my face. However, there are times when I think an eye mask would come in handy. You know that feeling when you’re falling asleep on an airplane and you keep waking up because you feel like your mouth might be open? That’s the kind of sensation I get during ketamine infusions, except instead of my mouth, it’s my eyes. They’re not actually open during ketamine infusions, it’s just that the feeling of “seeing” in my mind is so realistic that sometimes I can’t tell. I used to sleep with my eyes a little bit open, and apparently, it was really creepy. I’d like to spare the occupants of the room my unsettling zombie eyes.

Lately, I have been dreading the morning. Stella’s enthusiasm and relentless needling get me out of the house to tire her out, but depression has made it a slog. I’m hoping that this ketamine treatment will bump me back into feeling good about the day ahead.

Note: this blog recently hit 100 subscribers! Thank you all for reading my ramblings and thoughts about depression and mental health. Just before the new year, too! I hope you’ll stick around in 2020.

A wide, leafy tree in a field filled with fog and one person walking.

Depressed Again Despite IV Ketamine Treatment: The Ketamine Chronicles (Part 10)

December 19, 2019November 17, 2021 Genevieve7 Comments

When I started this series, I promised to be as honest as possible for anyone looking for information about getting IV ketamine treatment for 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 for depression 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 treatment 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 ketamine infusion sooner than we had scheduled. I didn’t want the Ketamine Chronicles 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’s automatic thoughts 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!

Colorful peanut M&M candies in a white ceramic bowl.

The Sound of Peanut M&Ms: The Ketamine Chronicles (Part 9)

December 10, 2019November 19, 2021 GenevieveLeave a comment

Part of figuring out what your individual limit is between ketamine infusions for depression is to stretch it out bit by bit until you find the length where it wears off. My daily mood metrics show a drop a few days ago that stayed steadily lower than my previous (good health) average. However, there were several possible factors that may be to blame, so it’s not clear to me whether three weeks between ketamine infusions is actually an accurate time frame to use. That said, we’re going to go another three weeks and see what happens.

Technical Difficulties

I had a lot of trouble with my music this time. The playlist I chose stopped playing shortly after I started to feel the ketamine, but I kept thinking that it was just really quiet. It was like when the radio is on in your car on low volume, and part of your attention gets sucked into it and you’re going, what IS that? I just kept turning the volume up again and again over the course of several minutes before realizing that no, nothing was playing. My brain was just making something up that was barely audible because I expected to hear something. I managed to find a different playlist that I’ve heard many times, so it was comforting but not very interesting.

An Octopus and an Ominous Shadow

Maybe because I listened to something familiar, I didn’t have any sustained scenes like the very memorable fish wedding in a previous ketamine infusion. But, like always, I sank into flowing images that seemed to come from my subconscious. A deep red octopus slithered around my mind, only one day after I marveled at a captive one in a butterfly pavilion. Under the influence of ketamine, I tried to imagine what it would be like to be an octopus; how would it feel to have eight limbs, each one a sensing individual capable of independent reactions?

A red octpous with blue-ringed suckers and gills nestled among rocks in the dark ocean. — *Photo by @sigmund on Unsplash*

At some point, a vibrant green light was disrupted by a dark shadow moving up from the bottom of my internal “visual” field. Like when someone stands up in front of a projector, this vaguely ominous shape rose up again and again. As it reached the top and had obscured all of the green light, the bottom thinned out and the light shone through again. Then, the shadow started again from the bottom.

Ketamine Infusions Make My Hearing Sensitive

I have no idea how far into the infusion this happened, but at some point, my doctor sat down at the desk in the room and began preparing something with plastic bags and vials. It sounded exactly like he had taken an enormous bag of peanut M&Ms and dumped them out on the desk, then rolled them around with his hands. The sound reminded me of how on road trips, my dad used to stop at the gas station before we left and get “a duffle bag” of skittles, peanut M&Ms, whatever was the largest bag available.

Grey and white sediment layers representing sound waves to a recipient of ketamine for depression. — This image reminds me of how sounds feel while on ketamine. *(Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash)*

I tried not to laugh at this memory, as that might sound weird out of the blue, and then I’d have to explain it with my too-big tongue. Instead, I cracked my eyes open and tried to discern what he was actually doing, because I knew, rationally, it definitely wasn’t the M&M thing. Too blurry. I got distracted and started looking around the room.

Sneaking a Peek Around the Room

The walls looked sort of like I was looking at them through a big sheet of cling wrap. Subtly shiny, a little distorted, and slightly moving. The edges of things were indistinct, and trying to focus on any one thing produced a weird motion that was like looking at something far away with one eye, then switching to the other eye. It felt like a very subtle change in perspective, despite looking at it from up close with both eyes open. The M&M noise had paused momentarily, so I looked over at Dr. G, who motioned for me to close my eyes. Ah yes, I’m not supposed to be looking at things. That’s how you get a bad case of nausea. I shut my peepers and was swept away by…something. I don’t remember.

Later, I laughed about the M&M sound with my mom, who apparently didn’t even notice it, despite sitting directly next to my feet. I’m sure Dr. G was actually being very quiet, but something about ketamine can make your hearing sensitive while the infusion is going.

Knowing My Pattern with IV Ketamine for Depression

I’ve been noticing that, for me, it’s the second day after an infusion when I wake up and feel better. The day after an infusion is usually a pretty sluggish day, but then the day after that is when things start to look up. If I didn’t know that, it would be pretty discouraging to wake up the day after an infusion and feel crummy. Now I know to wait it out and not let that first day throw me off. Experience is a great teacher.

A two-tier cake with decorative succulents, white roses, and blackberries arranged over white frosting

A Fish Wedding: The Ketamine Chronicles (Part 8)

November 19, 2019May 5, 2022 Genevieve2 Comments

It’s been two weeks since my last infusion of IV ketamine for treatment-resistant depression, and I’m still feeling much better than I did before I started. Minor setback due to my lithium experiment aside, it seems like the ketamine hadn’t started to wear off yet, meaning we could schedule the next one for three weeks out.

A Subtle Beginning

As they all are, this ketamine infusion was pretty…different. I popped my earbuds in and started a classical music playlist. Like last time, I closed my eyes and waited for it to begin. It was subtle, and when Dr. G asked me a few minutes later if I was feeling it yet, I opened my eyes and was met with a normal-looking world. “Not really,” I said. Of course, I was eating my words when, a couple of minutes later, I felt like my nose was sinking into my face. (It should be noted that none of this is ever scary for me. I had the sensation that my nose was sinking, but I was completely aware that it wasn’t.)

I thought that maybe I should say, “My nose is sinking into my face,” as Dr. G wanted to know when I felt it taking effect. Somehow, this got lost when I began seeing a whirlpool in a lake that turned into the eye of a storm, spiraling endlessly (song: Full Room Empty Space by Vincent & A Secret).

[I tried to remember which songs went with which images by taking screenshots of my lock screen. I’m finding it tough to remember the majority of this infusion, but I’ll do my best to match up the songs with what I saw.]

Music Influences My Ketamine Dreams

When I got home, I sat down with my laptop and my phone and began trying to recreate the images I saw by listening to the songs over again. Most of them only evoke general feelings and a vague memory of an image. For example, I remember that Prelude and Fugue in C by Bach produced a vision of bright red ink spreading on a ceiling of thick watercolor paper with a chandelier hanging down from the middle.

Concerto in D Minor by Handel gave me a feeling of very old royalty and led to images of stately, historic stone buildings.

At some point, there was a song – I think it was River Free by Boil the Ocean – that paired with images of vast open ocean and a whale shark swimming slowly near schools of fish. While most of these have faded in my memory and I have screenshots of more songs than I can remember images, there was one that stuck with me:

The Fish Wedding

The song is “Songs My Mother Taught Me” by Dvorak. It begins with two fish tucked into a bed, the linens pulled neatly up to their fins. Then, the bed falls away, and the fish are dressed in wedding attire; tuxedo on one and dress and veil on the other.

Two grey fish standing upright on their back fins, one wearing a tuxedo and the other wearing a wedding dress. — My phenomenal attempt to depict the fish wedding.

The fish bride is moving down the aisle (conveniently, I can only see her top half. Not sure about the mechanism of movement, having no legs). There are rows of guests on either side, and I cannot figure out if they’re fish or human. Either way, they watch her breathlessly.

Now, we’re at the reception. The bride and groom are cutting the cake, fins gripping a large knife. As it cuts into the cake, the entire thing collapses in on itself, as if the cake were made of cardboard. The song ends, Allegri’s Miserere mei, Deus begins, and we return to the church with the fish bride.

And then it’s like my brain went, “Wait a minute – we can’t have an anthropomorphized fish in a wedding dress in here, at least not with THIS song,” and the entire feeling of the vision changed. If you can consider your brain to have “cinematography” in ketamine scenes, the images went from “Pride and Prejudice meets quirky, French cartoon,” to “emotional history documentary.” The fish disappeared, and it was just soaring views of an empty cathedral with light streaming in through stained glass windows.

A cathedral interior with sunlight on intricate stained glass windows. — *Photo by Alexander Watts on Unsplash*

Memories of Ketamine Dreams are Choppy

It’s mildly frustrating to remember thinking “Wow, this song goes perfectly with what I’m seeing,” and not being able to remember what it was that I saw. Sometimes patients will ask the doctor to write down things they think of while the ketamine infusion is going, thinking that it’s incredibly profound, only to read it later and either have no idea what it means or be entirely underwhelmed by its meaning. I imagine that’s what would happen if I could remember every image with its accompanying song. It probably wouldn’t be as perfect as I thought it was.

This was definitely an entertaining infusion, and when I came back to the room, I had no words to describe it other than to say, “There was a FISH. WEDDING.” And then laugh and shake my head.

What it Feels Like to Come Out of a Ketamine Infusion

The best way I can explain what it feels like right after a ketamine infusion is that it’s like waking up over and over again. You’re listening to someone talk, definitely paying attention, and then all of a sudden you feel like you just woke up again. The words you remember them speaking bounce around in your head for a minute- were they dreams? This happens several times, each coming a little further out than the last one. Eventually, you’re solidly awake and can go home to contemplate the love lives of fish.

Love, Your Brain

Category: The Ketamine Chronicles