woman face in profile with eyes closed against dark background

Close Your Eyes: The Ketamine Chronicles (Part 16)

“I think Stella is a bad influence,” is a phrase I remember hearing Dr. G say during my latest ketamine infusion for depression. Stella is my willful, independent dog who sometimes flat-out refuses to listen to me. In trying to piece together the events of my day, that phrase bounced around in my head without context. What had happened?

Apparently, I had refused to close my eyes. Dr. G repeatedly told me to shut them, but dang it if that little glass dragonfly suspended from the ceiling wasn’t absolutely mesmerizing. I remember it glittering and moving gently while I stared. I closed my eyes eventually.

Some Changes to My Ketamine Infusion

This infusion was different from what I described in previous posts of The Ketamine Chronicles in a few ways. For one thing, it was a higher dose of ketamine paired with a sedative to make it less intense. I also am completely off of one of my mood-stabilizing medications, Lamictal, which can interfere with ketamine. Like my previous ketamine infusion, I took some Tagamet before my infusion to slow the metabolism of the ketamine and make it last longer. The sedative kept this infusion from being bizarre, or at least from me remembering any bizarre images I might have seen.

Abstract architecture made of long, connected panels like scales.
Photo by Luca Bravo on Unsplash.

Dissociation with Ketamine Treatments

At first, I didn’t feel as deeply removed from the world around me as usual. This was deceptive, though, as I soon began to feel – as trippy as this sounds – like my being was shrinking into my body. Or perhaps like my body was expanding to create a shell around my consciousness. Things were happening in the room – sounds of typing and clicking, machines beeping, Dr. G telling me to take a deep breath (which I also did not listen to, apparently) – but they all seemed so far away as to be completely beyond my caring.

I opened my eyes periodically to see what was going on and, due to the dissociative effects of ketamine, usually got sucked into the computer monitor, which displayed a series of calming images of winter mountains. This is the danger of not wearing a sleep mask; when you’re hooked up to a ketamine infusion, EVERYTHING looks interesting and it’s incredibly tempting to let all of your automatic functions, like blinking and breathing, be abandoned in favor of absorbing whatever magical thing you’re looking at. Nothing matters more than watching a snowy peak meld into a pine forest. Nothing.

Monitoring Vitals During Ketamine Infusions

It’s a strange experience to realize that you haven’t breathed in a while but not find that alarming at all. In fact, the longer I went without breathing, the harder it seemed to do. It’s sort of a heavy slowness that keeps me from breathing deeply. It has to be quite deliberate. My vital signs are monitored during ketamine infusions, so if my blood oxygenation drops or some other concerning development occurs, my doctor is alerted right away. I’ve had to be reminded to breathe during previous infusions, but a simple, “Hey, take a deep breath,” always seems to break through my trance easily. This time, Dr. G repeatedly telling me to take a deep breath reminded me that breathing was a thing that people did, but I found myself reluctant to put in the effort. There wasn’t much that I cared about doing, and I remember thinking that I felt oddly cushioned against the ketamine.

Intersecting scrabble tiles spelling inhale, exhale, and repeat.
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Sleeping off a Ketamine Infusion

Afterward, I tottered down the steps to the car and marveled at my mom’s apparent lightning reflexes as she drove us home. We stopped at the pharmacy and grocery store (a whole day of essential outings!) and I simply put my seat back and waited in the car while my mom went in. Unable to get comfortable, I flopped around until the car got too warm. I cracked the door open and leaned out a little to get some fresh air, resting my head against the door frame. I wonder what people in the parking lot thought. I was clearly not very with it and kept doing that embarrassing head-jerk that happens when you fall asleep sitting up.

When we got home, I crashed for several hours, then got up and walked the dog around the block. I didn’t think much about how I was acting until I passed a house and then noticed someone sitting on their porch. I had been walking a few steps, stopping for Stella to smell something, zoning out, then repeating all the way around the neighborhood. I have no idea how long I stood in front of that person’s porch with a blank look on my face, but it might have been much too long to look normal. Who knows – maybe they thought it was quarantine brain.

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 brown fuzzy moth with its wings outspread

Moth Wings: The Ketamine Chronicles (Part 15)

As I was pulled into mesmerizing moving images of purple and white half-circles, I remember pouring the words “please fix me” over and over into my mental space. Maybe if I asked it nicely, it would last longer. In a strange mixture of thought and vision, the words became part of the image, and they fanned out and seeped into the fabric of my mind. Ketamine infusions continue to be the best treatment for my treatment-resistant depression I’ve tried, but like anything else, it’s not perfect. Arriving at each appointment feeling depressed once again gives me a sense of hopelessness all its own. I know the ketamine infusion will help, but it may not last. We’re still trying to arrange the best combination of dose, timing, and medications that could help things remain more stable. 


Puzzles, Puddles, and Skyscrapers

I closed my eyes and settled back, listening to the “atmospheric piano” playlist I had chosen for yesterday’s ketamine infusion. Eventually, my awareness of my hands and arms disappeared, and I spent some time wondering where they had gotten to. The gentle piano music was relaxing, and tucked under my blanket and weighted lap pad, I began to feel like I was being enveloped in something. I imagined myself being zipped into a giant pea pod, and the image was comforting. “Nothing can get me in my pea pod,” I thought. There were times during the infusion when noise outside the room intruded on me, so I just imagined my soft pea pod and retreated within it again.

There were at least two scenes involving puzzle pieces and building skyscrapers in this ketamine infusion. We’ve been working on a 2,000 piece puzzle of Monet’s garden, and the pink, purple, and white pieces are haunting my subconscious. The puzzle pieces came together to form an endlessly tall building; I craned my neck back to see it disappear into the clouds.

At some point, everything dissolved. I was “looking” at a computer screen, and as I tried to read it, the contents of the page began to melt. The lines ran together, words sagged under the force of gravity, and eventually, the entire laptop softened and melted into a puddle. I began to melt, too. I slipped into the puddle of digital sludge – it looked like an oil slick – and soon accepted my new form. I was too tired and heavy to do anything.

I was far, far, far away when I heard the PA, Erin, ask if I was ok. Finding my mouth and giving it words to say was too difficult, so I nodded and hoped that my head was actually moving. It must have been, since she seemed to accept that as an answer. A little later, she sneezed, which startled me. At the sudden noise, I instantly saw moths with shattered wings, like glass with spiderweb cracks. They fluttered around and came closer until their soft, broken wings were all I could see.

Post-Ketamine Infusion Confusion

Coming back to the room was much harder than usual. I felt a little like I was wearing 3D glasses; everything was in relief with subtle red and blue auras. When asked, I said I felt like “someone else is talking,” meaning the words were mine but the sensation of talking seemed foreign. This is something I experience every time I have an infusion of ketamine for my depression. Erin said I seemed pretty lucid, to which, in relief, I said, “Great – I’m pulling it off.”

Walking down the steps to the first level of the parking garage was challenging. I clung to the railing and stepped carefully, feeling like I was walking on pillows. I’m usually fine to walk after a ketamine infusion; I could fall asleep at any second, but I generally feel pretty with it. This time, though, I felt a lot like this:

stoned fox

Tracking Adjustments to My Ketamine Infusions

In an effort to make the effects of the ketamine infusion last longer, I took some Tagamet before yesterday’s infusion. It’s an H2 blocker used to treat heartburn, but it might also slow the metabolism of ketamine and give patients more time between infusions. I’m usually tired after ketamine infusions, but this was different. I got home around 4 (I think) and by 6:30, I still felt like I was periodically dissociating and then coming back to the room and remembering I was in the middle of something. Walking was hard for a couple of hours. I was off balance and wobbly and had mild vertigo. I think it’s safe to say that the Tagamet is doing something. This morning, I woke up with a mild headache and am still incredibly tired, but the sun is out and our near-impossible puzzle will provide hours more entertainment.

P.S. I remember making a mental note that Shrek appeared briefly during my infusion, but I cannot for the life of me remember how/when. It’s such a bizarre thing to remember, though, that I am sure it really happened.

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.

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)

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)

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.

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 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)

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.

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

Backyard Lion: The Ketamine Chronicles (Part 11)

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. 

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

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

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!

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.