Ketamine

"Tell me about Ketamine" - everyone

Ketamine is an anesthetic that has a hallucinatory component. It's now being used for neuropathic pain as well as for depression and anxiety. The way that Ketamine works in your brain is very complicated and instead of focusing on the science I think the experience is what most people are curious about. In the most basic sense Ketamine helps you to retrain your brain/nervous system to build new neural pathways. 

The interesting part is when YOU enter the healing process. What I mean is that during the ketamine sessions I feel as if I'm having a conversation with myself. I believe that we all intuitively know who we are and that we get introduced to our interior self through self exploration, self awareness and always during more challenging times.

I get ketamine infusions at my doctors office, instead of one large dose they use an IV so that they can control how much ketamine you're getting in case things become a little too intense, which is what happened to me the first time. One moment I'm talking to the staff while they put the IV in and after the sedative effects I will start to realize I've fallen down the rabbit hole. There's no visual hallucinations while your eyes are open but when my eyes are closed I'm in another place. It feels like being supported by the universe physically and in emotionally.

Because of everything happening in my life, see previous posts, I wanted to make sure I was in a better emotional space to start having the infusions. I don't remember much of what happens while I'm under. During the first session I started having a panic attack and started talking to myself out loud and self soothing. These are the things  said to myself "It's ok to be sad", "you're safe", "you're going to be ok". I also spoke with the staff, I remember saying to them "Everyone gets sad", "I know you, I trust you", and "I'm so stressed", and I cry a lot.

This type of self soothing is exactly how the training is for creating new neural pathways works. Why do you need new neural pathways? For people like me who have experienced too much trauma the neurons in the brain can actually die leaving and individual at higher risk for elderly dementia and chronic illnesses. It's very difficult to overcome an inherent negativity bias without doing this. A negativity bias isn't just when someone notices the negative over the positive, it's when the brain is only filtering negative information along those pathways that were created during times of trauma. 

Today was my third infusion and while I haven't noticed any immediate changes in previous infusions I've had instant relief from this terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach for the last several years, that feeling of deep dread. This feeling is most likely connected to my psoaz muscle. This is the muscle that connects your upper and lower body and is also the primary muscle that holds deep trauma or stress. Over three sessions my ability to walk has improved, I've got an incredible amount of energy and the daily nausea I've had has been dramatically reduced. Hopefully the associated pain will also be reduced in time. 

Even when I feel I'm not improving at the rate I think that I should be, I'm still improving and that's something I haven't really experienced with since acquiring post covid syndrome. I'll take it.