I’d like to share my current success & experience I’ve had with Ketamine IV infusions for my CPTSD & depression. Hopefully it helps someone.
I’ve done a total of 7 sessions since 60 days ago, 6 were twice a week & then I took a week or 2 break before I had my 7th. I’ve been doing IV infusions, seeing a psychotherapist who’s educated in ketamine, journalling after each session & I also went into each session with my own personal intentions.
I wrote about what my first experience here https://www.reddit.com/r/TherapeuticKetamine/s/UNdWszfZKf
As it often is with CPTSD, my issues and triggers around it are interpersonal relationships and such. I have a long history of talk therapy, I’ve also gone through EMDR & I am also medicated.
I was worried halfway through the treatments, I think it was 4 infusions in I was talking to a friend saying I was still having passive thoughts of being unalive. Which is what my medication was holding me steady at. I was responding to the ketamine & receiving some wonderful messaging, themes of self worth & love & personal things relevant to my intentions I went into each session with.
Things really started to click for me after the 6th session. My thoughts started becoming…different. I’ve been a life long people pleaser, dissociation has been a coping mechanism for me, & one of the first signs I noticed something was changing in me was I was starting to get irritable at EVERYTHING. I was PMSing, so I chalked it up to that, but it was unusual for me to be THAT moody even then. My mood persisted even when I got my period, which was VERY unusual since my moodiness would always subside when that would happen usually. So I thought about it, and I realized everything I was getting bothered about, were legitimate reasons to be upset. Despite all of my years of therapy, there still was a layer of dissociation I must’ve been living under, because I was still pushing down my own feelings. To put it into words, it felt like ketamine had helped me break up the same thought and behaviour pattern I have had for years and years. I was thinking and feeling differently all of a sudden.
This started trickling into other parts of my life too. My psychotherapist had mentioned in one of my earlier sessions that people going through ketamine often experienced changes, and sometimes the people around them didn’t like the new them. I didn’t think for one moment that would apply to me, especially since the people who were closest to me were in some of my earlier trips. What she said stuck with me though.
As I processed more I realized my chronic people pleasing & pushing down my own feelings for the comfort of the people I love was a huge reason I’d always been so, so depressed. So I decided to speak the next time I was upset by something someone close to me did to me. One of the first opportunities I was given was by my best friend who I lived with, and oh my god it opened my eyes. I had to silently plan my move out with the help of a friend, it very quickly became a very unsafe situation for me. My therapist was right, people who are used you being a certain way for a long time do not like it when you suddenly start to change. Especially when they’ve benefited from you being that way. It was crazy enough that our entire friendship group won’t talk to her anymore.
Anyway, this is just the beginning. I feel like self confidence starting to grow. The way I see friendships. My entire perspective on certain ways of thinking I’ve had for years & years. Honestly, I feel like a part of me has died, but in the best way possible? I feel like a lot of the traumas I was still holding on to before the treatment don’t feel so strong anymore. They’re still there, but my perspective has changed…like I wouldn’t think the way I do without the awful things I went through…I wouldn’t have the compassion, emotional insight, drive had I not gone through what I had. I still wouldn’t mind if I found out tomorrow I was going to die tbh, but I also feel like if I’m going to have to live I might as well make life the best it’s going to be? I want to build something, have something to look forward to and give me drive to keep moving forward.
I will be continuing therapy, and I feel like the ketamine is still doing a lot of work for me in the way my brain is reprocessing a lot of my thought patterns. I do feel like I will need to get more infusions in the future, but for me it has been a great investment and I’m feeling so hopeful for the future. Full disclaimer though, I am still on my medication & was planning to try wean off of them, but think I’m going to push that back with the big life change.