4 Bizarre Experiences That Could Happen After I'm Infused With Ketamine For the First Time Tomorrow
This Experimental Treatment for My PTSD Could Get Really Weird and Wild
It’s coming up on a year now since the violent assaults and torture - yes, I use that word to describe what the police did to me - which has left me partially disabled with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder symptoms that are often so bad I cannot read, write, or even watch TV. I’ve been doing the talk therapy with two wonderful therapists regularly and have tried about a half dozen different psychiatric medications, only a couple of which even provide mild relief. (The newest one, this Thorazine that I’m on right now, drags me down like a cartoon character put into slow motion, but at least it doesn’t seem to make me worse like some of the others.)
So a few weeks back, my psychiatrist said that it was time to try Ketamine Infusion Therapy - I’d expressed interest in it after an acquaintance had told me all about it and convinced me it could be effective for me - and I’ve been counting down the days until I could start. And it’s tomorrow at noon.
So what’s it going to be like? Well, Dr. Ko, who will be performing the treatment, writes that there are four different types of experiences that have been observed regularly in Ketamine infusion therapies: “the empathogenic experience,” “the out-of-body experience,” “the near-death experience,” and “the ego-dissolving transcendental experience.”
So in plain English, what do those feel like?
1. The “Empathogenic Experience” is Pure Bliss and Dreamlike Joy.
2. The “Out of Body Experience” is where you a) go to mythological realms, b) communicate with angels, demons, ghosts or other spirits, and/or c) find out about past or future lives.
3. The “near-death experience” is where you relive your life and become a single point of consciousness.
4. The “transcendental experience” is where you unify with all of existence and realize we’re all one. Bill Hicks put it best in one of his stand-up routines doing a mock newscast of a positive drug story: “Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Here’s Tom with the Weather.”
So how is this supposed to work exactly? Why should having some - or all - of the above experiences over the course of my six infusions cause my PTSD symptoms to go into remission? Why should this “reset” my body back to a more “normal,” functional state so I can get back to work writing my books and publishing my friends’ books?
Answer: because the experience of it should be more “intense” and “overwhelming” than the experience of the violence and emotional abuse inflicted on me on September 16, 2021. This is essentially a form of “exposure therapy.” Last year I was put into a situation in which I feared for my life. I genuinely feared that the police officers were going to kill me to try and cover up their wrongdoing. (After all, they assaulted me in order to keep me from telling the doctor at the emergency room how they were responsible for intentionally injuring my already-bleeding swollen hand multiple times.) There’s no way to replicate such an experience ethically or safely as a form of treatment, of course. So receiving a simulated version of a near-death experience in the form of drugs may be the answer.
And as one might suspect and some already know, I already have had some experience with altered states and with attempting variations of this sort of treatment on my own. I’ve already had experiences of the first two states described above through other drugs and methods and then reaped some temporary remission from my symptoms as a result. I’ve gotten the extreme bliss and contentment before, and, yes, in altered states I’ve had such strange experiences as seeming to communicate with “entities” claiming to be ghosts, gods, and demons. I’ve had visions of what appear to be past lives. And yes - such experiences are akin to a form of “trauma.” They do violence on one’s worldview and sense of self. And that’s what I’m hoping the Ketamine infusions can do on a much larger scale than I’ve already experienced. I have not yet experienced the states in points 3 and 4 above. And now I’m ready for them. I’m oh so ready for this person I am now, that the police’s violence has transformed me into, to die, and for me to be reborn as someone else.
Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection has taken on so many new dimensions for me in the last year. I’m ready for my time in the tomb as this sick, PTSD-ridden person to be over. It’s time for a new chapter to this story.
