DOSE:		oral	Pharmaceuticals	(daily)
	50 - 70 mg	insufflated	Ketamine	(powder / crystals)

BODY WEIGHT:

160 lb

I never came close to tripping on K. I’m writing this because I read almost every trip report while I was researching ketamine treatment for depression, and I’m hoping my experience can be helpful to someone like me.

I’ve suffered from depression since I was a kid. The first suicidal thoughts I can remember came when I was 10, and they’ve been a daily occurrence since (28 at the time of writing). I’ve been in talk therapy and I’ve tried around a dozen different antidepressants, mood stabilizers, and antipsychotics, and many combinations of the three. I first heard about ketamine treatment from a psychiatrist and was very intrigued, but getting them done in a medical context is prohibitively expensive.

My current cocktail of pharmaceuticals worked… for a while. And then the dark thoughts came back with a vengeance. I felt hopeless, like I was destined to suffer for the rest of my life. I am not an experienced psychedelic user and ketamine seemed scary to me, but I was desperate for some relief. When I found out my weed dealer also sold ketamine I thought… why not?

Note: At the time of my treatment I was taking 5 different medications : some psychiatric, and some to help with their terrible side effects. As far as I could find in my research, patients continue their existing medication regimens while they undergo the ketamine therapy.

I did some research and found out the professionally given treatment plans suggested a dosage of 0.5-1mg/kg of body weight. The suggested treatment schedule is twice weekly, and not to exceed 6 weeks. I decided to start small with one dose weekly for 6 weeks. I insufflated my doses so I went a little above the minimal recommendation and settled for about 0.69mg/kg. I weighed about 160lbs and went with 50mg for my first session. I’m not an experienced drug user so I didn’t want to come anywhere near a k-hole. I ended up tweaking the dose a few times. My sessions went as follows.

1st session:
Dose: 50mg – divided into two lines. I waited 5-10 minutes between insufflating the lines.
Effects: My body and head felt strange and light. Drinking water was strange, I couldn’t really feel the liquid in my mouth or when I swallowed. I was pretty tired after the effects wore off. I felt relief from the depression pretty quickly, and felt pretty good for most of the following week, but the effects did seem to start wearing off near the end of it. I didn’t take my morning medication before I did the ketamine (I didn’t want any weird interactions), which may have made the tired feeling worse.

2nd session:
Dose: 70mg – insufflated all at once
I decided to up the dose for this session to see if I could avoid the effects wearing off later in the week. My body felt VERY weird and light. Objects I picked up also felt almost weightless. I became nauseous almost immediately and spent probably 45 minutes laying on the floor in the bathroom. I did end vomiting. If I covered my eyes with my hands I could see what I can best describe as swatches of moving color. After the effects seemed to wear off I was extremely tired and took a nap for an hour or two. I felt great relief from my depression that seemed to last the following week.

3rd session:
Dose: 50 mg – divided into 4 lines
Because the increased dose of the second session making me feel ill, I went back down to 50mg and decided to spread out 4 lines over the course of an hour. I felt pretty good and listening to music made me feel like dancing. Effects seemed to linger for about an hour after the last dose, and I felt no nausea this time. Again, the relief from depression was very noticeable and lasted for the most part of a week.

4th session:
Dose: 70mg – divided into 5 lines
I spread 5 lines over the course of an hour and fifteen minutes. I don’t remember why I opted for 70mg this time, it may have been in response to a challenging week at work. I felt the typical effects like a lightness or weightlessness in my body that made walking feel very strange. Colors were maybe a little more vibrant. Other than that it was pretty uneventful. Again, the effects lasted for the whole following week or very close to it.

5th session:
Dose: 60mg – divided into 4 lines
I insufflated the four lines in about the span of an hour. Typical light feeling in body, nothing much to note here. At this point my depression had lifted immensely. I had trouble even remembering what it was like to feel so awful all the time. I had started picking up hobbies again that I abandoned due to no motivation.

6th session:
Dose: 50mg – divided into 4 lines
Insufflated the lines over about an hour and twenty minutes. I didn’t take any notes for this session since I was used to the general effects by now. I imagine I had the same sort of floaty and disassociated feelings as usual.

By this point, it felt like my depression was almost cured. I’d never felt so good in my adult life, it felt like a miracle. Of course ket didn’t take away 100% percent of my suffering. It felt possible to live my life again, I could participate in hobbies, I wasn’t crying every day, I didn’t feel like suicide was an inevitability anymore. The effect ket had on me was magical.

Per my research, a 6 session treatment plan was the normal procedure, followed by less frequent follow-up treatments when it felt needed. After the 6th session I wanted to go as long as possible before I took another dose. I went about 4 months before I decided to do another session. The amazing thing was that I still felt pretty good - at least in comparison to before the treatments – but I was feeling a little low and wanted to dose before a family vacation. That time I did roughly 50mg.

I waited about another 4 months until my next dose. Again, I didn’t strictly need it, but I was hoping it would help me process some feelings about the death of a family member (it didn’t). I did about 50mg this time too. At the time of writing, this is the last dose I’ve taken.

Again, I can’t say enough about how wonderful this ket treatment has been and how it’s completely changed my life. BUT please be cautiously optimistic if you try this, it does not work for everyone. My sister also struggles with mental health issues so I gave her some to try out. I gave her 6 doses that were about .85mg/kg (more than mine). She said it helped her process some emotions, but she didn’t feel much of an effect on her depression levels even after repeated doses.

Not to be dramatic, but ketamine has saved my life, and I hope my experience can lead at least one other person into feeling relief from depression. I will say though, it doesn’t seem to have alleviated my anxiety.

Exp Year: 2021	ExpID: 116071
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: 28
Published: Jan 9, 2022	Views: 1,852
[ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
Pharmaceuticals (73), Ketamine (31) : Alone (16), Depression (15), Health Benefits (32), Retrospective / Summary (11), Combinations (3)