Grief, Beauty, and Doing the Work: Amber's Ketamine Story

Amber, a trained autopsy technician and Ketamine Insights listener, generously shares her story of doing research, finding a therapist, and finding beauty in the mundane. She and Molly discuss how ketamine journeys feel, the experience of "coming back" from trips, and the work of doing SO much introspection in a short period of time.

They also share practical tips about music, weighted blankets, mindfulness, support networks, and more.

Thanks so much to Amber for sharing her story.

If you or a loved one are experiencing a mental health crisis, please get help. In the US, you can dial 988. And remember, you are never all alone.

Please take a moment to share this podcast with a friend.

A transcript of this episode is available at ketamineinsights.com

Email us at ketamineinsights@gmail.com

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Remember to advocate for yourself, and never ration your joy!

Transcript

Theme Song: She's sometimes sad. She's sometimes happy. She's doing things to make her life less crappy, trying a treatment that's new on the scene. Let's sit back and talk about ketamine.

Molly: Welcome to Ketamine Insights, a podcast about psychedelic medicine and mental health. We are not trained experts, and nothing in this podcast should be taken as medical advice. If you like what you hear, please support us through Patreon or substack or by sharing an episode with a friend. We really appreciate it. Today we have an interview with a ketamine Insights listener that I'm very excited to share. Here goes. Okay. Today I feel really lucky to have a ketamine insights listener as our guest. Amber, thank you so much for joining us. I'm so glad that you're here. How are you doing?

Amber: I'm good, thank you. And thanks for having me. This is exciting.

Molly: Oh, no. We're so glad to have you. This is my very first interview with a listener, so I'm really excited to hear what you have to say and also kind of give the listeners a bit of a different perspective on what it's like to have a ketamine experience. So as we go along, please feel free to interrupt, ask questions, and skip any topics that you would rather not talk about.

Amber: Okay, sure. Thank you. Yes.

Molly: All right. Tell us about yourself. Just roughly how old are you? Where are you from?

Amber: Yeah, so I just recently hit 39 years old. I said, I better make it good. It's the last one before my 40s. But, I mean, I don't know. That doesn't mean a lot to me. But, yeah, so I'm 39. I live in central Illinois. I'm in Peoria. I haven't always been here. I've left and come back, but we kind of joke that it's like a black hole. It seems like everybody who moves away eventually comes back, but probably because our families are here and things like that. But, yeah, that's me.

Molly: Great. I'm the same way. I left Chicago and came back, I don't know, 15 years later. And it is nice. It's nice to be home.

Amber: Yeah, for sure.

Molly: Any other background you'd like to share? Like, what do you do for a living? Or kind of, I don't know. Any other little facts about you before we get started on the ketamine questions?

Amber: Yeah, for sure. So I would expect that maybe we'll talk about themes. And so one of the themes that I'll mention I had, in my experience, is a lot about grief and death. And so I wanted to kind of frame that up, maybe for listeners, because I think that sounds kind of grim, but that's just sort of my everyday. My first degree when I went to college, I went to mortuary school. So I'm a licensed funeral director and involver. And then through that, I was able to kind of go into what I do in my current position, which is an autopsy technician. So all of those jobs, all those positions I love. So it doesn't seem like dark and scary and grim to me. So if I talk too bluntly or flippantly about death, it's kind of because that's where I live.

Molly: Yeah, it's your profession. When you say autopsy technician, I'm just curious, are you carrying out autopsies? Is that what that means?

Amber: Yeah. So I assist our pathologist. So the role looks different in different places. The doctor I work with, she prefers to do, like, when you see it on tv, you take out the organs and you weigh the organs and things like that. So that's my job, really, is to take everything out and hand it to her. And then she likes to do the weighing and the examination and all the portion that she does for her work. So I'm just really her assistant. I'm there to do whatever she needs me to do. But, yeah, it's largely doing evidence collection, doing the evisceration, which is, again, removing the organs. It's interesting.

Molly: Yeah.

Amber: You see a lot of strange things.

Molly: What a job. I'm sure it seems like the kind of job that demands a lot of kind of respect. And I don't know if you'd say awe, but there's a specialness to it or a sense of importance to the work that you do. It sounds like, for sure.

Amber: I'm so glad you said that, because sometimes I've described it as the last good thing you could do for a person. Like, to care for them on their way out of this world. Sorry, I lost my train of thought there for a second.

Molly:  No, that's such a beautiful way to put it. The last good thing you can do for a person. That's really something. Wow.

Amber: When I worked in the funeral home, I worked in the Chicago area, and I happened to work at a jewish funeral home. So prior to being there, I didn't know anything about their faith, but they call good deeds like mitzvahs, and so they consider the care of their dead to be kind of like a final mitzvah, because it's something that can never be repaid. So you do it without any expectation that anything will come back to you for it. So it's considered a very selfless thing and a very good thing, and I've always treated it that way.

Molly: That makes sense. I love that idea that it's special and that it's not transactional. It's almost special in its one sidedness, because it's an act of service. That is just service. It's not a give and take.

Amber: Yeah, exactly. Interesting.

Molly: Okay, well, thank you for that. I've never spoken to anybody in that field before. I guess besides just funerals here and there. But that's always sort of when you're.

Amber: Not talking to people like us in the world, it might mean something bad has happened when you're talking to somebody.

Molly: Like me, which makes it important, right. That it's done well and done carefully. Okay, so can you tell me about the mental health challenges that you have faced going back as far as you'd like?

Amber: Sure. Yeah. I can't necessarily remember what drove me to initially seek help. I lost a friend to suicide, and I think that was probably part of the impact. But I can trace, I would say I have generalized depressive disorder, treatment resistant depression, generalized anxiety. And so I could almost think back even further than that. That happened when I was about 16, but even into middle school, I was having upset stomach, and I thought I was having heart stuff going on. And my parents, this was, whatever, early ninety s, and they didn't necessarily know what to do. They went to the doctor, the doctor sending us to GI doctors and heart specialists, and I was wearing heart monitors and things like that. And honestly, when I think back, I think all of that was symptomatic of undiagnosed anxiety. I think none of that was anything that was actually wrong with me. The heart monitor didn't find anything. I think it started quite early, but there's been peaks and valleys. I guess I've been doing this, like I said, I'm almost 40. If I started when I was 15 or 16, I've been going a good 20 years at trying different therapies. Sometimes things are good, sometimes I haven't been on medication, sometimes things are terrible and I take a whole handful. It's varied through the years, and it's varied through my clinicians, through the jobs that I've had, the levels of stress that I've had, things like that. So it's been a journey for sure.

Molly: It sounds like it's something that you've managed. It's a chronic condition. I mean, I'm in a similar situation. It's chronic. We hope for it to get better, but at some point you kind of settle into the reality that this is something that might come and go throughout your whole life. Is that right for you?

Amber: Yeah, no, I agree 100%. And even some of my doctors and therapists and stuff, we even kind of talk about that as an expectation. It's not always going to be amazing. Let's just talk about how we get through the day and take it one step at a time sort of thing.

Molly: Right.

Amber: I think that's an important thing. Walking into ketamine, you talk about setting intentions. I think it's also very important to set expectations right.

Molly: Completely. I forget which episode number it was, but we did a whole episode on expectations and cognitive distortions and cures and quotation marks. Is it helpful to even think of things in that term of curing or fixing? And a lot of the time it's not. It's not actually a constructive way to think about it. Yeah, I think for me, one of the things about dealing with chronic depression is that it's kind of a part time and sometimes a full time job just to navigate the world of mental health care and try to figure out what you haven't tried yet and what might work next and how to best prepare and how to. Just navigating that world is really difficult.

Amber: Well, and even finding somebody to be treated by, it's taken me quite some time. I love the person I see now as my psychiatrist, but unfortunately I'm in a learning teaching university. And so once her residency is up, I'm going to lose her. And it's like, I love her so much, but that's the nature of the program. But even to find someone like her that I love so much and connect with so much, it's taken years, like you said, so much trial and error, and that's tiresome.

Molly: It gets right and sometimes you don't even know what the metrics should be that you're judging the person on. Yes, it's a pile of work.

Amber: It's the worst metric, which is, oh, this is who I can go because my insurance says so. I could go big soapbox about that.

Molly: Yeah, completely right. The choices are limited. There's a lot that goes into it besides just what would be ideal.

Amber: That's the thing that kind of irks me when the talking heads on the news when we have a mental health epidemic. Okay, well, let's talk about how that's not easy. They act like, oh, we'll just come up with these simple solutions to cure that and it's like, no, that's not how it works.

Molly: Right.

Amber: If you think that's how it works, you obviously don't have mental health issues, or they're so bad, you're delusional, maybe.

Molly: Yeah. I don't know. It's scary. The mental health epidemic, and I don't even know where to begin because it is so hard. I feel like that's part of the reason for the podcast, is because I feel like so many of us feel like we're out there by ourselves trying to figure this out and feeling like we're the only ones and we must be doing something wrong because it's so difficult. But I feel like it's really actually just that difficult. It's not that we're doing it poorly, it's just. It's a hard thing to do.

Amber: Yeah.

Molly: Especially when you're sick.

Amber: Yeah, absolutely.

Molly: Do you remember where or how you first heard about ketamine therapy? Or how long ago was it?

Amber: Truthfully, I don't think I can pinpoint when I heard about it. I think just it being out in the ether and me just always looking for something to help me, I kind of found out about it maybe side by side with psilocybin and how that is getting a lot of medical trials now. And I see those as kind of similar therapies, with ketamine being the one that's accessible at the moment. And so while I don't honestly remember when it was, it just seems like it was always kind of there. And then as it became available, I thought, well, let's try this for sure.

Molly: And did you feel nervous about trying it, or did you have any hesitations? How did you kind of approach the process of it? Was it intentional? Did you do a bunch of research? Did you just kind of go as quickly as you could into it, or how did it go for you?

Amber: No, I really did probably a disturbing amount of research. I was trying not to get my brain so cloudy with other people's experiences that I couldn't have my own, but yet it kind of goes back to expectations. I really was trying to know what I was getting myself into, what it was going to be like. Certainly it's a tremendous amount of money. And so that was really kind of my only hesitation was, this is going to be a significant out of pocket investment, and what is that going to mean and what am I going to get from it? So I listened to podcasts like, yours was so incredibly helpful. I listened to, you know, looked at Reddit and those people's experiences. And there's a show on, I think it's Vice channel, Hamilton's pharmacopia. It's very interesting. And so he had an acetamine episode. So I just tried to take in everything I possibly could to learn about it. When I decided I was going to go forward with it, I consulted with three different places before I finally chose the one I was going to be treated at. I didn't necessarily just dive right in and be like, let's do it. It was a little bit of work. Getting there.

Molly: Sounds like it. You did your homework for sure.

Amber: Yeah.

Molly: Which makes sense. I mean, it's important, right? Even if it's important financially, but if you want to optimize the chance that it'll work, even if it was free, you'd want to optimize the chance that it'll work.

Amber: Certainly. Yeah, exactly.

Molly: So you must have known then, going into it, whether you wanted to do an infusion, and you chose infusions, is that right?

Amber: I did, yes. I don't even remember why. I guess it seemed like from what I was, the research I did that was the one that had the most impact. Intramuscular kind of was a slow burn sort of thing. And the lozenges and stuff, from what I was reading, those didn't seem like exactly what I wanted to do. And I felt like this is the experience that a lot of the studies are based on, and a lot of what I was reading were experiences based on iv infusion. So that was an easy choice for me.

Molly: And did you find a therapist trained in psychedelic assisted psychotherapy?

Amber: I did, yes. And she was so wonderful. And I think it was a really important part of it. I mean, they talk about integration, and that's where the work is, and I think that's where you gain the most. And so having her to be able to help me kind of digest my experiences was really good. And I met with her before I even started. And so I had, like, a pre infusion session where we talked about intentions. We talked about, what's it going to be like? Maybe we talked about, what if this doesn't work? I was kind of putting all my eggs in this ketamine basket of like, this is going to be it. This is awesome. And so, again, had to get my expectations a little bit lower to where it may not work.

Molly: Yeah, that's so important because I feel like if you're expecting 100% improvement and you get an 80% improvement, you hate to be disappointed with an 80% improvement.

Amber: Phenomenal, right? Yeah, it's all about how you look at things, I guess.

Molly: How did you find this? Sorry.

Amber: I was going to say maybe I see the pessimistic side of things.

Molly: Me too. I know, it's part of the problem. Right, right.

Amber: Prepare for the.

Molly: Yeah. What? How did you find your therapist, the one who helped you with ketamine in particular? Were you googling around, or was it word of mouth?

Amber: Yeah. No, it was just a Google search. It happened that I do believe she's based in Illinois, but with technology now and the ability to do Zoom calls and things like that, that's how we met. But, yeah, I was just looking up specifically people who were trained in either psychedelics or even just what they broadly call plant based medicine.

Molly: When you did the infusion, it sounds like she wasn't there with you in the room or anything, but you would meet with her afterwards. Is that how it worked, or would you?

Amber: At the clinic, we never met in person. We did everything via Zoom, and we didn't meet after every single time. And it also wasn't immediately after. So we had a pre infusion, I think the morning of the day of my first treatment, we met, I think the next day, and then I think I did like two treatments, we met again. Two treatments, we met again, and then we had like a final one or something like that. So it wasn't every single one, but even that number was helpful and very important. I don't regret doing that at all. In fact, I enjoyed her particular therapies. I thought her pore was so good that I am even considering just reaching out to her again to see if I can get into an appointment without having the ketamine. Yeah, because she was so wonderful.

Molly: That's great when you meet someone who you jive with. Well, that makes such a big difference in the therapeutic relationship.

Amber: Oh, yeah, it really did. And she made a big difference in when we would unpacking things, I guess, is how you put it. I would tell her what my experience was and she would kind of help to be one of the people to help remember, and she was the one who advised me to have another person to help me remember because she was explaining ketamine, it's an amnesiac. And so I had my husband kind of with me, and so he could kind of pick up on things that I was mentioning or trends and stuff like that. I was not just alone in a room. I think that's what a lot of people's experience is based on what I have listened to. And the two consultations I went to it was going to just kind of be, we're going to monitor you on a screen and you're just alone in a room. And that was totally not how mine went.

Molly: That was great. It sounds like just having someone there with you actually during the infusion, like you could feel the presence and you. It made a difference during the trip.

Amber: You think, well, it did. And also, for better or worse, I don't know. I was engaging for a lot of the time that we were doing things or if there was something. I put a lot of pressure on myself during this because I knew I had these limited amount of treatments, and I wanted to, like you said, just optimize it and get just the absolute best and get the most out of it I could. So the very first one, I'm thinking, I said a few times, like, am I doing this right? I kept saying, I'm ******** this up. I'm effing this up. But it was interesting because, yeah, I was there, the nurse anesthesis who was doing the infusion, she was right there. She stayed with me the whole time. And then my husband was in the room the whole time. And so I was very much engaging with both of them throughout the whole experience. And when I wanted to be quiet and just have it happen, that was there, too.

Molly: That's interesting. I've never been able to talk, really, during an infusion. I don't know if I've tried, but I don't know if it's ever occurred to me. I'm definitely not communicating during the experience itself. That's really interesting to hear. And were they talking back to you? Not really having a conversation. But you're engaging with each other.

Amber: No. Yeah, we would have full on not a conversation because you figure this is, what, 60 minutes, but there would be little, like a minute or two little threads throughout it, which was funny because there were so many things that made it funny at certain times. And I remember wanting to laugh and thinking, like, I'm probably not supposed to laugh during this. I don't know. Yeah, no, lots of stuff came up. The other thing that I think was a little bit different and where the conversational bit comes in is my nurse didn't just stick to the weight based dose. And my understanding is that's how everyone's experience kind of is. You just get the weight based dose. The nurse that I was with, as she put it, she liked to push the limits of the drug. And she's like, you're paying a lot for this. I want you to have the best experience so I wasn't just strictly set on 50 milligrams, which I think is the usual dose for the average dose for most people, she would push it. So my first time when I was there, I think the number was 66 milligrams. And we were talking, and as she was doing the infusion, and she was saying, like, well, I can tell you're not reacting because you're still with it too much. And so that kind of helped her to know that I wasn't responding to the weight based dose that I needed more.

Molly: So she was kind of monitoring it as you went, it sounds like. Yeah, that's great.

Amber: When she says she pushed the limits, she even did that, and she got me to a couple of points where I felt a little fearful, and I felt a little bit like, okay, I'm ready to pull out of this a little bit. But I would just let her know, like, okay, I'm feeling kind of overwhelmed, and then that's great. A little bit.

Molly: Yeah, it sounds like. And you kind of got a good vibe from her and had good communication between the two of you. It sounds like that's really great. I haven't heard of it going that way before with sort of monitoring throughout the actual experience, throughout the 60 minutes or whatever.

Amber: Yeah, no, it made it really interesting. I'm glad it happened that way, to be honest, because I was able to remember things that came up because I was talking out loud. Like I said, my husband was able to kind of help me with that. And then, I don't know, I just felt like it was a good experience. When I was doing the consultations and everyone was explaining, I was basically alone in a room, and I just had basically a blood pressure cuff, and they're watching me on a monitor, which is like nothing if you're actually having a problem. And so I felt even a little bit uncomfortable about that. And so having it happen the total opposite way without me needing having to say anything was really nice. I think that's great.

Molly: Yeah. I mean, they say, like, set and setting, right? Like, your mindset and your physical surroundings make such a big difference. And to have a setting where you felt safe and kind of cared for, I feel like that makes such a big difference. Is there a physical or not physical? But do you get visuals, or is there, like, a physical sensation or that you get often during trips, not situations, but for me, for example, I often feel myself like. I feel like the ceiling coming down or me pulling the ceiling over me like a blanket, and it sounds kind of claustrophobic. But it's actually very comforting, like, you're kind of cozy. That's kind of the setting that I see myself in often during ketamine. I've talked to one other person who is always in a jungle, which is interesting because I don't know if they've ever spent time in an actual jungle.

Amber: Oh, wow.

Molly: Do you get anything like that?

Amber: My trips were unexpected. I had never had any kind of psychedelics before. I know a lot of people who've done plenty of acid, done plenty of recreational mushrooms. I've never done any of that. So this was my. I didn't know what to expect in my first dive into psychedelics, but mine was very weird. My visuals were very geometric, almost like there was lots of angles, almost like I was looking into a corner of a room. I also saw everything in black and white. I never saw any color, and I thought that was odd. I mentioned it to the therapist, and she said that everything that I was describing was within the normal realm of things that people experience. But I thought that was super od. Sometimes the visuals were almost like kaleidoscopic, but, yeah, like you said, like a warmness. I was seated in a big, giant, fluffy, lazy boy recliner, and then she put a weighted blanket over me. So that weighted blanket was really nice. Excuse me. And so, of course, I just felt very warm and safe. I almost described it, the first experience, as, like, a purgatory, because everything just seemed like, okay. It wasn't amazing. It wasn't terrible. Everything was just kind of peaceful and calm and clear and clean, and it just felt very safe. I was just going to say, at the same time, I also had elements, though, of coming down where I could feel it kind of leaving my system. I could feel it pulling off. And that was how I would know I was done, was I would come back into the room, and all of a sudden, I could feel the chair underneath me again, and I could feel the setting around me coming back into focus, and I'd be like, oh, man, it's over. Disappointed, because it felt so good to be in that safe, warm, lovely space where everything was okay. And so when I'd start coming back into the real world, I'd think, no, maybe I understand why people are drug addicts, because I'm like, I don't want to come back.

Molly: Yeah. I thought, actually about doing an episode of the podcast about coming back, because it can be kind of difficult.

Amber: Oh, my goodness. I think that that was the hardest part, and that that was why having an integration a person was so necessary because there was almost a spell of bad depression afterwards, and it didn't last very long. But the way I described it to my husband, it was like ketamine showed me a house where every single window and door was open, and every single open window and door led to a brilliant possibility. And it showed me what the possibilities could all be. But as I would slowly come back into reality, one by one, those windows and those doors would close around me, and I would just come back and be like, oh, I'm back in the same. Locked in the same house. That was hard. But like I said, it didn't last long. Thankfully, it would be a fleeting depression. Little things like that were important to having that therapist. And she told me that when most people slump, it's like two weeks after their last session that that can kind of be. You can get some rebounding, is what she called it. And I think I probably experienced a little bit of that, too. So it wasn't all amazing, but I think that it wasn't because, I don't know, it's an interesting experience. I wish everybody could do. Told my husband's name is Joe. I told Joe, I was like, let's save up and let's have you do one him to have the experience, because it's cool to reach this inner part of your mind, but also you got to be kind of ready for it, and you got to be ready for what you might find in there.

Molly: Yeah, I think that's one of the main fears people have, is, like, facing that internal world, whatever. People are scared of what they might find. Yeah, that's such an interesting way to describe it, that a house with all the doors and windows open. I love that image. Did you ever feel the presence of anybody that you know or like any people while you were tripping?

Amber: I guess presence seems like a strong word. But I did think of my sister a lot, my older sister. She was seven years older than me. She died in 2008 from complications of epilepsy. And I don't know why, but she definitely was on my mind. Quite a few things made me remember her. And I talked to the therapist about that because grief in general kind of always showed itself. And I suspect I do have unresolved grief, but I don't know. You don't think about it or you try to push yourself on. That was another thing that was interesting about the ketamine is like, I have never done that much introspection in my whole entire life. I'm seeing my regular therapist. I'm seeing this ketamine therapist now, like, twice a week, I was doing so much self reflection and looking inward that I was like, jeez, this in itself is exhausting and wearing me out.

Molly: It's like a boot camp of therapy or something.

Amber: Seriously. I mean, it really was so get ready to look at yourself hard. It's like, ****, it's kind of a lot.

Molly: Yeah, it can be. It usually is, I think, exhausting, especially that first regimen before you start doing the upkeep infusions, if that's what you choose to do. Yeah, those first, where it's like every other day or every third day for a week or two. It's so intense.

Amber: Yeah, for sure.

Molly: Did you find that the intentions that you had chosen influenced the trip experience or not really?

Amber: A little bit. Because I mentioned I put a lot of pressure on myself to get the most out of this, and I was fretting about remembering things. And so I talked to my therapist and I talked to the nurse about recording a session so that. That way I could go back and experience it. And would that be a good idea or bad? And everybody said, do whatever you want. This is your time and your choice. And so I did just turn my phone audio on record. I didn't need to, never need to see myself doing anything, but I did have the audio on, and I don't think that made a big difference. But my intention for that day was to just let go and don't worry about remembering. And if I say something that needs remembered, I've got this audio thing going, so I could hopefully rest my conscious mind. I was always fighting a little bit with the inability to let go and fully get in, and I talked. Maybe that was because of the nature of how we were doing things, and I could talk versus if I was alone in a room, that would have been a different experience.

Molly: That's interesting. Yeah. I think I've recorded not infusion because I'm silent. There's nothing to record but the integration session immediately following. And then sometimes when I listen to it again later, it is surprising because I've forgotten half of the things that happened during the trip, and those memories were available to me immediately afterward, but not a day later. Yeah, but then when I listen to the recording, I'll be like, oh, yeah, that did happen. And I did think that. And I had this opinion about that. All of a sudden, it was good to have that recording because I felt like there were bits of insight that otherwise might be lost, at least to my conscious brain. Like, maybe it's done some good on some other level. But did you ever have a challenging trip or like, you know, a lot of people are afraid of so called bad trips. Did you ever feel like things were really more than you could handle or out of control?

Amber: I don't think so. I mentioned that the nurse anesthesis, she would really kind of push it to the limit. So once in a while, yeah, we would get to a point where not necessarily it wasn't bad, but I could feel my anxiety kind of coming into the trip, and it was like, wait a minute, this is supposed to be my safe place, and now I'm starting to get some anxieties here in the trip. Then that's when I would mention to her, I need to pull back. But at the same time, another thing that my psychedelic therapist said and the nurse pushed is make sure you can try to let go and try to go into it. So I hope I rode that line of letting myself go and letting myself in and then feeling like, this isn't quite right for me, and then. And then coming back out. And that was the thing, too, that was important about the intention. When I would talk about it or think about it, it would of course, be broad and be a number of thoughts, but I would always try to narrow it down to just one sentence. Like, today I'm going to try not to remember or something, or today I'm going to let go and get fully immersed. And so I would use my intention almost like an anchor when I would get too scared. So I could either repeat it for myself when I was feeling anxiety or just being a naturally anxious person for my whole life. I've got plenty of coping mechanisms, so I would start to breathe or kind of do some of the things I do in my conscious life to control anxiety and panic attacks and things. I would do that when I'd get to that brink in the ketamine experience where I was like, almost too deep, I could kind of help myself out of it, too. Yeah.

Molly: It'S great to hear. I think a lot of the tools that we have in everyday life feel unavailable when you're high on ketamine, but also some of them still are available. Or the practice of, if you have a meditative practice or mindfulness or breathing, if you've done it for a long time, they're kind of fail safes that you can fall back on even if you don't have a great grasp of what's going on or what room you're in. I feel like there's something about watching yourself or like, I've felt that way during infusions. Like you say, if you're trying to remember it, it kind of pulls you out of the experience a little bit. I've had that exact same feeling where it's like, oh, this is an important insight. I need to remember this for when I go back to the normal world. And then you're like, oh, yeah, the normal world. You're like, oh, no, now I'm not.

Amber: Yeah, right. No. Thoughts come in and out faster than I felt like I could process sometimes. And almost in a way that I wanted to explore a thought, like, oh, like this. I remember this. But then that would bring up another thing that would trigger. It was almost like word association I was playing with myself, where one thought would trigger another would trigger another. And it's like, no, I need to remember all these. But, I mean, there was really no need. I'm sure it was. Most of it was garbage, just silliness.

Molly: I feel like you're trying to pick up, like, put them into a basket or something and they're rolling away from you. Like, no, I need these insights.

Amber: Yeah. Like, the pressure to make it work. Yeah.

Molly: I think that's so difficult to let go of, especially if there's a lot riding on it. You're hoping to get better. You're hoping not to waste all this money. You're hoping, hoping, hoping.

Amber: Yeah.

Molly: Did you feel like there's anything. I remember my therapist once asking me when I had kind of reached a slump in therapy, and he was saying, what do you think the drug is trying to teach you? Or what do you think ketamine has to teach you? And it was funny because it seems like such a woo woo question, but I knew the answer immediately. For me, it was just very simple in that moment, at least. It was just like, it's not your fault. All this, your illness and all those things. Like, you didn't do this. It's not your fault. And that's not necessarily something that I've. Like, I know that's true. But you have difficulty at the same time believing it at some points in your life, for me, at least. And so it's something. I feel like ketamine is trying to teach me that, and I'm still trying to learn it. You know what I mean? Did you have anything like that, that you feel like the drug or the medicine or whatever is trying to get through to you?

Amber: Yeah. Well, the grief showing itself, I think, was important. I think that is something I need to explore more. I haven't yet, but I have an appointment with a new therapist in December because it's taking that long to get in. But, yeah, I think that's something that I do need to explore. And it was interesting that it was such a theme, but in general, what I liked about it was I felt like the ketamine helped me to just loosen up a little. I don't mean to be, but I think in life I'm kind of up tight. Not in a stuffy, not fun way, but just like in an anxiety way. I guess I'm just wound kind of tight. And the ketamine really allowed me to relax enough to let some different ideas in and see some connections in the world. I said to my therapist before I walked into it, I was worried that I heard a lot of people having these spiritual experiences, and I very much consider myself an atheist and a skeptic. And so I told her, I was like, am I even going to be able to have these beautiful experiences? Because I'm going to be so skeptical of it all or whatever. And thankfully, I was still able to have that. But I do think it opened my mind to, hey, maybe we are all sort of connected in this world, and I certainly didn't find God or anything like that. But like I said, it just allowed me to relax things a little bit. I don't have to be so aggressive about any of my opinions or anything. It just kind of, I think, taught me to slow down maybe a little bit and trying to find meaning in the mundane, I guess.

Molly: I love that. I think that's really helpful on kind of the flip side of that, do you feel like there's something that people who are thinking about doing ketamine as a treatment should not expect it to do? It's good for this, but it's definitely not so much good for that.

Amber: Well, everybody's different, so everybody will experience it differently. Just like as it goes with, if you're under the care of a psychiatrist long enough, you'll hear that 50,000 times as they throw every different pill that exists at you. But there is value to the point, to the thought of every medicine is going to affect someone differently. So I don't know. I just think that in my research and listening to people's stories, I did hear a lot of stories of people who were like, after the first visit, everything was different. My life's amazing. I'm like, okay, maybe so just be cautious. I advise everyone to be cautious and think about what's going to happen if this doesn't work. Where are you going to go from there? Because for me, I knew I had that a limited amount in the beginning. And I actually never went and got any boosters because I thought would want. I did seven. I didn't do six. I thought seven was a better number. Lucky number, seven. So I did seven. And my thought was, okay, is one more or two more going to do it? Three, four? No. I saw it as something that I would have to probably do long term. And right now I don't have the financial ability to do that. And so prior to doing the ketamine and with my doctor, I did not do it on my own. I got off of everything. I was taking no psychotropic medications, no antidepressants. Wow. Because I told my doc, I don't even know what my baseline is. I've been taking something pretty much since I was 16 years old. I don't even understand what my normal, just raw baseline is. I abstained from alcohol, any kind of recreational marijuana, anything like that. So my system was as clean as it's been since the day I was born. And I did that to try to allow the ketamine to just really have a chance to do what it was going to do. But knowing that I wasn't going to be able to do it long term, I had to think about what's going to happen if this doesn't quote unquote work. I didn't think that I was going to just suddenly be cured. I was hoping that it would help me, and I think that it did. Of course, now I'm back on some medication afterwards, so it didn't help me to stay off of it. But it was valuable. It was a very valuable experience. I want to do it as often as I can afford to. I think it's cool. I think it's interesting to just explore the inside of your own head and get out of that conscious world a little bit. So that was actually one of the things I read, like, the top ten things not to do or to do or something about ketamine. And it was like, don't go out and start telling everybody they need to do this. But I'm like, no, that's the first thing I want to do because I feel like it could help. It was a neat experience. So just anybody who's looking to do it, if you can, give it a try, and I hope it works, but just figure out, and maybe when it doesn't, don't let that bring you so far back down that you've reversed the benefit that you just had.

Molly: I think that's such a good exercise to go through before you start ketamine to say, what if this doesn't work and just have that kind of in your brain that you've explored it and that won't be the end of the world.

Amber: Yeah, for sure. It's always about expectations, right?

Molly: Yeah. And you said something, I think we talked earlier about music that you were listening. Were you listening to the same music every time?

Amber: Yeah, it was interesting. That was something that was stressful to me because on your podcast, when you guys were talking about whether something has words or doesn't have words and this and that, and so then I go into my first session, and the nurse is saying she's going to talk to me, and I just. My playlist was just pushed aside. She put on something on YouTube that was a ketamine mix. It was very pure, moodsy kind of deal, and that was fine. But what was funny is the music I was listening to in the moment meant very little. But in my trips, I had a lot of music and songs that would come to me, just that I liked. And so I joked that I had carried a diary with me. And as soon as I came out and we got in the car, we'd sit in the parking lot for a minute and I'd jot down all my initial thoughts while I was still in it. And a lot of times those thoughts would be a song. And so I can almost put together a full ketamine mixtape of the songs that came to me while I was in the experience. And what was in the background didn't really mean a lot other than it was just nice to have something to focus on if there was a moment where my brain wasn't already somewhere else. But my brain was so busy, and I know you guys talked about if it had lyrics, maybe it would bring you out of it. She had a blood pressure cuff on me that went off every, I think, ten minutes or 15 minutes or something like that. And so when that would kick in, I would kind of come out of whatever I was in anyways. And so there were so many interruptions already. The music just wasn't as primary as I thought it was going to be. When I pictured what the scenario was going to be like.

Molly: Interesting. And the songs that came to you weren't songs you were making up, but they were like songs that you've heard in your life that came back to you during an infusion. Is that right?

Amber: Yeah. For some reason, something like a lyric would strike me or something would come into my mind.

Molly: That's so cool. So now you can put together those songs.

Amber: That's great. Ketamine mixtape.

Molly: Yeah. Do you have any tips for people about physical comfort? You mentioned a weighted blanket before. Was there anything else that helped you stay physically comfortable?

Amber: Yeah, the weighted blanket was definitely very nice. I like them in my normal life for my anxiety, and it was really nice. And I also found a blindfold to be important to me because I didn't always want to have my eyes shut, but I didn't necessarily want to be in the room I was in. And so I got a really nice fitting blindfold that I put on, and the room where I was was quite cold, and so I bundled up. That was important to me, to be really just warm and comfortable, and that's pretty much it. Just make yourself as comfortable as possible, I would say, too. I thought before I consulted with other people and my therapist, I thought I was going to have this treatment on, like, a Tuesday and roll into work Wednesday morning, and it was kind of like, no, it's not quite like that. You might want to give yourself some time. And so that was something where. That's something I'd warn people is don't expect to just come right back in with all full energy. It takes a little bit.

Molly: I think that's something that. Yeah, that's definitely a good thing about preparing, being ready to not just enjoy those 72 hours or however long you have afterwards. Not try to go right back into getting yelled at by your boss or whatever pressure you have in your life. Like try to take a mini vacation after it, if possible.

Amber: Yeah. And take that time to just really focus on doing the work that needs to be done, whatever that means to you and whatever that is in your life, take some time to really focus and give it a shot.

Molly: Okay. So we're going to just do a quick round, I guess, if that's all right with you. Okay.

Amber: Round. Okay.

Molly: Yeah, exactly. We're actually a podcast. Okay. So I'm going to ask you if you have any advice or kind of even druthers like, oh, I wish this group of people would act like this. Or little tips or advice for, what is it, five different groups? And feel free to skip if you don't have anything that you like from these people. Okay, so the first one is, do you have any advice for ketamine clinicians or the people who work in the ketamine clinic?

Amber: Yeah, if it is not usual to experiment with the dosing, I think that should be the norm, because if you're paying all this money to have something to receive this treatment, and you don't react to 50 milligrams, then I think you need the space to play with that a little bit. And I don't know if everyone does that. I think that would be important. This is going against the lightning round, but I did, as part of one of my mental illness journey things is I actually did genetic testing. It was called gene site, and what it was supposed to do was to test how my body metabolizes all of the drugs that are out there. So every anti.

Molly: I've done the same thing.

Amber: Yeah, really interesting, so cool and so interesting. And so if you can see that about Prozac, it seems logical to me that you would see that with ketamine. So maybe starting on the beginning dose, that isn't going to work for everyone. So if you're going to see a clinician who's just going to keep you at that 50 milligrams per kilogram or whatever that standard is, and they're not willing to play with it to how your body is reacting, I would say find a different clinician.

Molly: Yeah. Okay. Any advice for psychiatrists or other physicians?

Amber: I've been really lucky that I have my primary care and my psychiatrist. Everybody has been really on board with me and really super supportive, but I understand that that is not going to be the case. Not everybody's going to have an open mind with something like this. I think a lot of people, there's already a bad enough stigma around mental health anyways, and I think a lot of people feel funny about telling people they take antidepressants, even. And so if you're telling someone that you're doing something like ketamine, which might seem kind of drastic, I could see that it's coming with some judgment. And so I'm so lucky that I had all the support that I had, but I know that that's not always the case. And so, hopefully to psychiatrists and physicians, things like that, just don't be judgy. Don't be so old in your ways, too. If you get some old curmudgeon that isn't totally progressive, you got to find somebody that's willing to work with you on things.

Molly: Great. What about for therapists?

Amber: Kind of the same, I would. Same category. If you have somebody who isn't supportive of that, again, I think you need a new therapist. It's so important to find somebody that you have a good rapport with. And so if you have somebody who's not behind you or doesn't believe in the therapy, then I think that would cause a struggle.

Molly: Yeah. I once had a physician going back to physicians. I was working with a doctor who was like a holistic doctor and was doing acupuncture and all kinds of other stuff, and I liked him fine. And then I told him I was considering, I think it was TMs or ECT, I was considering some of the other interventions, and he said, oh, that's a hard no. And I was like, excuse me. Yeah. It just changed my attitude toward him so immediately and completely. This is not your decision. I'm the person in charge of my treatment, sir, what are you talking about?

Amber: Yeah. And to even say it so bluntly, a huge turn off back and forth like that. No.

Molly: Yeah. Okay, so back to the lightning round. Do you have any advice for members of a support network, like friends or family of someone who's going through it?

Amber: Just maybe be there to listen? I found that I really wanted to talk about the experience a lot, and I think that was, in a way, me sort of digesting it and me unpacking it by doing it kind of out loud, mostly with my husband.

Molly: But.

Amber: If you can be supportive and if you can be there to listen, I think that's going to mean the world. And if you're the driver or you're going to be there and be in the room, be that person's memory and help them out, because it is really hard to try to remember what you need to work on when you're in it.

Molly: Yeah, totally. Okay, great. And final question. Any advice or tips that you haven't already given for depressed people themselves or people struggling, really, with any mental illness? I know that's kind of a big question for lightning round.

Amber: Oh, yeah. And I'm certainly not qualified to tell people what to do. One thing that the psychedelic therapist said was, even if you don't trip, remember that your body is still receiving the medicine. And she was kind of emphasizing, even if you don't, your body's receiving the medicine. No matter what you necessarily remember or think happened, it's still in there. And so I think that's important to remember. And again, just, she said, look for hope in the little things, and if the little mundane things in life are just a little bit lighter and your quality of life is just a little bit better, then that's a sign that it's working. It might just be by the tiniest little increment, but see that increment as a big leap, because I think that's important. And then, like my doctor said, don't ever give up, too. For depressed people, I don't know that ketamine necessarily worked for me. I loved my sessions. I would do it again and again. Overall, I don't think that wasn't the thing. It is for a lot of people. It just wasn't for me. So now I'm looking at other things. And so for depressed people, just. My doctor said, just try not to give up because there's always something. There's always going to be another thing to try.

Molly: Yeah, I'm crossing my fingers for MDMA. It's supposed to be approved in 2024.

Amber: Okay.

Molly: I can't wait, honestly, because I think a lot of the treatment resistance for a lot of people, I think it's really true for a lot of people who have treatment resistant depression, I have a feeling it's very true for me, is that it's just trauma. I don't know if you'd even consider that separate or whatever, but it's like the thing that's making it hard to heal is that an MDMA is supposed to be very good for overcoming PTSD.

Amber: Yeah. I think my next journey, I think, is going to be into psilocybin and micro dosing there. There's some ways you can do it that are kind of more on the up and up than others. And so I think that's probably going to be where my next journey takes me because I think there's a lot of value in psychedelic medicine and in plant based medicine, so I want to continue it. Certainly.

Molly: Cool. Yeah, it's such an exciting. I mean, it's been so long since real new breakthroughs were happening in mental health. I'm so excited for this period.

Amber: Yeah, for sure.

Molly: Thankfully, we need it, right?

Amber: Yeah.

Molly: Well, thank you so much, Amber, for this time. I really appreciate you sharing your experience and your insights with us. This was really fun. I really haven't had the chance to talk to anybody this in depth before about their own experience, so this was really valuable just for me personally.

Amber: Yeah, well, and I hope it's valuable for other people. I really appreciate you having me on, and I appreciate what you do. Like I said, when I was doing my research, your podcast was such a huge part of it. And, yeah, I hope I can just pay it forward and help someone else along the way.

Molly: That's fantastic to hear. I think that's one of the lessons of ketamine. Right? It's like you're not alone. We're not in this by ourselves. As lonely as it might feel sometimes.

Amber: Exactly.

Molly: Thanks for listening to this episode. If you liked it, please share it with someone who might find it helpful. And if you want to help keep the podcast going, you can support us by subscribing through Patreon or substack. Just go to those platforms and search for ketamine insights. This episode was hosted and produced by me, Molly Dunn. Our theme song is by Solid State Symphony. Remember to advocate for yourself and never ration your joy.

Theme Song: She's sometimes sad, she's sometimes happy. Doing things to make her life less crappy. Trying a treatment that's new on the scene. Let's sit back and talk about ketamine.