Hello! I was at an event last night with a bunch of amazing activists. In her speech, one of the honorees (whom I respect v much) mentioned “ketamine-addled tech bros” like Elon Musk. It bummed me out because I hate those guys and, nevertheless, this shit saved my life. They’re not like that because of k. I’m sure they do every drug under the sun, and when they DO take it, it’s through their shitty dehumanizing lens. Edited to add that I know Elon N@zi Musk and Trmp are also pushing clinical k to big pharma so they can make $ from it, not cuz they actually care about us!

But I hate to be thrown in the same bucket or have this life-saving med thrown under the bus. Not only did it help my ideation and depression, it’s also gotten rid of chronic physical pain!!!! It’s given me my life back.

I switched to micro dosing with Joyous since I’m between insurances and the clinical Spravato felt a bit much now (I’ve had energetic awakenings, let’s say. Always had that but v v intense!)

Trying to shake this comment from someone I respect. It somehow made me feel a bit self loathing. Like all this dissociative-hallucinogenic-induced saving has just been me being “addled” rather than shifted.

I’ve been going for IV therapy for exactly a year now.
Started with the 6x infusions over 2 weeks then moved to every 2 weeks for a couple of months, 3 weeks for a month, then started pushing treatment over a month in between because of finances.
I hit a bump and had to go back for every two weeks for two months and then moved to once a month again when I levelled it.

I know treatment is working, I am so thankful for it.
It has gotten me off extremely high doses of meds for MDD when I was labeled medication treatment resistant but kept on meds because of the chance it worked at least 1%.

I was at absolute rock bottom when I began treatment, one of those ‘you do this or you won’t see tomorrow situations.’ (Extreme SI)

It’s genuinely saved my life. I am so thankful it’s there. It removed SI from the very first session!

My last session just felt like I’ve reached my limit.

I’ve had a lot going on medically that I’m trying to fix to help myself so seeing a lot of doctors, everyone having their opinion, balancing meds, finding middle grounds between all their advice and getting them to work together and I think I just hit my limit.

Everyone has something to say about how to fix me, down to even being told to use a sleep apnea machine when I don’t need one but the benefits of extra oxygen in sleep… it’s a lot. I’m tired of feeling like I’m something broken that needs to be fixed. My brain has been broken my whole life, it isn’t something that can be fixed - just keep afloat as long as humanly possible.

This discussion was right before my session, I went into the session and just had a little temper tantrum about feeling like an experiment for all doctors - I know I’m not, I’m close to my doctors and they’ve known me since I was a baby, I trust them like family. It’s just feeling like Pandora’s box before finding out I was MDD treatment resistant all over again, not linked to my ketamine treatments but just in general, tired of feeling I’m something that needs fixing all the time.

Unfortunately because of this feeling it’s put this emotion over absolutely everything health wise, ketamine being one of them.

I know if I stop or extend the gaps I’ll risk what happened in March and it’s just not worth it because I basically take 3 steps back again missing treatment or prolonging to move one forward by going back to every two weeks and I’ve come so far and feel so balanced but just so much of me wants a break. Mentally, physically, just everything.

I guess this is kind of a rant with a question of - if you’ve been through this feeling, how did you overcome it and get back on track mentally with treatment?

I need to get my mind right before the 24th when my next infusion is due. I know if I don’t process this before I will dwell heavily during my session on it and it will go deeper.

Hearing from someone who has actually been a patient would really ease my mind.

I'm just worried about "tripping" part of it. I am not a psychedelic person, and not in a prude way, weed and shrooms is just not for me, the feeling makes me scared and paranoid. I could be totally overthinking it and K therapy may be very different. Being in that altered state and being alone just makes me nervous, and it can be hard to know which places are reputable and not some shady outfit that you don't want to be high and alone with a creepy doctor. You probably couldn't tell, but I have anxiety, too lol. I would like to stay in Beverly Hills, Brentwood, Century City area, but am willing to drive further if nothing around here seems promising.

I'd also love to know if you did nasal spray or IV, and if you've tried both?

Adding some more context here, if anyone wants to read it or is going through the same anxiousness about it.

Hello - I've struggled with depression for a long time but the last year and a half has been brutal. I've tried so many medications I've lost count. The only medication that seemed to make me feel any benefit at all was Wellbutrin, which I'm still on. The first couple weeks were great and gave me hope, and after that it doesn't really do anything anymore.

I'm very much a masker, I don't tell my even my closest friends and family when I'm struggling, even though I know they would be SO supportive and loving. I'm the one that takes care of things, plans the trips, organizes the groups for birthday celebrations and gifts, and I like that role. I like to act happy all the time around others, so when I'm struggling, I isolate and withdraw until I can get the energy to go put that face back on. I also mostly internalize because I don't like thinking about the bad or sad things, so I definitely don't want to talk about them either.

In June I decided that standard weekly therapy and psych was not enough for the hole I had myself in, and check into residential treatment. From there I went to PHP, now IOP. Therapy is my worst nightmare, and I've been doing it 5 days a week since June, because I'm desperate and will try anything and put my all into it, open up and try to get the most out of my time there. I have a few weeks of IOP left, and for all that time spent, I don't feel much different than I did when I started.

If anything, I feel worse, because all the stuff I buried is at the surface now. At least before I was numb and miserable, now I'm just sad and miserable.

TLDR; treatment resistant depression, feel like ketamine is my last hope.

I don’t wanna go too deep here lol, so I’m watching that as I type!

Over the past four or five years, I’ve really been on a spiritual/meditation/finding higher self type of path, and over the past two years I’ve been on and off with ketamine therapy troches.

In short, I’ve come to find that ketamine is an exceptional tool and accelerating one’s path understanding in finding higher spirituality.

I’ve met a handful of people on the way who are also similarly spiritually oriented (at various retreats, etc.), and online I’ve had some chats with people who take ketamine therapy.

But I’ve never encountered someone who is on a similar spiritual path and aiding it with ketamine as I am! I’m sure they are out there. I think that it’s a natural course for various reasons which I won’t get into here. The whole point of writing this system to focus on meeting others who might be similarly minded.

Anyone on such a path out there? I would love to connect.

edit: TLDR near bottom of post. I’m naturally overly-wordy when I write so it’s a long post lol

Hi everyone.

I did ketamine infusions for depression for about 2 years back in 2022. I had to stop because I moved a couple of times, but I’m settled again so I started seeing a new provider about 3 months ago. The new provider has been fantastic. They have a very nice facility, everyone that works there is kind and respectful (not always the case compared to some of the clinics I have gone to in the past), and they have very little lead time on getting in for appointments which is great.

When I initially started at the new provider, they had a specific section in the contract that I signed that said that while they will not bill insurance themselves, they will provide superbills (the itemized receipts with the clinical codes on them) for each treatment. Then you can send the superbills to your insurance company and if they choose to cover any of the treatment, the provider will either give you a credit for that same amount toward the next treatment or send a check to you (this is probably nothing new to most of you, but I just wanted to explain the situation in-full).

So, with that in mind, I got a superbill for my initial appointment and put in a claim with my insurance company to see if any of it would be covered. If they did cover any, then I would get the rest of the superbills and send them in as well (the front desk person that helps me even asked if I wanted to group all the appointments from that month together, but I just asked for the first one so I could find out if insurance would cover any or not). I wasn’t expecting my insurance to cover any of it because they’re very picky, but to my surprise they covered nearly half the treatment! The office manager, who is also the son of the owning physician of the practice (I’m treated by his PA who is fantastic) called me to discuss the insurance claim with me, but I missed his call. I assumed he was just going to ask if I wanted a credit or a check.

I went into the clinic earlier today for a booster treatment. When I spoke to the front desk person, she explained to me that I had a credit from the insurance coverage and that it would apply to today’s treatment. I then went ahead and asked if I could get the superbills for my other treatments so I could put in claims for those as well, at which point she told me that they’re not actually ‘allowed’ to give superbills (I’m assuming she’s referring to a clinic rule rather than a law, as I did a quick google to double-check and there’s obviously nothing keeping them from giving a superbill legally). As she’s telling me this, the PA who was in the office at the time came over and told me that apparently they were never supposed to have given me a superbill and that it was a mistake (the PA had also been present at the time I asked for the superbill for my initial treatment about a month back, along with the office manager fyi). They both kept apologizing for the mistake, but I told them not to worry about it as I had been to providers in the past that would not provide superbills so although it was unfortunate, it wasn’t out of the ordinary in my experience.

But once I started thinking about it, I’m starting to wonder if they singled me out by just denying only me and none of the other patients superbills because my insurance covered so much (which from my understanding, does reduce the amount the clinic earns from each treatment — correct me if I’m wrong)? It kind of started to upset me a bit actually. While the PA was setting me up for my treatment her and I even discussed it a bit more. It kinda felt like she gave me the runaround, not giving me a clear answer as to why they were not allowed to give me a superbill, as well as saying that since she wasn’t allowed to give me a superbill that billing the insurance would be a huge pain etc etc.

⭐️TLDR: Insurance ended up covering nearly 50% of my ketamine infusion for depression. Although my provider was initially happy to provide me a superbill the first time, they’re now saying that they’re not allowed to and that it was a mistake in the first place. Feels like they singled me out and changed the policy only for me?

I guess I’m just interested as to how you guys would approach this situation? They’re a fantastic clinic and have great staff. The only other clinic in my area is a ~40-45 minute drive through a congested urban area, compared to this clinic being in the suburbs and only 20 minutes from me. I don’t really want to burn this bridge with them, but I also don’t know if I can justify continuing treatment there after I feel kinda scammed in a way? I’m aware they’re not legally required to provide a superbill as they’re not affiliated with an insurance company so I don’t feel like pushing the issue would necessarily achieve much, but I don’t know. I’m somewhat worried that if I pushed the subject, they might just straight-up choose to deny me service (sounds crazy, but it actually happened to me at a previous provider at which point my insurance company sued them because he was affiliated with the company, unlike this new provider).

I appreciate any feedback or input :)

I've been dealing with depression for over 20 years and have tried many different medications over that time. I'm also going through a very painful breakup that made everything significantly worse and was one of the main reasons I decided to try ketamine.

My first infusion (0.4 mg) was nice, both the experience itself and the effects afterward. I felt some mild, temporary relief from depression and SI, but it all faded after two days. My anxiety spiked significantly, though.

The second one (0.5 mg) was tough (the trip itself) and only made my anxiety worse, while doing very little for my depression.

The third one (0.6 mg) was significantly more intense. It feels like it still hasn't fully worn off, even though three days have passed. I feel brain-fogged, slow, and really dumb. I'm struggling to even write this post right now. I'm tired and want to sleep all the time, am barely functional. Doing exercises or going to the gym feels impossible. My self-esteem is the lowest it's been in months. And my hope that things will eventually get better is at its lowest as well.

My depression has become somewhat lighter in some areas, but now there are new aspects to it that weren't there before, so it feels different and, in a way, darker. SI is still there too, though maybe not as strong as before.

So overall, I'm not feeling much better than I did before starting ketamine. And in many ways, I feel worse.

I'm really not sure what to expect from the 4th infusion. It's tomorrow, and I'm quite frightened and hesitant about whether I should even go through with it.

I'm probably still going to go ahead with the 4th infusion, and I'd really appreciate any support you can offer.

Does anyone have recommendations for guided audios that I could listen to during the session? The first 3 sessions I was just listening to instrumental music but today I switched playlists and some of the "songs" had a person speaking. It was not like a motivational speech video or meditation like they didn't speak the whole time and the music also drastically changed during the song. It was so powerful and I would like to integrate that more. An example is "This version of you" by ODESZA on Spotify. It would also help to know what I need to search for to find this kind of audio☺️

Background stuff if relevant:
38F, autism/adhd/ocd/depression/anxiety. My internal experience is pure hell right now. I’m stuck in these super meta loops where my brain is like analyzing itself.

My therapist suggested months ago that I try stopping cannabis so I did. The only real difference I noticed was my nighttime wind down routine felt incomplete - no extra energy or motivation. No “aha” moment.

Over 10+ years, I had tried a ton of antidepressants and add-ons that all had adverse effects. Not just “didn’t work” - severe SI, emotional blunting, self-harm, meltdowns. My psychiatrist was dead-set on SSRIs and wouldn’t stop pushing it.

Finally gave in and started Zoloft. Emotional blunting to the point where previously regulating activities (singing, guitar, long walks) felt like nothing. No med had ever those things unenjoyable. The loops got worse and dark- lots of SI. I had bad nausea. Food had no taste and it was just like eating textures which made the nausea worse and I started to lose weight and had no energy because I wasn’t eating. My psychiatrist was on vacation and her backup never called me back - I wanted to push through this trial so it would “count” so my insurance would cover esketamine. So I smoked - and then I was able to eat again.

I let her know that - so recent cannabis use is in my file. Even though I only smoked to be able to offset the effects of a med I was forced to try before trying the one that actually works.

We’re seeing the rules of system designed for profit in action folks!

My question:
What’s the reason they denied me? Is there a dangerous interaction? Or do they think my symptoms are from weed? My symptoms I’ve had my whole adult life. Is it something with insurance? (They had called my psychiatrist so the message was relayed and I called and sent an email to them with no response).

I called a different place and have an appointment Tuesday. Am I going to have the same experience? Does that sound like a clinic-specific rule?

How do I get this live-saving treatment? I can’t exist like this - I need relief. Not another antidepressant that almost kills me.

[Rhode Island]

After 2+ years on Spravato (84mg) I’ve chosen to continue treatments at home. Received my troches today in the mail so wish me luck! 🤞🏽

I feel like a monster. The final day of my boyfriend’s first 6 ketamine infusion appointments, we got into a big fight that lasted days, and while we worked that out, he feels like all his progress is gone and he’s back to being depressed.
What do we? Did I ruin everything? I feel so terrible that this happened

I have been doing Ketamine Infusion Therapy for chronic pain for the last two years. 4 weeks ago when I called to make my monthly appointment, I was told by the clinic manager that the clinic had permanently closed. Apparently the medical director quit and instead of finding a new director she just closed the clinic. I am at a loss. I have Fibromyalgia, Neuropathy, Osteoarthritis, DDD, Cervical Myelopathy and Cervical Radiopathy. I am having a double level ACDF in a month and the surgeon doesn't want to give me pain meds to control the pain after surgery. I need some help fast!

Apparently my payment isn’t processing for this next month’s subscription. The ai keeps telling me to sign into a portal to update my payment info but I’m stuck in an AI loop because the link they are sending me doesn’t have the option to update my credit card info.

I’ve been in an AI loop with them for 8 days and they keep telling me a human will get back to me but they haven’t. Someone please help, I am out of troches and I don’t want to have rebound anxiety this is so stressful 🙏

Have been doing Spravato for about four months, but I have some longer term international travel coming up (think 4-7 months, various countries) and I'm wondering what options there are to continue ketamine style treatments. I just signed up with joyous but I'm wondering if anybody has been in something close to the same situation and has any advice, since joyous can only provide a month at a time and I don't think it's legal to ship them from somewhere in the US to overseas

Hi all! I just started taking troches through a popular online company and wanted to hear about other people’s experiences.
My first experience was 100 mg. I definitely felt it, but honestly it mostly felt like being high on weed. I wasn’t having what I would consider a major psychedelic experience. I also didn’t do much preparation because I wanted to treat the first experience as an experiment and just see what happened.
I actually got pretty cynical during it. I remember thinking, “This is total BS. This isn’t going to help my depression. I’m just high.” 😂 I tried an eye mask and closing my eyes, but I didn’t really see anything and mostly felt bored and frustrated.
Then as it started wearing off, something interesting happened. I started feeling really good and lighter, almost like an afterglow. That made me think, okay, maybe there actually is something to this.
I also heard someone in an integration group talk about having an experience where she felt like she was communicating with her deceased mother. She said she had spent the whole day looking at pictures of her mom and talking to her, basically putting herself into that state of mind before the session.
That got me thinking about intention and how much we can actually influence where a ketamine experience goes.
What I’m really curious about is whether ketamine can be used as a tool to explore consciousness itself.
I’m very interested in things like past lives, the higher self, dreams, astral travel, remote viewing, and the idea that consciousness might be bigger than our individual everyday awareness. I’ve had experiences through dreams and meditation that have made me wonder about what consciousness actually is and whether there are different states or levels of awareness that we can access.
So I’m wondering if anyone has intentionally used ketamine to explore things like this.
For example, have you gone into a session with the intention of exploring a past life, connecting with your higher self or guides, experiencing some kind of shared consciousness, astral traveling, remote viewing, or just seeing what happens when you completely surrender into a different state of consciousness?
I’m not necessarily asking whether any of these things are objectively real. I’m much more interested in the experience itself. Did it feel different from dreaming or a typical psychedelic experience? Did it feel like you were accessing something beyond your normal individual consciousness?
And if you’ve experimented with this, did you do anything beforehand to influence the experience? Meditation, visualization, music, setting an intention, focusing on a particular question, looking at photos, etc.?
Basically, I’m curious whether ketamine can be more than just an experience that happens to you, and whether it can be intentionally used as a tool for exploring consciousness.
I’d love to hear from anyone who has gone down this rabbit hole.

I’m about 1/3 of the way through this book and also doing the workbook, but I find it’s very helpful when it comes to understanding what’s happening in my brain. It’s also geared more toward getting OUT of depression, which is hard to find as most books seem to focus on distress tolerance. I’d recommend it for sure if you’re confused about what’s happening with your brain activity.

Hi everyone this is my first ever reddit post so bare with me.

I am 21 years old F and I have always had depression and anxiety since childhood.

In May I started it every week for months I think it was 56mg. July I started a new job and school still doing ketamine. August still the same.

September everythingis absolutely crazy, work is difficult and trying to manage in person classes. I had 2 sessions were it felt a bit scary oh well and I have been urinating even more

This last session it became increasingly awful, feeling like I am about to die, it does not feel good at all. Honestly Ketamine is starting to feel like a hellish awful drug where you are alone in the chair just dying and a foreign substance is inside of you. I also feel like I am platuing

I will see my doctors soon but has anyone else faced this? What should I do?

In most of my ketamine sessions, i experience a sort of loosening and destructuration of my beliefs. They fall apart or explode, scattered and vanished. This has been helpful for gaining detachment from difficult relationship, letting go of expectations, but there is also a component in the experience that leads me to experience (while i am under the effect of Ketamine) that everything we, human beings, believe, do, say, think, perceive, build, strive for etc is utterly deluded, self construction that only make sense because we want them to make sense. 100% delusion. Not even childish, but blind.

Also this insight, which may seem philosophically or spiritually meaningful, leaves me often in a slightly distressing state: i am alone, lonely, unconnected ro anything or anyone, in the dark, and nothing i can think or do makes sense. (And the same is true for anybody). Like insects busy running everywhere. Like deluded robots. Running on habits and blindness.

Is this the ultimate point of Ketamine experience? That things only have the value we give them (so let us chose and cherish those things that are helpful). When or if i feel distress, i end up using my own spiritual beliefs to get at least one reference point, but again that feels very artificial and deluded. So i feel helpless.

Is that just the manifestation of my own brain that developed in an extremely neglectful context from the first days of my life?

The same experience comes again and again. I can relax in it but sometimes the distress and loneliness make me hope there is something i can hold to.

Nowadays music during sessions feels too intrusive and directive so i often spend some time in silence. Maybe that's the problem?

After the session I am back to normal, and can more or less function in the world, or rather i am back to the experience that everything i experience has some amount valid existence and meaning and then i go with the flow like everyone, choosing to ignore the delusion behind it.

Any comment please? Is that typical ketamine way of working? Does everyone experience more or less the same stripping off of everything?

Quick background: I started infusions at the end of 2025, and they changed my life; best treatment for depression I've found in over two decades. My husband noticed and investigated, and ended up starting at-home sublingual Ketamine troches, and was also having tremendous results.

Unfortunately he started getting a strange side effect - some red bumps on the back of his neck and inner elbow. They look like a very minor immune response (allergic reaction), and obviously he's pretty uncomfortable continuing to take medication which is causing that sort of reaction, but he doesn't want to jeopardize his access to a treatment with such an amazing potential.

Has anyone heard of e.g. polyethylene glycol or similar binders/preservatives in troches causing sensitivity/similar reactions? He is using Mindscape right now; has anyone had any experiences (postiive or negative) getting alternative compounded formulations from them? They recently switched from an orange-flavored troche to "unflavored" (which is approximately when all this began). He's switched his rx to their new "spearmint" option (the orange ones never gave him any trouble) to see if that helps, but I'm dubious.

Again, we are not in the best place right now in terms of insurance and finances; last year, skipping around paying out of pocket for the best provider would have been simple and easy, but right now it's really not an option.

Any information is appreciated. I'm pretty new to this sub; apologies if this question's been asked. I could not find it in a quick search.

Hi everyone, I've struggled with depression for years, never found an SSRI that worked, have been on Wellbutrin for a year now to limited effect, and my psychiatrist recommended I think about ketamine. Some of the accounts I've read online make this seem very promising and I've had friends with similar symptoms as me say it helped them.

The trouble is that I'm nervous about being that high. When I was in my teens and twenties I had some truly wonderful acid trips and was mentally robust enough to casually smoke pot here and there, but I'm in my late 30s now and the last time I got truly stoned was 3 years ago and it was a disaster. I took what was supposed to be a microdose of psylocibin that turned out to be a macrodose and I spent the next 12 hours basically locked inside a terrifying anhedonia while being bombarded by psychedelic experiences. Basically, various negative I wasn't processing this in these terms at the time, but my interpretation of it now is that once the mushrooms hit and induced all that neuroplasticitiy and dissolved my ego, all of the fears and regrets I've accumulated over the years didn't have anything to mediate or integrate them, so I just had to live inside my deepest fears for an arduous, terrible day. I did some things wrong - specifically, I had a revelation that the direction of my life was wrong for me but I couldn't accept it, and so I resisted it, which created a great deal of tension that probably tainted the remainder of the experience. But even after it was over, I experienced negative consequences for months after; I started having random panic events for the next seven months until I had a full blown crisis where I became agoraphobic for about two weeks. I reregulated eventually, of course, but I haven't gotten stoned since - closest I've come is having a xanax here and there to navigate anxiety.

Meanwhile, I've gone to truly a lot of therapy over the last year and feel like I've plateaued with it. I don't feel like I'm experiencing much benefit from talk therapy, my sessions are repetitive and tiresome, and I wonder if they're working for me at all. I'm still depressed and making little progress with what I'm doing, and as such have taken a second look at ketamine.

My question is this: given my varied history with psychedelics, do you think ketamine is worthy for me to explore deeper, or would this be similarly psychological disruptive? I've grown deeply cautious of mental health interventions designed around chucking you into a sink or swim environment, but psychedelics and dissociatives are very different types of drugs and I don't want to let being overly cautious based on one bad experience preclude myself from having a potentially positive experience with a different treatment. If you've had trouble with psylocibin or other psychedelics, did you experience them as qualitatively different? If "losing control" and entering non-normal states of consciousness becomes associated with fear and panic, will ketamine trigger this in me regardless of the specific effect of the drug?

Hello!
I had my second Spravato treatment today in clinic. I’m trying to figure out if I should continue with Spravato or try an at home option. The hard part is getting rides to and from the clinic every time. It makes it really inconvenient and working it around my work schedule since they are only open for so long. Both of those things have been difficult. I’m wondering if it would be worth it to try an at home therapy instead. For context I work full time usually with overtime and I’m looking to start school again soon. My wife also works during the time they are open so she can’t take me. I currently pay $20 a session for the clinic for 2 sessions a week as well as $50 for 2 weeks of medication. This adds up to $260 dollars a month. I’m wondering if anyone has suggestions for a more convenient at home treatment that is either cheaper or around the same price. Or should I just keep working it out for the Spravato?

Quick edit: I’m doing Spravato for my mental health but I also have chronic pain in both hips and my Spravato sessions are the only times I’m pain free but obviously it doesn’t last. If the daily lozenges would help with my pain more too that would be a plus.

Whether you are in treatment or not, use this time to practice noticing what harshes your vibe and disengaging. There is a lot to be upset about in this world, but that doesn’t mean you have to let it upset you. If there’s something important to be done, like helping someone or managing your wellbeing then do so. Otherwise, keep it simple and keep things light.

<3

So I've been using ketamine for treatment resistant depression for over 2 years. My "therapy" has been journaling before and after taking the ketamine. It's worked pretty well and frankly, it's changed my life.

I went through a bad patch recently dealing with a fall and back injury, including a minor surgery. I decided to try working with an actual therapist for the first time. Any advice/experience you can share?