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My Public Journal for Treatment of my T-R-Depression
11 months ago
Just putting this as a public journal of my experience so far with starting my new path on Ketamine IV therapy for my treatment resistant depression. TL;DR I have suffered from MDD since I could first remember anything (kindergarten) and have lost hope that traditional antidepressants would do anything at all to help me. While I have taken 4 different medicines over the past decade, the fact that these medicines take weeks to months to fully kick in is something that I can't afford anymore. My disease is so bad that I cannot even work for long periods of time.
So I came across this therapy, and have read stories of other people in similar places as me, whose lives were completely changed because of it. I immediately gained hope that I could actually experience a life without the constant thoughts that I have. It's hard to explain to people who haven't been in shoes like mine how invaluable such an opportunity is to me. I'd spend every little bit of everything I have just to be able to actually experience it and have a chance at living "normal." Normal to me is anything better than what I've lived with before. While some of the stories I've read explained that they felt a difference with just hours of receiving their first dose, I was still a bit skeptical but optimistic. I wanted to have realistic expectations because, yes, it is still medicine just like antidepressants and may not work.
Well, yesterday, I received my first dose and after chatting with the doctor a couple hours after, they believe that I had achieved remission and more than 12 hours later I have to agree. I've written down the experience I had while I was under the effects of Ketamine and might post it at a future time but after I was starting to come out of that experience, I just couldn't stop smiling and had cried a bit because of how calm my head was. I had never felt so genuinely happy and sad, yet not overwhelmingly dreadful in my life. I remember being able to compare the feeling to when I was a really young boy, care-free with nothing to lose, no responsibilities, and my wild imagination but without depression. I felt safe, comforted, calm, whatever you'd want to call the surreal moment I no longer felt my depression. It was as if it was cast out and completely vanished without a trace. I can hardly remember what it felt like before Ketamine, but I knew instantly that it was going to work and that it actually worked.
I'm no doctor, and the little I've read of studies from journals said something along the lines of how Ketamine is able to help the brain regrow neural connections and pathways that have been lost due to mental illnesses while also letting previously inactive areas of the brain light up again, but that it's not understood exactly how it's able to do that.
This is only the first session of 6 that are typically recommended by clinics that offer it. So I still have 5 more to go after new years. But I'm excited to go back and continue my treatment. I only wish that I found out about this a year or two ago because it could have really helped prevent a lot of things that happened over those years.
So I came across this therapy, and have read stories of other people in similar places as me, whose lives were completely changed because of it. I immediately gained hope that I could actually experience a life without the constant thoughts that I have. It's hard to explain to people who haven't been in shoes like mine how invaluable such an opportunity is to me. I'd spend every little bit of everything I have just to be able to actually experience it and have a chance at living "normal." Normal to me is anything better than what I've lived with before. While some of the stories I've read explained that they felt a difference with just hours of receiving their first dose, I was still a bit skeptical but optimistic. I wanted to have realistic expectations because, yes, it is still medicine just like antidepressants and may not work.
Well, yesterday, I received my first dose and after chatting with the doctor a couple hours after, they believe that I had achieved remission and more than 12 hours later I have to agree. I've written down the experience I had while I was under the effects of Ketamine and might post it at a future time but after I was starting to come out of that experience, I just couldn't stop smiling and had cried a bit because of how calm my head was. I had never felt so genuinely happy and sad, yet not overwhelmingly dreadful in my life. I remember being able to compare the feeling to when I was a really young boy, care-free with nothing to lose, no responsibilities, and my wild imagination but without depression. I felt safe, comforted, calm, whatever you'd want to call the surreal moment I no longer felt my depression. It was as if it was cast out and completely vanished without a trace. I can hardly remember what it felt like before Ketamine, but I knew instantly that it was going to work and that it actually worked.
I'm no doctor, and the little I've read of studies from journals said something along the lines of how Ketamine is able to help the brain regrow neural connections and pathways that have been lost due to mental illnesses while also letting previously inactive areas of the brain light up again, but that it's not understood exactly how it's able to do that.
This is only the first session of 6 that are typically recommended by clinics that offer it. So I still have 5 more to go after new years. But I'm excited to go back and continue my treatment. I only wish that I found out about this a year or two ago because it could have really helped prevent a lot of things that happened over those years.
