Ketamine Sessions 2-4

K-2: Unexpected Love

My veins still reject the needle. This time, after many pokes, my right wrist takes it in.

I’m ready this time. I watch the hooks on the wall. They change, like I know they will. Unlike the first time, I’m aware of my body and how it sinks into the chair. Sinking. Siiiinnnnkkkking. Like that scene in that movie where the guy sinks through the floor, only this isn’t scary. I know the chair is underneath me, but it’s loose, like quicksand. I open my mouth. I have a jaw. I can actually feel the skeleton, not the skin.

Sponge paint. There’s beautiful sponge paint on the walls of the rooms that change and rearrange around me.

Cakes come out of an oven. Then I see her. I’ve known her for years but I’ve never seen her like this. She’s a woman stripped of every damning expletive I’ve ever given her, every unfair judgment, every unfounded fear. She’s just love. Pure love. And she’s my favorite person. I feel the love welling up inside the body that otherwise doesn’t exist anymore. I love her.

When I think it’s almost over, I fall back in. I know how to get back now, and I want to stay as long as I can inside this illuminated bubble.

Wouldn’t it be amazing to carry this love with me always?

K-3: Via Paris

My arms look like a junkie. After trying the crook of both arms, both wrists, and a tiny vein in the center of my left forearm, the only vein to take is the one offset on my left arm. Here we go.

I fall deep and fast. Today I land in Paris. I don’t know how I know that’s where I am, but the room around me feels distinctly Parisian.

Mind chatter is strong today, but it’s only a fraction of my awareness. There’s more than one mind. Or there’s many, many pieces of the same mind, and we spend all our time focused on the one that talks the loudest. The mindless monkey jabbering screaming in our ears, keeping us up at night. But there’s more. So much more. Bigger parts that are silent and peaceful that don’t need the chatter that see the world clearly, for what it really is.

It's my third time, but I feel like I’ve been doing this forever. I’ve always been doing this. I’ve always been here. I’ve always been in Paris. I’ve always felt this peace. I’ve always had it in me. Now that I know it, I never want to be without it again.

Unique beautiful soul. I don’t know where it comes from. Three words whispered from the ether. Through all the garbage, beneath the depression, is a soul untouched. I’m more than what I’ve been, than who I’ve been, than every terrible, obsessive thought that clogged my mind until now, today.

I recover quickly this time. He can’t believe how fast I can walk afterward. I’m back to my old self—but better—before we even get home.

K-4: Cathedrals

I don’t think he’ll get a vein this time. We’ve tried them all. Between my toes? I ask jokingly, hoping he knows about some other vein somewhere else that won’t sting as bad as the wrist but I’ll take any pain as long as it works. My arms are black and blue. After this I take a break for a week, which is good. My veins need time to recover. This is my fourth session in two weeks.

Finally, the right crook of my arm takes. We’re off to…where this time? I fall deep, fast. I let myself go. When the whole world blots out there’s a moment of panic, but deep down I know I’m hooked up to a machine and on a camera and I am fine. I’m still here even if I’m completely gone.

This is the most beautiful. Rooms change, like they always do. Skylight. Jungle. Asia. Somewhere else. Pastel blues and golds in ornate patterns and shapes. I’m in the clouds. The room is full of them. White, fluffy clouds. Now the colors again and I’m in the ceiling of a cathedral.

My youngest brother appears through the ether. I try to make a mental note to call him when I come back to earth. If I come back. Can a person get lost in here? It wouldn’t be the worst thing.

I am profoundly happy. I am awake.