Ketamine 1: I am strong and healthy

I just finished a five-part ketamine-assisted psychotherapy (KAP) series. My powerful guided integration sessions borrowed liberally from Jungian stuff, Internal Family Systems' parts work, maybe some ERDM or whatever that tapping/eye-movement thing is, a dose of somatic Buddhism, and lots of frontal cortex stimulation. 

And a plush blanket, beautiful happy ketamine music, and a very comfortable reclining chair! How far we jointly traveled, friends. Knowing a trusted psychonaut friend waited in the mountain parking lot, ready to lend a shoulder or hand or hug, to receive me and my evolving puzzle.

Ketamine and my traumatized self are the stars of my current, sad story, though. Trauma turns one inward in a destructive, hopeless way.  I had become my own only story.  Boring—and lonely. 

All the elements contribute to and energize the ketamine experience. Health care professionals who are leaving anti-depressants and traditional trauma treatments need our cheering support, and deserve to be honored. They have a true power to heal now. Dream of how much suffering KAP professionals can eliminate if, for instance, they only worked on end-of-life anxiety. This is powerful work unlike any healing that's ever been available to Western healers and sufferers.

I've done a fair amount of LSD, MDMA, psilocybin–both recreationally and therapeutically.

Top Psychedelics

LSD (Lysergic acid diethylamide): Known for its powerful hallucinogenic effects and impact on perception, mood, and cognition.
Psilocybin (Magic Mushrooms): Naturally occurring psychedelic compounds found in certain types of mushrooms, known for their mind-altering effects.
MDMA (3,4-Methyl​enedioxy​methamphetamine): Also known as Ecstasy, it's recognized for its empathogenic and entactogenic effects, often used in therapeutic settings.
DMT (Dimethyltryptamine): Recognized for its intense and brief psychedelic effects, often associated with spiritual experiences.

Ketamine is different–notably delivering more dissociative (my first "out of body" or "I am everything there is") experiences.

Ketamine is also "medicine" in a way the others are not. It becomes you and tells you what you need to know, as the professionals say. A deep breath activates ketamine. I experience the very common sense that every unused neural pathway in my brain has been "dusted off and circuit-tested." My brain cavity feels larger as my guide leads me into my first journey. 

The healing begins in the first moments as messages from these depression-damaged, joyful-to-be-back pathways start competing for space with my manic self-destroying focus. 

I am fully entrapped in a single mania: the trauma and abuse I suffered during my marriage to–and relentless ghostings and belittlement from–my life partner.

Going to IFS land, the healing continues for a second reason which I refer to as "vacation postcards from the edge." The first postcard I receive from my first journey declares I have more-than-sufficient health and strength. I am overjoyed to see those "parts" again after their long absence. I note that I had not noticed their absence.

Myself "on vacation"– released from duties and risk of quotidian failure. That is niiiiiccce. I have never experienced me free of duty before. It's been 30 years or more since I've experienced myself free of criticism. And my entire life without a pause in self-criticism. (I have not discovered the source yet–epigenetic?–but I believe now that I will soon.)

In that one instant, I knew for the first time in two horrendous painful years that it was effortlessly possible to regain mental health and happiness. I, David Foster, was not the roadblock to some sort of rebirth. The image of da Vinci's dome inside the Sistine Chapel appeared. I could touch all the other pure shining parts of myself, just by raising my arm and reaching forward.

"I brought you all the way out here to see that you are all that is important to you," the medicine chanted, full of love and admiration and beauty.

I knew for the first time in fifteen horrendous painful years that I contain the capacity to regain mental health, wellbeing, and happiness.

David Foster, April 10, 2024

A third transformation occurs because ketamine showed me my (IFS, again)Inner Critic, mentioned above. In fact, I found myself locked in a lightless black room for the entire second medicine journey (K-2!), more or less "wrestling" with that part. The journey ended in a draw between the physical David Foster, and my annoying, destructive and self-protective Inner Critic–there are never winners with this part. K2 was my one self-portrait. I looked at myself with strained muscles and damp face, grunting against an equal combatant who could never lose, or win.

I've lived my life in fear and service to my IFS Inner Critic. My life partner was the first and only physical manifestation of my Inner Critic mania. She didn't invent it. I did. I do not desire another example, and when I can say goodbye it will be with the slam of a door.

Now I knew how much my inner critic harmed others, and what nonsense it shared with me. And how strongly it refused to shut up.

If K1 showed me I was capable, and K2 showed me how miserable I was in the thrall of an IFS part that has only one line ("You cannot fail! You cannot fail! YOU CAN NOT FAIL!), then

• K3 gave me true images of infinite love, compassion, connection, gratitude and so much more. I saw my brother Glenn and knew I loved him and he loved me (the only person who showed up in pure form during my five journeys).
• K4 gave me true images of my capacity for pleasure. Not sexual. Just all the brain capacity I had for pleasure all firing all at once. Absolute pleasure. I tripped around the purity of the idea of "fun"–not adolescent goofing around, but all the experiences of fun I've ever had appearing at once. Pure fun. Unattached to any action or activity.

And K5? My last journey. Me, David Foster, filled and overfilled with gratitude, open, safe, vulnerable and receptive–willing the medicine to show me whatever it wanted.

What knowledge did I gain from this fifth, final, life enabling medicine journey?

                   You are safer now than you have ever been. Tranquil; at excited rest.

                                             What concerns you is nonsense.

                                                                                                                                                             But...     And...

You must pass through it now to die.

There's no space or time between life and death,

              Mental illness and mental health are also there together.

Now that I happily know myself in death, 

and hold out my willing hand to touch the loving kindness of a friend--

I step across the line without a flutter.

                                                                           Whoooosssssshhhhh.  One breath.

                                                            Just like that.         

                                                                                                                              I am reborn.

My family tried but I could not receive this gift from them. My life partner destroyed any path that didn't celebrate her as Queen Elizabeth (we're all Mary Queen of Scots in this drama, waiting for execution). My life partnership broke my heart, numbed my body, and locked me in a prison cell immunized against a rich spiritual life.

YOU ARE NOT MY QUEEN! YOU ARE YOUR OWN QUEEN, AND THAT'S ALL YOU'LL EVER BE. GET IN LINE WITH THE REST OF US GASPING SUFFERERS. AND PLEASE REMOVE THAT SHORT STORY ABOUT OUR ARGUMENT IN ST TROPEZ. THAT'S LIBEL. I HOPE THESE POSTS GOT YOUR ATTENTION IN THE SAME WAY YOUR SHORT STORY GOT MINE IN 2010. NOW YOU KNOW HOW I FELT…EXCEPT I CARE FOR YOU.

I share my broken soul and life with you, ketamine. I am not healed. This work of putting aside trauma and depression and resolving anger that has no home–this is the hardest work of my lifetime, and I am so deeply alone with my grief and pain.

But ketamine–you're the first to send me infinite true postcards of myself—–on vacation. Your gift to me…now.