Hello readers- I want to keep you posted about my ketamine journey!
My first round of eight treatments concluded on March 30th of this year; less than two months later, my emotional struggles were back in full swing. As for the reasoning behind this, I will explain everything in the coming blog articles. For now, I will simply say that “life” happened.
The second time around, money for ketamine therapy was more of an issue than in months prior, so I was grateful and humbled when Aja (my therapist) agreed to treat me for half the cost as before. Because I was now on a sliding scale with her, Journey Clinical (the company she partnered with to handle the medical side of things and to prescribe the ketamine), agreed to put me on a sliding scale fee as well, which was much appreciated.
Another noteworthy change is that this time around I dealt with Brielle, the head nurse at Journey Clinical, who was caring, kind, and professional. The NP I corresponded with before had a tendency of leaving me feeling rushed and had somewhat of an icy persona, so my experience with Brielle was definitely a breath of fresh air.
However, one pressing matter which seems to be constant, is that Journey Clinical doesn’t get back to you over the weekend- meaning, if you don’t hear back from them by day’s end on Friday, you definitely won’t hear back until at least Monday. Here’s the thing: I don’t care if it’s a damn bot responding, you do not leave someone in a compromised state hanging over the weekend because if you’re seeking ketamine therapy, you’re not exactly living your best life- you’re struggling. Many places such as Journey Clinical, provide a suicide hotline # for emergencies, but that is no substitute for actually responding to a person who is desperately in need of answers- especially considering how hard it is for most people to ask for help in the first place! To Aja’s credit however, she will be addressing the aforementioned concerns with Journey Clinical directly, as other patients of hers have shared similar experiences. For the most part, Journey Clinical offers a valuable service that is helping many people, although, like the majority of businesses, there is room for improvement.
Side note: Before deciding to go through Journey Clinical again, I had looked into a company called Joyous. They are strictly an online company that does ketamine microdose therapy for a subscription that costs $129/mo. That includes your ketamine and any online sessions you may need, which seems like a pretty good deal. I had asked Journey Clinical if they do microdosing and they said no, because of concerns it could lead to a condition called interstitial cystitis – think a UTI you may never get rid of. They also said the evidence shows that microdosing ketamine has not been proven to help with depression and it can likely increase the risk of becoming addicted to it.
Out of curiosity as to how they would respond, I reached out to Joyous and a few days later they contacted me saying that if used as prescribed, ketamine is proven to be completely safe. As for the “effective” part, it will always depend on the individual.
In the end, I chose to continue macrodosing with Journey Clinical, as it seemed like the safer option for me. Brielle prescribed me 850 mg of ketamine per session; this was a 250 mg increase from where I’d left off in March. I was supposed to hit it hard and do two sessions/week for a couple weeks. However, this dose proved to be too much for me. In Brielle’s defense, there’s a lot of trial and error involved, as each person responds differently to the medicine; also, I had asked for a higher dose while explaining my goal was simply to feel hope again (pretty f-ing bleak). 850 mg left me feeling nauseous the rest of the day, despite following all the protocols, and the entire next day I felt out of it as well.
Last week I had my second session, and took 600mg of ketamine. It went a lot better, which I couldn’t be more grateful for because just two days prior a tragedy had occurred that in retrospect, I probably should’ve seen coming.