“Ketamine Therapy” Should Mean Ketamine WITH Therapy

Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy is ideal for people suffering from treatment resistant mental health conditions. Those who have depression, anxiety, suicidal ideations, OCD, PTSD and have had limited or no relief from psychiatric medications or therapy.

One caveat before it. Ketamine is different for everyone who takes it, and it can feel different from one session to the next even at the same dose.

Often the first few minutes are mostly calming. Anxiety loosens and your body settles. Around eight to ten minutes in, the room starts to feel farther away. Your body may feel heavy, or weightless.. Time perception is often different, sometimes feeling slower or faster than normal. Thoughts can arrive as images more than sentences. Music gets deeper and often is a central aspect of the experience, due to ketamines ability to produce synthesia. Some people describe it as floating, some as watching their own life from a distance. For some people ketamine is profoundly psychedelic, and for some people it is less so. Ketamine can sometimes bring forth emotion, and sometime it can create distance from emotion. Both of these effects can be useful in Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy work.

We dose ketamine to aim for a level lucid enough to talk with your therapist throughout, but detached enough to be able to more easily tolerate therapy that would normally be too difficult.

You aren't locked into any specific level of ketamine. Your nurse is in the room at your side the whole time and can adjust the IV rate whenever you need. Too much, we bring it down. Barely feeling it, we can bring up the level. Changes to the IV pump take just a minute or two to take effect.

You'll be yourself the whole time. You can speak, you can move, and you'll generally be able to remember the experience.

You can expect to be at the clinic for approximately 2 hours. There are many factors that influence the length of the infusion but most patients will receive a 35-50 minute ketamine infusion. Your Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy trained therapist and a registered nurse will be by your side throughout your entire time during the infusion. Your therapist will be with you before to help set goals for the session, during for guidance and processing, and after for continued therapy, integration, and reflection.

Ketamine is a controlled substance and it can be misused. That's true and worth saying plainly.

What creates dependence is high doses, frequent use, and unsupervised access. Our doses are low, sessions are spaced out, and nothing leaves the clinic with you. You never handle the medication yourself.

The structure of KAP works against dependence. The goal is a short course of treatment you finish, not a prescription you keep refilling.

At Transcend, it is our goal to have this treatment be a highly transformative, short-term intervention for you.

Most of our clients (around 83%) reach a point where their symptoms are no longer clinically significant after somewhere between six and ten sessions. From there they discharge and go back to standard therapy with their own therapist. They don't need KAP again. Some come back for a session or two later in the year to keep the work moving, but that's the exception here, not the plan.

This is one of the real differences between KAP and an infusion-only clinic. When relief comes from the chemical effect of ketamine alone, it tends to fade, and people find themselves back every 20 to 30 days to hold the ground they gained. With KAP, the relief follows the therapeutic work, and therapeutic progress doesn't wear off on a schedule. Far fewer people need maintenance. Over time that difference shows up in how you feel and in what you spend.

We reach out to your existing mental health team during our therapy and medical intake process. We will collaborate care with them throughout the process. If you do not have a therapist or psychiatrist, that is ok, we have a full team of providers who can see you not only for Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy but also for standard therapy services or medication management. So no formal referral process is necessary to reach out to us to initiate the intake process. Just contact us by providing your information here and we will reach out to you to consult with you and get started.