What does a ketamine infusion feel like?

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.