Wholehearted Endeavors

You can expect a grounded, non-judgmental space to slow down and hear yourself more clearly. We’ll explore whatever is present for you—questions, tensions, emotions, desires—through attentive conversation rather than diagnosis or fixing. My role isn’t to manage you or prescribe a path, but to offer steady presence, thoughtful witnessing, and explore practices for staying with what what cannot be resolved.

Conversations in these sessions involve a mix of slow, attuned reflection, somatic inquiry, and depth-oriented exploration. We pay attention not just to your thoughts and stories, but to the sensations, impulses, and cues in your body, using them as guides which allow insight and direction to emerge from within rather than being imposed from outside.

Ketamine is a Schedule III medication that has long been used safely as an anesthetic in multiple medical and military settings. Now it is being offered medicinally for depression, alcoholism, substance dependencies, post traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD), and other mental health concerns. Therapeutic ketamine sessions are considered an “off label” treatment for these and other health conditions. 

It’s in the brain! The medical and scientific community’s current understanding of ketamine’s mode of action in the mind and body is as an NMDA antagonist working through the glutamate neurotransmitter system in the brain. In comparison with other psychiatric drugs such as SSRIs, SNRIs, lamotrigine, antipsychotics, and  benzodiazepines, it operates on a completely different neural pathway.  

At varying dosage levels, once can experience mild numbness, relief from anxiety, and antidepressant and potentially psycholytic or psychedelic effects. It is my view that experiences of being in “non-ordinary” mind states may be instrumental in providing a more robust positive mental health effect.  

Relaxation from ordinary concerns while maintaining conscious awareness of the influence of ketamine is key. It supports expanded perspectives on one’s habitual mindset. This disrupts the patterns of one’s typical negative feelings or narratives and entrenched patterns of worry. It is my view that this relief, and the exploration and 

experience of other possible states of consciousness, can have a rich and supportive impact in thinking about and living in one’s own life.

It is essential that you receive careful attention during and after your ketamine session. Monitoring will include blood pressure and vital signs measurements as well as felt-sense check-ins before and after sessions. 

You are strongly encouraged to participate in supportive preparation that will ready you for your ketamine session(s) and assist you in integrating your experiences(s) afterwards. For people participating in a ketamine medicine session, a therapeutic program outside of their ketamine experience provides support for the continuation of emotional healing and growth. I encourage you to access support from a therapist, family member, partner, close friend, safe environments, etc. I see how social and environmental supports can be integral in creating lasting positive change. 

The purpose of the intramuscular (IM) ketamine experience is to create a non-ordinary (“altered”) state of consciousness, which is why a structured supportive therapeutic relationship with a practitioner who has a view of your hopes, reported issues, desires and struggles is important. Many people also feel  improvement in mood and reduced depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic symptoms. Your experience will be unique to you, and if you choose to have more than one session, each of your ketamine sessions will be a different experience.  

All non-ordinary state experiences are adventures that can’t be programmed. In therapeutic ketamine journeys, the adventures evolve from your own relationship to yourself in this state as well as your relationship to ketamine itself. You bring your expectations, fears, hopes, and desires, and these inform your experience.  

While I believe that it is best to form an intention for your journey, your intention may or may not evolve rapidly once in the ketamine experience. I have observed that the journey will flow whether you hold on to your intention and resist the flow, or whether you follow the path that unfolds and relax into it. I have noticed that holding on or trying to control the experience is a main source of anxiety in this and other non ordinary state experiences.  

A ketamine session can be light and joyful, dark and challenging, or both together. There may be concepts that surface in your mind, or visions, or personal encounters, and you may face the ideas that are uncomfortable. Not everyone enjoys the journey, but everyone comes through it.  

Before participating in a guided ketamine session, you will be carefully interviewed by a provider at Elevate Adult Psychiatry to determine if you are eligible. 

Pregnant people are not eligible because of potential effects on the fetus. The effects of ketamine on pregnancy and the fetus are undetermined, and therefore, it is recommended that you protect yourself against pregnancy while exposing yourself to ketamine or in the immediate aftermath of its use.  

Untreated hypertension is a contraindication to ketamine use because ketamine causes a rise in blood pressure (BP). Ketamine should not be taken if you have untreated hyperthyroidism. Similarly, a history of heart disease may make you ineligible to participate. 

Information on ketamine’s interaction with other medicines will be assessed as to your eligibility for treatment through your psychiatric provider interiew(s).