What Does Getting a Ketamine Infusion Feel Like During Therapy and After?

How does ketamine feel when it enters your body during therapy for treatment-resistant depression? What does ketamine feel like during and after therapy?

Imagine signing up for a ketamine infusion therapy program and scheduling your series of sessions at a ketamine clinic. You feel a sense of excitement and hope. Is it possible that depressive symptoms, panic attacks, obsessive intrusive thoughts, suicidal thoughts, and the pain left by past trauma can be dissolved away by each successive ketamine session? Will ketamine make chronic pain more bearable?

Yet, as the day of your first IV infusion appointment approaches, you may wonder how it will feel when the first drops of ketamine enter your body and quickly reach your brain. Will you sleep and have no memory of the experience? Will you see visions or hallucinations or any other psychedelic effects?

Fortunately, ketamine provides brain healing, and it also provides a pleasant, relaxing experience, when administered in a medical facility by an experienced ketamine infusion team. You will be aware of the experience and remember it, and you will not experience the mind-bending hallucinations associated with psychedelic drugs, such as LSD or psilocybin.

To better understand how ketamine therapy feels during your infusion, it helps to know that ketamine is classified as a dissociative anesthetic. This means that part of the experience is the dissociative effect of having your awareness and identity being separated from your brain and body.

In fact, some ketamine patients have felt reassured by the ketamine journey, sensing that they are more than simply a physical brain and body. By directly experiencing this out-of-body sensation, they are comforted to know that, in some way, their existence transcends their physical functioning and the world around them.

What does ketamine treatment feel like for a person with OCD?

OCD, or obsessive compulsive disorder, is a type of anxiety disorder. People who suffer from OCD have disturbing intrusive thoughts, repetitive thoughts and behaviors, which result in a high level of anxiety.

A person who has OCD feels that they can never escape their symptoms. The persistent rituals of counting and repeating pointless actions continue throughout the day, every day.

When they try to suppress repetitive thoughts or actions, the urge to engage in them becomes overwhelming. Some OCD sufferers isolate at home as much as possible, avoiding stressful social interactions that may exacerbate their symptoms.

Substance use and excessive drinking may be an issue for many people with OCD. They use sedatives and central nervous system depressants to self-medicate, leading to additional problems, including addiction.

The ketamine experience provides immediate relief, by dissociating the patient from the obsessive thoughts and compulsive actions, as well as intrusive thoughts. For a brief time, they can experience a sense of eternity, a warm, floating sensation, with the stress of OCD symptoms disconnected from their awareness and the essential essence of their being.

Ketamine also works well for drug addiction and alcohol addiction. In fact, some experts see addiction as being closely related to obsessive compulsive syndrome, so it makes sense that addictions would also respond well to treatment, similarly to severe depression and anxiety. We will likely see more ketamine use as an addiction treatment in the future.

Does the relief that occurs during the ketamine infusion experience end when the treatment session is over?

The ketamine infusion experience is not just a temporary reprieve from mental health conditions, such as depression, PTSD, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and OCD. The effects are long-lasting, due to the unique ketamine brain-healing process.

Ketamine works at the NMDA receptors in the brain, facilitating the balance of the neurotransmitters, glutamate and GABA. It also reduces central nervous system inflammation and promotes the growth of new dendritic connections.

Ketamine neurogenesis reverses the long-term effects on the brain associated with depression, anxiety, and related disorders. Patients report feeling relief for many months, or even years.

What does ketamine therapy feel like months after the last infusion? Most patients report ongoing relief from their symptoms.

What does ketamine infusion feel like years after the initial sessions?

Some patients continue to have lasting relief, even without returning for any additional sessions. With effective ketamine assisted psychotherapy, results can be long-lasting, and even life-long.

Ketamine for major depression is a powerful new tool that doctors are using to make a positive difference in the lives of their patients. And, ketamine for anxiety, OCD, PTSD, and other conditions provides the relief from symptoms that make it possible to enjoy life again.

The best ketamine infusion Maryland has to offer is in Annapolis. We provide care for patients in Virginia, Maryland, Washington D.C., and the Washington Metropolitan Area.

There is no need to take ketamine on a regular basis. After a series of sessions, the patient may choose to return only for occasional booster sessions.