What Is Happening to My Brain · 11:36pm Feb 9th, 2016
Stuff's on pause for a bit. Here's why.
I recently heard about an experimental treatment for depression: a series of low-dose ketamine infusions. So I immediately took off work and headed to the nearest clinic (about four hours away), and that's where I'll be all week.
I like to joke with my students about all the drugs I take, but I'm only on a small amount of narcotics. I tried marijuana once twenty years ago, and I've had kratom recently (which is like a combination of the two) to see if it works better than the narcotics, but the side effects are about the same. I'd probably choose kratom over the narcotics if it were properly regulated.
Well, ketamine is a pony of a very different color. 
This image doesn't remotely do justice to the experience.
Holy bucking road apples.
I've only had two infusions so far, but these have by leaps and bounds been the most interesting experiences of my life. Hallucination isn't the right word for it, but this is probably as close as it gets. It's more like a mental hallucination, where your thoughts are doing the hallucinating. While there are minor visual and auditory disturbances (blurred vision forces you to shut your eyes), intriguing physical sensations, and depersonalization, those aren't the main effect that makes the experience so bizarre. 
The main effect is very difficult to describe. It feels like your neurons are being rewired as you're trying to think with them. I can't explain it justly without waxing poetic. You alternate between being stuck in cramped little eddies of rotating thoughts, and pulling upward into wide vistas where you can see and think very clearly. Most of your thoughts are about the process of thinking (at least with me, because I'm trying to record and interpret the experience as a scientist while it happens), so it's very meta.
Never, ever do this drug without a doctor supervising you. (Don't do anything illegal, for that matter. Don't take risks with your body.)
So, is it working? It's too soon to tell. I think it's starting to help, though, and I remain optimistic. Currently I have to shell out big time because insurance won't cover this use case yet, but it looks like a promising treatment so probably in the next few years it will go mainstream. If you suffer from severe depression that hasn't responded to numerous medications and you can scrape together $3500 or so, it might be worth a try.
I'll report more once I've been through the entire series. 
I hope that this does end up helping you.
I've been thinking about you a lot lately, and I'm glad that there are still options and things that can help you.
Good luck
sounds pretty similar to acid
hope it helps
This seems appropriate given all the 'Ketamine is for horses' jokes I've seen over the past few years
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Heh, I didn't even know about that! I'm so furry/pony.
Girl...I don't know how you do it. *hugs*
Also:
img08.deviantart.net/ca55/i/2012/211/2/9/time_for_science_by_zedrin-d58w4xz.png
Yeah, it's a fairly strange experience, that stuff. It pretty much defines "altered state of consciousness"; you experience odd things that have no real descriptors in the normal world. Which is, I imagine, part of why it works for depression and other things... it's sort of like pressing the hard reset button on your PC, in a way.
Gif saved.
Sounds like the time I was on a powerful antihistamine, except way better.
Tangentially related side note: I've been feeling lightheaded a lot recently since I stopped Zoloft.
Good luck and hugs
I really hope it works and that you'll soon get better.
Stay strong.
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I think so, yes. Still loopy after the last treatment, though. I'll post something Monday in all likelihood.