Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP)
First, a note about safety:
While psychotherapy is a way for most humans to engage in for self-improvement or mental health concerns, psychedelics, and psychedelic-assisted psychotherapies (including KAP) are not for everyone. There are crucial steps that everyone involved in any ethical, sustainable, safe and responsible psychedelic journey of any kind must consider to prevent injury or harm.
psychedelic: (adj.) describing drugs that induce changes in the level of consciousness of the mind. examples include psilocybin ("mushrooms"), DMT, LSD ("acid"), mescaline (found in peyote).
psychonaut: (noun) "navigator of the mind." an individual who accesses higher states of consciousness through breathing techniques, meditation, yoga, lucid-dreaming, or responsible journeying with psychedelic medicines.
What is Ketamine?
ketamine (C13H16ClNO): (est. 1952) a chemical derivative of a class of compounds called arylcyclohexylamines, otherwise known as "dissociative anesthetics," used for sedative and numbing purposes.
When used for anesthesia purposes, ketamine is given at high doses (measured in grams). Medical findings from 1970 revealed that when ketamine was given at lower doses, it induces a unique psychedelic experience.
Both Western medical research as well as indigenous histories tell us that experiences in which we can alter our state of consciousness (like with ketamine) allow us the potential for perspective beyond "everyday brain function."
It's like traveling abroad: this is a new place, language(s), landscape, people, smells... When we return home, something is different. Subtle enough that we can miss it if we aren't mindful, but powerful enough to be noticed. (Stay tuned for Corinne's Integration Tips!) That wider perspective has us considering how even water is different at home, versus abroad. Without this new depth of exposure and understanding, we may never have wondered about our water before.
This is why we call it a "journey," as well.
What is Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP)?
Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP) is when a clients receives a low dose of ketamine under the direct supervision of a trained therapist. This combination allows for the benefits of ketamine to be maximized, customized, and focused. That means that as a KAP client, you get to dive deeper into your subconscious than ever before, to directly access the root causes of your symptoms, sources of stuckness, and trauma.
Ketamine Fast-Facts:
Approved by the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) in 1970 as an anesthetic
quickly embraced by armed forces as a safe medical combat evacuation during the Vietnam War
earned the nickname "the buddy drug" because it was so safe to administer, "your buddy could do it"
anti-depressant effects of ketamine discovered in 2000
less addiction potential than opioid use for pain and PTSD in soldiers
considered the #6 most essential medicine on the planet by the World Health Organization as of 2023
What does the research say?
Even though ketamine's effects on the brain and senses are very similar, it is not technically a "classic" psychedelic, and works very differently from antidepressants or pharmaceutical medication. This means it interacts with our bodies and brains differently than daily meds, and therefore, our approach to this medicine has to be also be different.
Ketamine functions by acting in areas and processes of the brain that control memory, plasticity, learning and sensitivity; this allows us to change how we respond to pain and inflammation. More magic happens when ketamine encourages production of proteins called Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) and rapamycin (mTor) reverse damage to the connections between brain cells. That "damage" is caused by depression, trauma, chronic pain and stress, grief, substance use, anxiety...
The positive effects of ketamine and psychedelic experiences are heightened, deeper, and more profoundly long-lasting when combined with therapy or integration.
when used to treat substance use, "ketamine appeared to promote abstinence initiation, improve relapse prevention, improve craving reactivity management, and increase motivations to terminate drug-use in select individuals"
when used to treat trauma, depression and anxiety disorders, ketamine was "proposed to facilitate the neuroplasticity involved in new memory formation, fear extinction, and the restructuring of traumatic memories"