I’m seated reclined in a faux leather recliner in a small room with a wood and glass door in a location 20 minutes from my home. The glass is treated to not let anyone to see in or out but to let the light in. I’m winding down from the latest Ketamine treatment, fully aware of my surroundings. I feel frail and old, just like I saw my Dad during the last medical appointments I accompanied him to. I’m in darkness except for the muted light coming in from the door and a lamp that is displaying different color dots of light moving around like the night stars on amphetamines. Ambient music is playing from an Alexa on a table near the chair. Like the most recent Ketamine treatments I never fully dissociated from the pain. And I was ruminating that this was the latest unsolvable problem. I agreed to these latest treatments just to get out of my head for a few moments. I didn’t really believe they’d cure me or even provide a route out of the unrelenting despair for just a few moments.
The room is in a two story suburban mostly vacant office building that houses a title company a dermatologist office and a reality company. The visit began thankfully being driven to the building by first some friends but now by a Lyft driver. I’m not allowed to drive myself home. I check in with the front desk person after having filled out some online forms earlier in the day. Two of the three are standard psychological evaluation forms I’ve filled out many times during my past 28 years. Those two ask questions about my functionality. Am I having difficulty concentrating? With my sleep? With my appetite? Am I suicidal. My scores are maximum, confirming yes indeed day to day life has become unbearable. The third form confirms that if I try and drive myself home I will forgo any further treatments. Guessing that one is included for liability purposes. The front desk person asks if I’ve completed the forms and asks who is driving me home.
I take a seat in a small waiting area. Usually there are others there waiting as well. My friend who drove me to some appointments says there are a lot of people coming in for treatments. I share that is not a good sign. There are too many people still suffering in this post-apocalyptic world. Eventually I’m led to the room with the faux leather chair and Alexa and starlight lamp. The person leading me back to the room varies, but they are all very nice asking me about my day and week. They strap a device on my wrist with two finger attachments to monitor my blood pressure and heart rate. They leave the room and wish me a good infusion. Next a nurse enters along with usually another staff person. The nurse questions me about my how the previous treatments have gone and my current suicidal ideation level. Bad news with both. The nurse asks me about the dosage of my treatment. Do I want to increase or decrease? I don’t know. We agree to the Ketamine amount for this session. The nurse leaves as the other staff person inserts an IV into one of the veins in my arm. They turn off the lights and leave the room wishing me a good infusion. I tell Alexa to play some ambient music as I put a blanket I brought with me that has cartoon cats on it and cover my eyes with a blindfold.
The Ketamine eventually kicks in, lessening the pain of my day to day existence, but I never fully disassociate from ‘reality.’ I always know that I’m sitting in a chair under a cat blanket listening to ambient music on an Alexa. Worrying about the Lyft ride home. I again recognize I feel as frail as Dad looked and wondered if he was cognizant enough to feel how alone he felt in his journey and knowing how minimally effective most medical treatments end up being. They can prolong life but is the quality of the remaining life worth even the effort it takes to get out of bed? Is there any hope left? Is it false hope?
One of the more insightful feelings from the treatments is there is a definite connection between my first serious breakdown in 1987 and this one. The connective tissue is my writing. In 1987 I suffered from my first writer’s block. I couldn’t write because it was too painful. This time around I wrote about my life of writing and depression in a result I’m very proud of that explains the connection between writing, feeling and thinking… I was able to write my novel with the first line of a writer finally figuring it out that the difference between fiction and non-fiction doesn’t exist, doesn’t in the end, matter. It was a freeing revelation insight that led to a 300 page unpublished novel, until now, my greatest accomplishment by far ever. All writing is fiction obviously told from a singular point of view. Many wounds and up and downs later, a dozen year puzzle of a memoir was written during this most recent devastingly sad time when there are political and day to day (I see constantly riding our light rail) differing versions of reality that have grown since 2020.
Different realities, desperately clinging on to the familiar. Ketamine and writing. The core of my memoir is about being as authentic as I can be. Telling my life story in the most authentic way. I’m reminded of the Imgmar Bergman film ‘Persona” where halfway through the movie there is an apparent technical break in the film and when it resumes, reality is different.
The staff have advised me to think about positive affirmations during the Ketamine journey. And I try my best. The most effective are reminding myself my heart and my ability to love remains because of living with the three latest great cats who mean the world to me. What will happen if I’m no longer around and they hopefully have a dozen or more years to live? I don’t want them separated but who is going to take in three cats? These thoughts are included in my memoir from a previous time and specific encounter with cat lover who tragically did take her life and leave her cats behind after sharing with me how much they meant to her.
The nurse after learning I write after the Ketamine sessions urged me to focus on writing about what life looks like without depression. This had been suggested by other healthcare practitioners during the past four years of trying to figure things out. Trouble is, and has been, I can’t picture that life. Publishing my memoir, having others read and like it, promoting it and being given speaking opportunities about its message are part of that vision. But the dark side of the vision is no one cares or reads the memoir or those that do don’t like it. I don’t exactly come off as the most likable person ever. I expose my many flaws hoping readers will respect the ‘courage’ and the overarching essential message about living in this world is to realize all of us are flawed and that is the essential lesson in understanding the most human being lesson we can learn.
What else? I’m living with two four year old cats from the same litter that bonded from the start and a two year old soft and cuddly guy who has aggressively found his way with the other two and me, in an inspirational way. I desperately want to see their lifelong journeys together. Maybe I get hired as a Walmart greeter to support my debt and expenses and live a much less stressful existence. Maybe that lessons the pain and insanity of the past four years (and beyond)? I don’t know if that is a vision that works.
Depression has always been my Achilles heel, my biggest weak spot that has always strategically known the precise way to shred me to unsolvable jigsaw pieces, destroying any sustainable livable years. The fear with agreeing to another round of Ketamine treatments and taking time off from work was what if it didn’t work? What if I didn’t feel just a little bit better figure out a way to think more positively? Well here I am. What is next?
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