Ketamine Therapy

Research shows that KAP is an effective treatment option for a variety of mental health conditions, including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and obsessive thought patterns. KAP is unique among treatment options for these conditions in that its effective use can be both fast-acting and time-limited.

KAP is not appropriate for individuals with acute mania or psychosis, or with a recreational interest in ketamine. It is not for those with uncontrolled hypertension, uncontrolled hyperthyroidism, increased intracranial pressure, cystitis, evidence of liver disease, or for those who are pregnant.

It is also not recommended for those who only want medication management and are not interested in psychotherapy (one exception is severely depressed patients who initially may lack the ability to engage in therapy, yet may respond to ketamine; see below).

Typically, ketamine infusion clinics are run by medical professionals without specialized training in mental health, such as anesthesiologists. In this setting, it is common for the medication to be administered without any additional support to explore the changes in consciousness and insights that ketamine facilitates. While it may transiently relieve symptoms, ketamine treatment without skilled psychotherapy squanders a valuable opportunity for true healing and growth.

In addition to psychedelic medicine, psychodynamic psychotherapy is baked into our clinical methodology. We do not want one meaningful, interpretable detail of any psychedelic experience to go to waste. We have a sacred duty to help integrate and develop the personality in the especially interesting, intense, as well as connected, psychotherapy process that unfolds. For true KAP sessions tend to be considerably richer in content and more intense than conventional psychotherapy, and require great training and skill on the part of the therapist.

At Acheron, we don’t just let the ketamine we prescribe do the heavy lifting, we always work diligently by listening skillfully and attentively to deliver depthful and quality psychotherapy treatment. Anything less is in part squandering a precious window for significant healing.

Patients have understandable concerns about safety when it comes to ketamine. It is not everyday that one receives an intramuscular injection in one’s outpatient psychiatrist’s office. There may be some misplaced associations of ketamine with either illicit party drugs, or commonly misused prescription medications like opiates, which can suppress respiratory drive, leading to grave injury or death. There is something scary, as well as vulnerable, about being in an altered mental state, and the notion of undergoing an “ego death” in a transformative psychedelic experience may be cause for added alarm.

Despite all of these concerns, the reality is that ketamine is very safe. Ketamine is frequently used to treat children with analgesia/anesthesia needs in emergency settings. It does not suppress respiration. Even accidental ketamine overdoses, e.g., due to hospital errors, do not result in long term injury or death, just a long period of sleepfulness. While ketamine temporarily raises blood pressure, the data on this shows that the typical elevation is small and clinically insignificant. Ketamine is appreciated within medicine not only due to its effects, but also due to its minimum of side effects. The exception is that with recreational ketamine abuse in high amounts over a long-term period, bladder and liver inflammatory complications can develop. Those potential complications are very likely not to be relevant to the brief, time-limited, clinically focused use of ketamine at Acher

From a psychological perspective, Acheron’s clinical process is designed to help you feel psychologically prepared and emotionally safe for the psychedelic component of treatment. Your intake and preparation session(s) includes psychoeducation on what to expect, the opportunity to ask questions and share specific concerns you may have, and time spent discussing what you would like to explore. During the ketamine session, your therapist will be present to offer guidance, reassurance and assistance as needed.

These are understandable concerns, and due to the historical misunderstanding and stigma about psychedelics, may still be actual fears of many prospective patients (including possibly you). First one note about personality: while we all have some level of “narcissistic attachment” to ourselves, and fear change of who we are, we also seek out mental health treatment because we need and want to change.

According to traditional psychiatric understanding (the wisdom tradition of psychodynamic psychiatry), when we look at our personality objectively, we have neurotic fixations that impact our personality in adverse ways and determine who we are in a not so optimal fashion, unfortunately. These can be characterized as the following paradoxical constellation: ego (or self) boundaries that are on the one hand poorly individuated from parents and cultural demands, and ego boundaries that are also too restricted and closed off.

Psychedelics heal personality on both sides of this equation: they can ground us more in an authentic individuated self, and they make the ego less restricted and closed off, opening channels internally for greater connectedness to self, and interpersonally, for connectedness with others. So, no, your life will not be upended in any negative sense, and you will not “go off the rails.” Our careful medical and psychiatric screening will make sure you are mentally stable enough for KAP treatment (the vast majority of patients are), and our safe, professional, and comfortable treatment setting will optimize conditions for a successful treatment.

While we are primarily concerned with treating and helping patients, every treatment center must have a cultural orientation of some kind, and this is a valid question. Do we support the ideas of Timothy Leary quoted above? On the one hand, we do honor and credit those original psychedelic intellectual and academic pioneers who were onto something important that was sadly suppressed for many decades.

However, while we support thinking critically and challenging convention, we do not believe social reality on its own terms can simply be ignored or avoided. It must be courageously and productively engaged and grappled with. For it is a clinical fact that healthy transformations of the internal world are necessarily conditioned by and condition healthy (and disruptive) transformations of social reality. This is another way of saying that we expect a successful course of KAP treatment at Acheron would inevitably make you a more socially engaged and transformative person.

Yes. However, there might be clinical situations in which we would treat with ketamine in the absence of a psychotherapy expectation, such as cases of severe treatment resistant depression with suicidality, for which ketamine alone could be life-saving. Please feel free to inquire with us about your clinical situation even if you may not be interested in psychotherapy.

Nausea may occur in a minority of patients. Prophylactic anti-nausea medicine is available in the clinic prior to ketamine treatment for those who are concerned, or can be administered during the treatment. Gait is typically impaired during the ketamine psychedelic state; patients are recommended not to walk around on their own, and can be assisted to the bathroom if needed during the typical 45-60 minute duration of the psychedelic state.

We offer several pricing and packaging options, including cost-accessible options, given our belief that psychedelic medicine combined with skilled psychotherapy represents a real advance in mental health care and must be accessible to suffering, and curious, soul-searching humans. Please contact us for details.

We are in-network for some services. Please inquire for details.