What Depression Felt Like
A year and a half into my son’s life, why did I still feel like I was failing? Why was I miserable any time I wasn’t sleeping? Why was I waking up in the middle of the night, over and over, having to count myself back to sleep? Why was I so fucking angry? Why did other moms have patience and love and understanding? How did they feel romantic, ever? How did they have jobs, juggle more than one kid, go to the gym, sit for five minutes of quiet meditation, not hate everyone and everything all the time?
Depression had been growing like an unchecked weed. I’d been too busy to notice how much it was growing, slowly taking over. Every day I walked around the yard with my son in a daze. I hated my life. I hated myself.
Call it undiagnosed, late-blooming postpartum depression. Ever since my son was about four or five months old, since he started needing so much more than clean diapers, lots of sleep, and the boob, I had been sinking. Down, down, deeper, my feet lodging in the muck at the bottom of the world’s murkiest pond. I didn’t know I was down there. I knew it was dark, I knew I was living under some kind of cloud or within some kind of hell, but I was so deep in it I couldn’t see two inches in front of my face to know how bad it really was.
In the spring of 2022, a full year and a half from the start of my descent into hell, I finally realized what had happened. It didn’t matter that I had every reason to feel #blessed, I was #messedthefuckup.
I had succumbed to the beast that was depression.
“I feel like a tired old ogre skulking around the house with fuzzy teeth in yesterday’s clothes. ”
Every time I clawed out of the muck and through the water hard enough and long enough to break through the surface and suck in a much-needed breath of fresh air, I’d bob for a few seconds until something else was packed on my back—another commitment, another stress, another worry (perceived or actual), another responsibility—that pushed me back down. Down, down, down, back into the depths of the pond where there was no light or air, just darkness. A void where happiness died.
In August 2022 I discovered a Ketamine clinic ten minutes from my house.
I first read about psychedelics being used to treat depression in the winter of 2021. I was curious but didn’t have a relationship with a therapist to take part in what was becoming an experiment in mental health, so it fell off my radar. And back then, with only an inkling that something was amiss, I still thought I’d find my answers in the right documentary or the wisdom of my next self-help book.
Without getting into specifics or medical jargon, it’s thought—but not wholly understood—that psychedelics, when used in specific doses under observation—might help rewire the circuitry in the brain in more lasting ways than, say, traditional anti-depressant medication. Some people come out of their depression all together after a series of treatments. As a person who abhors the idea of being on any kind of medication long-term (already played that game, thanks) I still hadn’t even taken the low-dose anti-depressant my doc prescribed when I broke into tears in her office. But Ketamine? I had to know. If it worked, I might actually heal this brain. If it worked, I might actually be free.
I reached out to the clinic, was accepted into the program, and offered up my arms.
I don’t know when it happened—after the first session? Third?—or how, but I’ve had nine total sessions, each profound and majestic in their own completely unique and indescribable ways, and I’m not underwater anymore. I’m out of the muck. I might even be out of the pond all together. I can breathe.
Nothing has changed, except me. Except everything. I didn’t knowingly heal any deep-seeded wounds while I was, as my husband says, tripping balls, I just let myself go. I let myself take the trip wherever it led, and it was always to somewhere beautiful.
No, not beautiful. Beauty is a word unequalled to the experience. I don’t have the vocabulary—if it exists—to describe it adequately. There’s freedom that comes with Ketamine, like being safely outside the body, floating in a place with no fear or pain. It’s like my brain has been cracked WIDE open and all the darkness has been released. What’s left has been scrubbed clean. It’s calm, and fresh, and healing. When I smile, I’m not faking it. I feel actual joy. I feel actual love. I feel actual hope.
What is this? Happiness? It doesn’t feel fleeting, like that space when I used to break for air and had a rare good day. Now the good days are…normal. The bad days are the ones that come, wreak some havoc, then go, and I’m OK afterward. I’m not back in the bottom of the pond staring through the darkness wondering how the hell I’m going to get out this time.
And isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be?
For anyone who is interested in the specifics, my Ketamine dosage started at 47 mg. Around my fifth session, we found a sweet spot that I tolerated well and from then on, my dosage was 90mg. Doses were administered over the course of an hour via intravenous infusion, beginning at around 0.5mg/kg titrated up to around 1mg/kg.