Working in the mental health field has taught me a lot in a short amount of time, particularly because I submerged myself in it just this past winter, with almost no prior experience.
If I can break down the fourth wall for this patient story: I couldn’t possibly have known what kinds of things I would be exposed to when I took my current role as administrative marketing assistant here at The Good Drop.
I’ve seen ketamine therapy take patients from the agony of chronic pain to real, actual relief.
And from depression back to life.
The two patient success stories we’ve written so far–Michael’s and Jeff’s–are just a few of those unique outcomes.
Today, we’re documenting an outcome that almost didn’t make it to print: my own, Michael Ruth’s, The Good Drop’s marketer and a patient.
Covering other patients’ ketamine success stories has been informative, educational, and quite moving. I thought mine would be easier since I know myself best, but that was only until I wrote the introduction, my nerve failed me, and I set the whole thing aside to stew on it for two weeks.
Coming back lent me some fresh perspective, and I somehow made my way through the rest of this.
It turns out that detailing something as personal as your mental health for public consumption is like standing naked in a crowd, there with all your wounds, some old and long scarred over, others fresh, sensitive, and still bleeding.
But we work in mental health now, and we’re not here to be selfish. If my story can give someone else the courage to come to The Good Drop and see what ketamine therapy can do for them, then I am happy to share what’s been happening with me.
In the Beginning
I’d known about The Good Drop for almost a year before my thick head finally started considering their ketamine therapy as a tool I could use to overcome my own mental health struggles.
In the beginning, I never thought ketamine was for someone like me. I assumed it should be reserved for the worst-off among us, those suffering from severe, crippling depression that makes daily living impossibly difficult.
And I didn’t really have that, not so much anymore. My problem was general anxiety, more specifically social anxiety, historically one of my most profound hang-ups. I guess I didn’t fully understand the tremendous influence our minds can exert over our emotions and behavior.
Irrational anxiety can wreak absolute havoc on our mental and physical well-being. And mine had been doing that to me for years. The idea of approaching strangers and making conversation–or worse, being approached by strangers–had been horrific to me for most of my life.
So I turned to that ever-popular human tactic of avoidance. It seemed easier, but I know now that “easy” doesn’t equate to “good.” I spent most of my teens and 20s, what some would call your best years, watching the world go by. Always wanting it, never joining it, alone in a world of billions.
Anxiety became avoidance, avoidance became depression, depression became fear, fear became suspicion, suspicion became paranoia, and paranoia did nothing but fuel the anxiety that started it all.
Quite some time before starting ketamine, though, I did have a breaking point, during which time I ate almost nothing for three days. It was enough to turn me around on my own to realize something wasn’t working. This period at least motivated me to start wrangling the worst of all this using more traditional methods, like studying the principles of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).
CBT teaches us that our thoughts influence our feelings and actions, and so if we can train ourselves to think rationally, we can mostly avoid becoming anxious and upset in ways that hurt us.
If I avoided social interactions for fear of being negatively evaluated, not only was I depriving myself of social growth opportunities, but I was doing it for irrational reasons. The other person just wants to talk, not judge me on how I speak, or my appearance.
And even if they do judge me, so what? The sun still rises.
That’s CBT.
But what was still missing from my social interactions as I ramped them up over time was a complete sense of calm. I could use rational thinking to complete the action of talking to new people. And I was getting more comfortable in my skin. But not without a pounding heart, or a burning desire to get out of there as fast as I could.
Entrenched remnants from old ways of thinking? Never underestimate the power of habits.
So I still wasn’t totally feeling okay. Day-to-day social tasks were now possible but remained somewhat difficult: making a phone call, doing any kind of public speaking, being introduced to someone.
I started thinking more about ketamine therapy after a while, and how I had nothing to lose by seeing what it could do for me.
What a Good Drop
At this time of writing, I’ve experienced ketamine therapy in all its administration forms: intravenous (IV), Spravato nasal spray, and intramuscular (IM). My introduction to it was through IV, and that’s how I stayed for the first few months.
Now here’s something to remember: ketamine is a psychedelic drug. All its mental health benefits aside, receiving ketamine can be a bit of a trip. You have to experience it for yourself before you can really know what it means to dissociate, or separate from reality, during treatment.
It isn’t that you necessarily go to sleep and start dreaming, but you’re in a mental state between reality and fantasy. When you close your eyes, your mind takes you to all kinds of crazy places that you can actually sort of see.
During my first treatment, I watched myself and my two cats explore a new planet that was a giant morsel of dry cat food. Successive treatments had me traversing the far reaches of space, witnessing some wonderfully abstract psychedelic sights, and along the way gaining some new perspectives on many of my earthly affairs.
It’s just that, when you see the profound beauty of the seemingly unknown universe through a psychedelic experience, it seems impossible to return to reality worrying about the same temporal concerns you had before.
I felt connected to everything, part of everything, and therefore at peace.
I believe, with each treatment, I experienced a gradually more enlightening ego death.
After a month of treatments, I noticed I felt different in my daily life. The way I described it to my friend was that I had no fear. Having been where I’d repeatedly been in my mind–riding the waves of therapeutic ketamine–my social stage fright seemed to have shrunk in importance.
If I combined my CBT-influenced rational thought with the perspectives I’d been gaining through ketamine, all my old hang-ups seemed terribly short-sighted. I think now of all the years I wasted letting anxiety and fear rule me.
Studying CBT helped me establish the required habits for living a happier life, but ketamine therapy showed me that life itself has many more flavors than I’d been aware of before.
That’s the kind of integrative medicine The Good Drop advocates for so enthusiastically.
Thanks to ketamine therapy, I’m more comfortable than I’ve ever been.
I’m less anxious, less angry, and less concerned about all those “what ifs” that can plague your mind.
I’m more confident, more open-minded, and more willing to seek out new experiences.
I’ve become a more complete person.
Kelly and Mara
The Good Drop devotes time to creating these patient stories to highlight our patients’ successes while giving people on the fence about ketamine therapy an idea of what it’s like to be treated here.
The truth is that, without Kelly Wilson and Mara Capozzi, you don’t have a Good Drop at all. You could offer the same services in the same office, but you just wouldn’t get those blissful vibes and sense of really being understood that you get from Kelly and Mara when you receive IV ketamine, Spravato, or any other service here.
These two have combined all the best things about mental healthcare here at The Good Drop. You get safe, monitored, quality treatment in private rooms with compassionate care. I know when I sit down in an infusion room that I’m in the best hands. And if I ever need a little extra support, Kelly or Mara is right there to help.
Until you’ve been here, until you’ve sat with them, talked with them, and been treated by them, you just can’t know. That feeling of being cared for without judgment by nurses whose only goal is to help you access quality mental healthcare has been a wonder of my unfolding world.
Without question (and not just because I work here), I so appreciate the fact that we have a ketamine clinic like this in our area. It’s almost unimaginable.
It’s also nearly unimaginable to me that I could have found what I needed at all. I thought I was special, the only one on Earth who couldn’t be helped.
The Good Drop’s ketamine therapy results speak for themselves. Look at our previous patient stories. Read this one again.
This stuff’s real, and it works.
Contact The Good Drop Today
Phone: 570-701-6044
Email: info@thegood-drop.com
Address: 824 McAlpine St., Ste. 6, Avoca, PA 18641