In Susana's life, anxiety and depression are two shadows that loomed large from an early age. A daily suffering that Susana mitigated the day she embarked on an innovative therapy that combines classical psychotherapy and the use of ketamine. A liberating experience that Susana witnesses here in the first person.
"And life has always hurt me, it's always been little, and I've always been unhappy." The verses by Álvaro de Campos, Fernando Pessoa's heteronym, from the poem "Passagem das Horas", dance in Susana's words. They sum up the feeling that has accompanied her for years, the deep shadow that looms large and takes over every corner of our innermost being: depression. Susana tried various therapies and medications. The improvements, she says, "were limited in time". With motherhood, and a psychiatric problem that affected one of her children, Susana also started having anxiety attacks which, as she tells us, "were constant". She finally decided to undergo ketamine-assisted psychotherapy. Susana turned to The Clinic of Change, an organization that uses a therapeutic approach that proposes a combination of classic psychotherapy and the use of drugs, specifically ketamine. A treatment that offers the possibility of tackling complex and recurring psychological problems. A method that reaches a deeper level of consciousness, always with the support of doctors and psychotherapists.
In Susana's case, the balance could not be more positive. Her life has changed for the better. "The environment, the context and the accompaniment" in which the therapy took place "were really reassuring". Last summer, for the first time in a long time, Susana looked at the blue sea in a different way, got into the water and enjoyed that moment of escape. In Susana's life, anxiety still lurks, albeit mitigated, because it's natural in the face of life's problems. What's more, "it's absolutely new" how she now manages to overcome her anxiety and enjoy life.
Having set the scene, let's take a closer look at Susana's story of overcoming and how years of suffering and pain are now a memory recalled with a smile in a first-person account. There are words that take on a profound meaning, and Susana's are in that narrative quadrant.
Pain
"I've had a history of depression almost as long as I've known myself," Susana tells us, recalling her teenage years, "although at the time I didn't really understand what was happening to me". Susana says she lived "always fighting against that malaise, even though I had an absolutely normal, fulfilled and even happy life. But there was this dark cloud hanging over me that made me feel like I wasn't enjoying things. Above all, it was a feeling of emptiness, a loss of connection with everything around me, a lack of meaning."
The moment came when Susana was diagnosed with "a depressive state. I was medicated without having much effect on my state of mind, I did therapy, I went to doctors, especially psychiatrists who did psychotherapy. At a certain point, an innovative drug came along, Prozac, and it really transformed the way I felt about reality and lived my daily life."
Susana confesses that "it was a time when I was able to make a lot of changes. I bought a house, I started living on my own, I felt energized, I met the man who is still my husband today." However, "this worked, but in a time-limited way. Whenever I stopped or tried to stop the medication, the symptoms came back with great exuberance".
"From the moment I became a mother, my symptoms changed. What used to be depressive symptoms turned more into anxiety," says Susana, who adds: "In the meantime I stabilized a lot. But when my children grew up, when they became teenagers, one of them had very serious problems. It was the need to deal with these problems, which were also psychiatric, that led me to ask for therapeutic help again."
The change
The day came when Susana heard from her psychologist the words that would change the course of her life: "The psychologist thought I would be eligible for treatment with ketamine. So I plucked up the courage and decided to give it a try," says Susana, who turned to the innovative therapy in practice at The Clinic of Change. "And I did very well, very well indeed. The balance is very positive," says Susana.
"I finished a ketamine session in a very good mood. Of course, I started with trepidation. It was something completely unknown to me. I'd never been exposed to psychedelics. It was completely new to me. I didn't know how I was going to feel, but I went. The first time, I was naturally more nervous, but here the environment, the context, the accompaniment, were really reassuring."
Susana details the feeling of well-being that each of the four sessions brought her: "There's a moment, when you're about to fall asleep, when you're already dreaming, but you're not asleep yet. That's how I can describe what I experienced during the sessions". After that first moment, "concrete images began to appear, images that I associate a lot with Salvador Dali's paintings. There is a problem, enunciated in a symbolic way that I can't interpret, but I find solutions in the very journey that is made to deal with this problem."
Liberation
After therapy, Susana confesses that she is "much more in control of my emotions. I live much more in the present" and adds: "There are other curious things: it seems that my senses have become more acute. This was very clear shortly after I had the treatment. I would go out on the street and, perhaps because I was less inward-looking, my senses were more awake: to colors, to sensations, to the wind, to the thermal sensation, to certain perspectives and framings in places I passed every day but didn't notice."
"After this time, I'm sure of what I'm saying: although I haven't become completely immune to anxiety, the time it takes and the way I turn it around is much quicker and more effective than before the treatment. Before treatment I lived in constant generalized anxiety. Now I don't feel it.
A The Clinic of Change é um prestador de cuidados de saúde com o n.º E166508, sediado na Rua das Picoas, 12 R/C, 1050-173 Lisboa, com licença de funcionamento n.º 22863/2023, inscrito na ERS com o n.º 39467.
