Carolina: "It was the hospital where I was admitted that recommended Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy."

As Carolina says, "nothing is enough for anorexia". After living for many years obsessed with food, this way of being in the world spilled over into other areas and living was so difficult that "I regretted having to wake up the next day". Her body gave in too, and Carolina only survived by chance. After being admitted to hospital, she was authorized by the hospital to undergo psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy at The Clinic of Change. "I already knew that I didn't have to live by the rules of my illness, but with this treatment I felt it. The learning was emotional, experiential, visceral and not just cognitive. That was the difference."

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Read Carolina's full testimony about her experience with the Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy program at The Clinic of Change:

I studied psychology in Lisbon at the Universidade Clássica de Psicologia. I currently work in a mental health clinic. My parents divorced when I was a year old and contact with my father was very distant until very recently, when we've been getting closer. I have a brother from my mother's marriage to someone else, to whom I am very close, but I was the victim of abuse by his father. Now my mother is with someone else, whom I like very much and who helps me a lot. I live alone and I'm single.

Since I was very young, I've had serious problems falling asleep and staying asleep. I also took sleep medication from an early age, and it got worse and worse. Around the age of 11, 12, I became very obsessed with healthy eating. Slowly, I started restricting my diet and losing a lot of weight. From then on, controlling my diet became the center of my life, alongside my grades.

I had compulsive eating, and there was a self-imposed pattern of restriction, increasingly severe, with subsequent compulsions. Since then I've never had a normal diet, and there were many rituals, obsessions and bizarre behaviors with food. I rarely ate meals, let alone shared them, I found ways to avoid them and it was difficult for my family to get through to me, especially when I moved to Lisbon without them.

I underwent psychotherapy and psychiatry as a teenager, but I kept to the surface and never really opened up or exposed the sides of myself that I was most ashamed of. I don't think my parents' divorce had an impact on my illness, but my stepfather's abuse may have. He even humiliated me about my weight (too thin, too fat, etc.). Apart from that, I'm not aware of any other events that might have had something to do with the onset of the illness. It's very genetic and temperamental, from what they say and what I understand.

I was always "haunted" by anorexia

There were very different phases of the specific behaviors of the disease and the way they manifested themselves (often, the obsession with food was "exchanged" for other obsessions, such as studies or the love relationship I was in). There were better phases, but I was always "haunted" by the illness. Obsessive traits emerged and then solidified.

I was constantly anxious and hyper-vigilant. I was focused on controlling everything and "optimizing" everything (including, of course, food). This only made me feel miserable. Intrusive thoughts and deep suffering permeated all my experiences and achievements, but they numbed the pain and the doubt and fear.

From the age mentioned, I considered myself to be extremely unhappy, anxious and a real imposter. I felt different from everyone else and highly inferior and defective, despite my academic excellence and success among my peers. I didn't like who I was, let alone living.

Guilt, shame and the fear of going mad haunted me and wouldn't go away. My social life was tightly managed and grades and food control always came first. Pleasure and tranquillity were concepts I didn't understand. I didn't take care of myself at all, and I had little respect for my physical, emotional or psychological limits. I would never go to bed satisfied no matter how much I did, I could always have done more.

For anorexia, nothing is enough. And it's a way of thinking, a way of being in the world and functioning, that sometimes becomes totally independent of food.

Even in phases when my weight was more stable and my eating less out of control, the way of thinking, the rigidity, the self-flagellation and constant self-criticism were still there. I simply didn't like myself. Not at all. There were times when my weight dropped a lot and I had serious health problems. I only had four periods in my entire life.

I didn't die by luck, several times

Anorexia totally isolated me and deprived me of everything I valued in the world and in myself. Life was a constant race to escape from my own shadow. I felt very alone, and very crazy. I had a constant fear, the cause of which I couldn't even name, and I had given up on having a life or a job. I don't know how I kept my grades, my sanity and, above all, my friends.

Every day she went from task to task, ritual to ritual, just to get to the end of the day, because she woke up exhausted. Living was so difficult that I regretted having to wake up the next day.

Over time, my body couldn't cope. Twice I went to hospital with convulsions, and I survived by pure chance, because my family found me lying unconscious on the floor, already in a coma, due to malnutrition and because I drank water obsessively, which caused very serious hyponatremia. I wasn't lucky enough to die several times. Strangely, this didn't scare me or make me want to change my behavior. Being told that my life was at risk didn't affect me, because my anorexia convinced me that everyone was exaggerating.

Two years ago, I was admitted to the psychiatric ward because anorexia had left me at risk of death and I was denying it with conviction, living all my fears and rituals in secret, bound by bizarre obligations I had developed (for example, having to take five baths a day, etc.).

In hospital, I was accompanied again, I opened up more, but something was missing. It was all part of a process. The support at the hospital made me understand and accept that my behaviors, which I was ashamed of, were part of a mental illness that wasn't my choice or my fault. They also made me aware of my responsibility to change my situation.

On the other hand, they forced me to be transparent with others, because I had no alternative. It was a "shock treatment" in terms of my awareness of my illness and that of the people around me. That was half the battle, but it wasn't enough to make me feel really free.

It was the hospital where I was hospitalized that authorized me to undergo Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy

I was hospitalized for three months and, after I was discharged, I began to relapse. It wasn't until I was faced with the possibility of being hospitalized again that I "woke up" and realized that I didn't really have to live like this.

In Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy, I took a completely transparent stance and put my shame aside. I set out to get to know and accept myself, and to use this to my advantage in my genuine and overwhelming desire to help others. I really wanted to be functional, to be freer and to have a purpose in life.

It was a long shot because, no matter how much I changed, something inside me kept making me feel like I was in a prison. I wanted to discover who I am and live according to my values. To discover myself, and to have a life. My life. In the course of this discovery, when I was given permission by the hospital (where I was being monitored), I went to The Clinic of Change. I had nothing to lose, so I had no fears other than "what if this doesn't cure me".

In one of the sessions, I tore off my dress and necklace and shouted "I'm sick of feeling trapped". For me, that episode alerted me to how trapped I felt, and the desire to be free was greater than the fear of failure.

After we feel what we felt in the session, the thoughts can all come up again, but we have that experience in our memory, inside us, that reality is created by us. From then on, once we know, we learn a new way of being and being, which we can hardly "unlearn". This makes us realize that we can always choose to remember the ketamine experience as a teaching when we are returning to old patterns.

I no longer feel like I'm in a bubble that doesn't allow me to be part of the world. I feel connected and alive.

I felt that I didn't have to live by the rules of my illness. I felt that I wasn't my illness. I felt that my problems weren't real, and that we are the creators of our own personal reality. That we have much more choice than we automatically assume on a daily basis. We can change and become someone different.

I already knew all this, but the difference was that with this treatment I FEEL it. The learning was emotional, it was experiential, it was visceral, not just cognitive. And that was the difference.

Now I can work. I have friends. I no longer live with or depend on my mother. I've grown up. I no longer feel in a bubble that didn't allow me to be part of the world or a whole. I feel connected and alive. My relationships are healthy and my values are clearer. I enjoy my day-to-day life! My routine has become more "normal" and balanced. I have moments of real peace.

As for the "sick" thoughts, when they arise, I can only see them as thoughts. I no longer "am" my thoughts. I feel a very concrete point of choice when I make decisions, and I feel in control of myself. There's an "underlying" tranquillity that has settled into me, which has consolidated itself, which has overridden the constant hyper-vigilance and fear that have been here for as long as I can remember.

I seem to have stopped seeing life in black and white. I feel very grateful for my life, for what I have, and for what is still possible. It wasn't just the ketamine working its magic. It took a lot of courage and dedication to work, to integrate everything I had realized, and the integration and psychotherapy sessions really helped.

Today, I consider myself happy and on the way to feeling fulfilled. The illness is still there, but it no longer commands my life. It's like a separate entity that I feel I have the power to listen to or not. I never thought that was possible.

[The Clinic of Change would like to thank Carolina for her courage in sharing her story and for her generosity in helping others to seek help].

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