Susana suffers from depression and has undergone psychotherapy with ketamine: "Now I control my emotions"

"I'm much more in control of my emotions and live more in the present," says Susana, after finishing the Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy program at The Clinic of Change - where she sought a new solution to the depression that began to affect her as a teenager.

"When you think about what you're going through and how much of your life you have fighting this malaise... it's horrible." Over the years, she tried various therapies and medications, but 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, she says, "were constant". She finally decided to undergo ketamine-assisted psychotherapy. And in her case, the outcome couldn't be more positive.

She embarked on this solution with some trepidation, "but the environment, the context and the support were really reassuring". Now, having finished all the sessions, she shares with a smile how, for the first time last summer, she "enjoyed the sea, getting into the water, being in the water". She knows that it's natural, in the face of life's problems, to feel anxious from time to time, but "it's absolutely new" the way she now manages to overcome this and enjoy life beyond it all.

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READ THE FULL TESTIMONY BELOW

About depression

I 've had a history of depression for practically as long as I can remember. Maybe it started in my teens, although at the time I didn't really understand what was happening to me. It wasn't something that was talked about socially or about which there was, at least in certain classes, the perception that depression was an illness and that it could be treated.

I was always fighting that bad feeling that came over me from time to time. Even though I led an absolutely normal, fulfilled and even happy life. But there was a dark cloud, as my grandmother used to say about herself, hanging over me, which clouded my enjoyment of things.

I was diagnosed with depression, but the drugs were still first or second generation drugs, I don't know the terminology. I was medicated without having much effect on my state of mind, I did therapy, I went to doctors, especially psychiatrists who did psychotherapy, and at a certain point an innovative drug, Prozac, came along and really transformed the way I felt about reality and lived my daily life.

It was a time when I managed 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. In any case, this worked, but in a time-limited way. Whenever I stopped or tried to stop taking the medication, the symptoms came back with great exuberance.

Above all, it was a feeling of emptiness, a loss of connection with everything around me, a lack of meaning.

Motherhood and the onset of anxiety

From the moment I became a mother, my symptoms changed. What used to be depressive symptoms turned more into anxiety.

It's horrible. It really is. When you think about what you're going through and the life you have to fight against this bad feeling, it's really, really hard.

As Mário de Sá-Carneiro or Fernando Pessoa used to say...? Life always hurt, it was always little, and I was unhappy. I remembered these verses a lot.

I stabilized a lot in the meantime. But when my children grew up, when they became teenagers, one of them manifested very serious problems. It was the need to deal with these problems, which were also psychiatric, that led me once again to seek therapeutic help.

The psychologist thought I would be eligible for this treatment with ketamine, so I plucked up the courage and decided to try it. And I did very, very well. The balance is very positive.

About Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy

In my case, I would finish a ketamine session in a great mood, always. Of course, I started with trepidation. It was something completely unknown to me. I had 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.

I reached the end of the fourth session, which is a treatment with four sessions of ketamine administration, apart from the so-called integration sessions, which take place after the inoculation of the substance, and I always left with a very pleasant feeling, with energy.

There's a moment when you're about to fall asleep when you're dreaming but you're not asleep yet, and that's the way I describe what I experienced during the sessions.

When this impact passed, which was only a sensation, concrete images began to appear, images that I associate a lot with Salvador Dali's paintings. I saw images that could very well have been in a painting by a surrealist.

What has always happened is this feeling: there is a problem, stated 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.

After the therapeutic program at The Clinic of Change

After this time, I'm sure of what I'm saying: although I haven't become completely immune to this anxiety, the time in which it occurs and the way I turn it around is much quicker and more effective than before the treatment. I've had two or three anxious outbursts after treatment, but before treatment I lived in constant generalized anxiety. Now I don't feel that.

I'm much more in control of my emotions, and there's another thing that may be commonplace, but I feel it and I have to say it: I live much more in the present.

There are other curious things too: it gives the impression 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.

This was very evident this summer. I used to be very cold, so getting into the sea was a punishment. This summer I really enjoyed the sea, going into the water, being in the water, I went in much more easily. I can't tell you why this happened.

Not being completely well is absolutely natural and to be expected in the face of a situation that I have to face on a daily basis. Now, facing that situation, but having the ability to think outside that context, to live outside that context, that's absolutely new.

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

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