The most restorative, lifegiving way to use Ketamine – overlooked by the vast majority of strictly medical providers – is that it’s absolutely crucial to have a deep, trusting therapeutic alliance with a trained, licensed psychotherapist who has learned about you well before you’ve taken the medicine, is there with you the entire time you’re on the medicine, and knows how to help you make sense of your deepest, most confusing, often terrifying feelings in the days and weeks after you’ve taken the medicine.
Most clinics in New York City employ unlicensed life coaches who, after a brief introduction, leave you completely alone after you’ve been given the medicine, either via an intravenous IV drip or an intramusculare injection, by a physician assistant or nurse practitioner.
What the vast majority of clinics miss is that it’s absolutely crucial to have a deep, trusting therapeutic alliance with a trained, licensed psychotherapist who has learned about you well before you’ve taken the medicine, is there with you the entire time you’re on the medicine, and knows how to help you make sense of your deepest, most confusing, often terrifying feelings in the days and weeks after you’ve taken the medicine.
Here are the most important things for you to consider before engaging in Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy:
- Screening and Assessment: A thorough, sensitive consultation with your psychotherapist and medical provider is necessary to determine if Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy is right for you. This includes medical screening, learning about your current life circumstances and the state of your mental health. For example, do you struggle with on-going Anxiety, PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), ADHD (Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) or TRD (Treatment Resistant Depression)? Have you suffered past or very early childhood trauma or complex PTSD?
- Integration Support: Effective Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy includes not just the ketamine sessions themselves but the integration of your emotional experiences while you were on the medicine. This means processing and making sense of your deepest, often confusing, sometimes terrifying feelings with a trusted, psychotherapist who is compassionately curious and always motivated to help you discover who you really are deep down.
- Safety and Monitoring: The setting should be safe. If you decide to use Andre Moore, LMFT to take Ketamine in his home office – either sub-lingually with a small tablet absorbed under your tongue or with a nasal spray – he will be there beside you the entire time you’re on the medicine – usually between one to two hours – and make sure you’re feeling calm and stable before you leave his office for the bustle and noise of Manhattan.
- Personalized Treatment Plan: Your treatment plan will be the result of a close, on-going consultation between you, your medical provider and Andre Moore who will help you discover your unique needs and goals, learn your dosage preferences and your desired frequency of ketamine sessions.
- Support System: Ideally, having supportive friends or family is highly desirable. If not, your theraputic alliance with Andre Moore, LMFT who will always take time to know you deep down is crucial. Andre will enhance the benefits of the medicine for you with his respect, empathy and compassionate curiority. This kind of emotional support is absolutely crucial when taking Ketamine or psychedelics like MDMA Ecstasy, Psilocybin Mushrooms or Auyhuscha and Ibogaine plant medcines. True healing can only come from being seen and known by a trusted other. It can never result from just the medicine itself.
Andre Moore, LMFT, is a Ketamine and Psychedelic Assisted Psychotherapist certified by the Integrative Psychiatry Institute and is well placed to provide the emotional support you’ll need to make sense of your Ketamine journey which can take you to hidden parts of yourself that have eluded you, your acquaintances, friends, even your lovers in every day life.
The only way you or any of us can truly know ourselves is through the eyes of a trusted other, a dear friend or loved one if we’re lucky. If you don’t have such a person in your life, a compassionately curious psychotherapist like Andre Moore, LMFT can help you discover your true self.
Andre’s job before, during and after you’ve taken Ketamine – in the words of Leonard Cohen – is to help you find the beauty lost to you yourself.
