Psychedelic-Assisted psychotherapy
Evidence supports ketamine-assisted psychotherapy (KAP) as an effective method for addressing many mental and emotional disturbances. It also facilitates an expansion of consciousness allowing valuable insights regarding the nature of reality. KAP is used to address anxiety and depression.
The word ‘psychedelic’ literally means ‘mind-manifesting'. Treatment is highly individualized to meet the participant's goals. The best way to describe how this modality results in healing is by imagining that it allows you to be awake in your dreams. It is well known that the dream state is often comprised of unresolved, subconscious material that had not been processed during the day or throughout your past. This is another example of the natural healing mechanism of the psyche, (we are amazing machinery)! Our natural healing intelligence is sneaky enough to process this stuff without our (conscious) consent or even recollection, while we are in deep sleep. By allowing the participant to be awake in their dream, they have the opportunity to confront traumas in a way that no other psychotherapy could facilitate in an ordinary state of consciousness. The non-ordinary state of consciousness (NOSC) that ketamine produces allows you to confront repressed or preverbal memories without the usual emotional charge attached to these events.
After the psychedelic session is complete, there are several therapy sessions to integrate the experience so that long-lasting change is created. The previously disturbing event no longer holds an emotional charge after these new insights are integrated. The participant then feels relief, often described as feeling “lighter”, as if there was a burden released. This is a miraculous, transformative experience which allows the participant to move on with their lives without the need for daily medication to suppress emotions that want to be addressed and released, as nature intended.
