Changing your mind

https://youtu.be/EZdluixHM4k

So I met this lady at aqua therapy who is in extreme pain ALL THE TIME (AKA Complex Regional Pain Syndrome). Like, even a sheet rubbing against a toe can set her off and she wakes up screaming. (I just read a novel where one of the characters was going to kill herself because she had this, and absolutely nothing helped her. Hence, the suicide plans.)

We talked a bit, and she said the only time she didn’t feel horrible was 1) when she was in the warm water, and 2) when she was getting ketamine infusions. Naturally, my ears perked right up, since it’s another psychedelic medicine.

Well, not in the same doses she gets, obviously. So I checked this out.

I looked into it before, but it was really, really expensive. Like, $3000-a-session expensive. Well, guess what? They’ll ship you a 30-day supply of microdoses and supervise your treatment for (drum roll, please) $129 A MONTH!!! WOW!!!

And what intrigues me is that even at tiny doses, it still seems to rewire your neurological pathways. What’s not to like about neuroplasticity, the frontier of the future? I’m most intrigued by research that shows that changing your brain wiring can actually get rid of chronic physical pain. 

God, I know so many depressed people. A couple of them have been on Prozac for more than 20 fucking years, and they’re still depressed. When I suggest it might be a good idea to taper off, they say, “Yeah, but I’m afraid of getting depressed again.”

“But you’re already depressed, so it’s not working,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, but it could get a lot worse,” they said. (Two different people.) Oy!

Obviously, this warrants more investigation, but I’m definitely interested. Has anyone here ever tried anything like this?

For additional reading: Michael Pollan’s How To Change Your Mind.