How I went from psychedelic facilitator to ketamine addiction in 2 months, Part 2

It was two months from the first time I used Ketamine to being in the hospital thinking I was dying from over use.

For those of you who are new to me, I spent 15 years as an equity trader with firms such as Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse and finishing my career as a Managing Director. I am a Chartered Financial Analyst and have an M.S. in Computational Finance from Carnegie Mellon University. I share this so you know I am not, by the world’s standards, fragile or lost - an easy projection when you read a story such as this. I am, however, oh so very human. I write to support the humanity in all of us.

Part 1 recounts the events. Part 2 looks at some of the reasons I think this happened. Coming to these understandings has helped me make sense of what happened. It all happened very fast and all of a sudden I was unrecognizable to myself. While I take responsibility for my actions and for my recovery I do not fundamentally blame myself just as I would not blame another person for their suffering and addiction. Cultivating self compassion is one of the biggest tasks of my recovery.

Here are some of the contributing factors to my over use of ketamine this summer:

The puzzle pieces of trauma. My therapist calls it “copy cat relationships”.

The experience of my birth, a key experience in my first year and the way F. called me into trust and then abandoned me…. they fit like a glove. I can see now that my attraction to F. contained the seeds of the collapse. The way he met me so intimately at the beginning touched me in places that had never been touched building the possibility of a deeper breaking than I had had before.

Trauma is an experience that overwhelms our nervous system such that we cannot feel it fully emotionally and physically. We can’t do anything about the fact that we have experienced trauma. I did not know the well of instability that sat underneath my being that had been practicing steadiness for two decades.

Before this happened I would not have believed this could happen. I never set out to lose my ground in this way nor did I have a history of drug abuse.

The acute trauma reflected in this copy cat event happened on top of the chronic traumatic imprints I live with every day and are both factors in the addiction getting as bad as it did.

F. and I met heart to heart until we met trauma to trauma, shadow to shadow.

Life happens and it shows us ourselves.

I can’t adequately put into words how much pain I was experiencing.

I did not trust my anxiety.

I had almost debilitating anxious attachment through much of my relationship with F. At the time I saw this as all about me and my trauma. From today’s perspective I see it differently.

First - I was anxious because he wasn’t there. I wasn’t wrong. F. had a split that he was unaware of in himself and I could feel it.

Second - I thought the anxiety was the cost of love. I no longer believe this. Never again will I go through what I allowed myself to go through in my relationship with F. Whether that means not being in a relationship or communicating differently I will never sacrifice my well-being in a consistent way for a connection of any kind.

Compassion fatigue. In my work I am generous with my time and energy.

Psychedelic facilitation is draining. Takes at least a day of rest and recovery after a ceremony.

When people access their youngest places they can’t see how much they ask of their practitioner. This is part of the job. My willingness to meet people in these places is a big part of the healing. I chose it. It is very hard to sustain oneself energetically, emotionally or financially in this situation.

Financially the continual resistance people have to paying for this work becomes exhausting over time.

Big boundaries are required. I felt like I was playing whack a mole - putting up a boundary only to have another tested. Before this happened, I was giving too much without receiving. It was showing. I was talking about it with my mentors. I didn’t know how much this was a problem until seeing how much having a private life with F. meant to me.

I was not personally resourced enough to do this taxing work.

My trust of the medicines

Those fatal words spoken aloud to Ketamine, “You got me in and you will get me out.” Based on my experience with Ayahuasca I deeply trusted the medicines.

The purgative nature of Ayahuasca is a built in control on its use.

Ketamine is a whole other story. It is easy to take. So instructive and rich. So short-lasting. Pleasant at first. And it creates psychosis fast. I will be writing about this in the coming days. I trusted ketamine, just like the people in my life, when that trust was not warranted or earned.

Believing words (including words said on MDMA) rather than actions.

F. and my friends said a lot of things about their love and their loyalty. No one had bad intentions, myself included. But much of what I believed was aspirational rather than real. I did not give the relationships time to show themselves because the love met me at such a starved place inside.

What happens on MDMA is not real.

Who we want to be is not who we are. Who we say we are is not who we are. Who we are is who we are. Trust is earned.

Konrad Z. Lorenz being followed by his imprinted geese. Source: Psychology Wiki.

Deep developmental imprints on MDMA set the stage for trauma.

This isn’t my first break-up - not by far. A key reason why this one was so hard is how deep we went at the beginning on MDMA. We held each other with the kind of love an infant needs. When our brains were neuroplastic. And I didn’t receive that when I was actually an infant so my being connected deeply to F. This made the anxious attachment much worse and set me up for a traumatic fall when the end seemed to come out of nowhere.

Of all the factors this one is the most important in explaining how bad it got and how difficult the recovery is. It is also the one, as someone who facilitates ceremonies and educates on how imprint-able we are when we are on psychedelics, I feel I should have caught and addressed. I caught that I was having key developmental experiences far beyond F. and I but I missed the risk to myself that this scenario created.

If I wasn’t in recovery and not using substances at all, I certainly would not do MDMA with a lover until that relationship was secure. I think this is wise for everyone and particularly those of us with significant infant trauma.

Misinformation about addiction

My primary support person recently told me that during my period of using ketamine not one person suggested that I needed love and support.

From rehab centres who make their money from community powerlessness to the ongoing rhetoric of enabling and interventions on television, some people in my circle used their care as currency to try to convince me to stop using.

For me, a brand new drug addict reeling from an abandonment wound this was abandonment on top of abandonment.

If you learn one thing about addiction from me let it be this: every addict is different. Every substance is different. Every trauma is different. Addicts are human beings who deserve our love and support. While there is an important place for holding back and letting an addict fall, it is not the only option. And if this is the option you choose, remember to return when they are in recovery.

Addiction evokes deep pain and trauma in friends and family as well as addicts and both roles need attention and care. Addicts are often carved out of society and treated as problems that need to be fixed and there is little attention paid to the intersubjective and collective context in which the addiction arose. There is often little attention paid to the material coming up for the friends and family of the addict.

For the family and friends of the addict the problem is solved when the addict stops using the substance. For the addict the problem is never solved. The pain in recovery often feels unsurmountable. And the conditions in which the addiction arose have not changed - we have to change them. This is huge ongoing work that is never finished.

Lack of community.

The short version is that a lot of people let me down. It was a huge reality check. Each is a different case and I do understand.

Even before I started using ketamine the shock of the break-up seemed to scare people close to me . I say this because I don’t want to over-focus on the addiction piece when it comes to community.

In general we pay lip service to having community but so many of us do not. I was losing my mind all by myself interspersed with the odd phone call.

And it wasn’t everyone. I am forever grateful for the support I did have. And I understand that navigating the mental health and addiction world is challenging.

Eventually I stopped using ketamine on my own two days before I got myself to detox.

Even in recovery many friends remain silent. No person should have to go through this the way I did. And I know I’m not alone.

Addiction and traumatic loss terrifies people. It is terrifying.

I won’t forget this experience and I want to find ways to serve others who are suffering so they don’t have to do it alone.

Moving from ceremonial use of psychedelics to personal use.

Ceremonies where I was served Ayahuasca by trained shamanic practitioners are an entirely different scenario from MDMA with friends, and then a lover, and then mixing substances and then….

Unbeknownst to me this was all teed up from the beginning.. On my first date with F. he asked what I did for a living. I told him, mentioning only mushrooms. He told me his “normal” profession. He didn’t tell me he loved drugs. All drugs. He filed the information about my apparent drug-positivity away. I had no idea when we first did MDMA that he loved drugs. Zero idea. Two worlds colliding.

Me - an earnest healer whose main teacher was ayahuasca - over thirty long nights of vomiting, diarrhea, each night promising myself I would never do it again until I woke up, lighter. Unburdened. Pledging my clear heart to more intergenerational healing.

I did not associate psychedelics with escapism in any way until that first time with MDMA. And that first MDMA evening I recognized only the heart connections in the moment rather than the possibility of what it could lead to. The activation of the heart with others was a profound experience for someone who carries so much pain. For someone like me who wants love in her life more than anything - who longed for family. Who spends the vast majority of her days alone. The experience of what at the time felt like love met me at the depths of who I was. In retrospect it was not love, it was a drug.

I won’t take a black and white stand here. But I do think that the move from held space to personal consumption is a significant one. As is the move from intentional (for healing) to recreational use. I know this is controversial - play, dance, music are sacred and also healing. But it is a slippery slope when we also have pain, trauma, and the very normal desire to escape from a difficult world.

The drug curiosity in much of the psychedelic community.

Before my addiction happened people were often asking me to use MDMA before their psilocybin dose because this is commonly discussed on the internet. I used to say “MDMA is not a medicine I carry - I have never used it. In general I think when you finish working with mushrooms let’s consider mixing it with something. There is so much to learn right here with the fungi.” I became more open to trying more things over the past year and though it was interesting it didn’t add anything to my life or my healing.

And you should see the psychedelic forums. A sober person has a hard time not seeing addiction rather than integration in the way these medicines are discussed, grasped, and used.

I had never heard of DMT or MDMA (other than as a club drug) or considered mushrooms as a possibility before I began my ayahuasca journey. I learned about drugs/medicines in the long hours between ayahuasca ceremonies where participants talk. I believe deeply in the power of ayahuasca and will always be grateful it found me. And - it was a gateway for me to a world I would never have entered otherwise.

Personally, I’m not sure we need to try them all. In my experience we are called to right medicine and the right time. Then there is integration. My primary teachers have been ayahuasca and bufo alvarius. I don’t see any in my future - there is enough to work with here.

At a minimum there should be more awareness in how we speak about these substances around others. A realization that we are creating the culture as we go and to remember the precious and sacred lessons the medicines have given us, letting those infuse our actions and words. Remembering that there is much trauma and vulnerability around us and that we may be normalizing casual use of a substance that could kill someone who is listening.

The money/psychedelics/party scene. I flirted with the edges of it only. It is beguiling as fuck. Healing, propserity, drugs and partying all under the guises of good for the world, love, authenticity….

High-Net-Worth spirituality and elite shamanification

Is there anything inherently wrong with this scene? I don’t put the world in those kinds of categories. But when privileged people who feel invincible begin to treat substances in a way that serves them, blending spirituality and partying in a murky mix, forgetting about needs outside their own bubble, forgetting that we are all (not just the people who go to Burning Man) walking each other home…

Well one thing is for sure the universe wanted me to see that scene clearly and get out.

Lack of knowledge

Again this was a bit of a fatal blow. I’m not 14 - the time in life when we try to educate people before they encounter street drugs.

Believe it or not, before this point I had never encountered hard drugs. They weren’t a part of my world or identity. I had never heard of ketamine as a street drug. I didn’t know it was one of those ones I could ‘like’. I didn’t know it destroyed lives. Quickly.

I just didn’t know.

I also didn’t know what cocaine actually does to people. I knew it was addictive. I had never really thought much beyond that. F. wasn’t using it in front of me until the end so it took time to realize what was happening. I have learned since that cocaine is a heart-closer. A medicine which carries the karma of blood. F.’s heart literally closed. It’s breaking this beautiful man.

I just didn’t know.

I am on a healing journey.

This part might be the most private of all. Since a young age I have pledged my devotion to God. I have been following a calling that I can feel in my heart.

I don’t know what it is that I feel but it’s persistent and I trust it. I don’t know how to live otherwise.

For years at a time I fumble, trying to put on a “normal” life. Life lets me try but there is another voice that re-emerges time and again.

It is only now, as 50 approaches and I have destroyed the life I was living that I am committing to this inner stirring above all.

I don’t know how else to say it but life wants me right here.

I needed to heal.

It’s not that the triggers are gone. It’s that I will not put myself in that place again. A place where my wellbeing comes second.

I am here to serve at a whole other level now because I am healing the part of me that gave away my wellbeing for the sake of what I thought I would receive. That’s not real giving.

I have myself now and I can, when I choose, really give.

I don’t know what the purpose of this growth period will ultimately be but I know that I have a solid foundation that I have never had. Not the kind of solid foundation that is effortless but the kind that knows moment to moment how I am in relation to myself and can adjust along the way.

The shattering allowed me to see the fault lines and attend to them so that little by little I can shatter without breaking.

And I know that my path will continue to bring me opportunities to grow.

Today:

In recovery I am focused on myself. My circle is much smaller but they are the people who could stay. And they don’t need me to be anyone other than who I am. We have navigated some difficult conversations and I feel closer to these people than ever before.

Yes I am lonely day to day. It’s a long winter. My body is requiring extra care so not even pepperoni pizza is available for solace.

I am becoming more conscious of my needs and parts. Remembering to root down softly and let it all flow.

There is no part of me that wants to go back to who I was a year ago despite ongoing being-shaking shame over what has transpired.

I am increasingly mindful of the fact that life is not about what we are conscious of. That there is a whole picture emerging of which our conscious minds know just a sliver.

And so there is daily release, contemplation, tears, anger, love and learning. And, I trust, a generative life ahead.