Accounts from a director at a large tech company

Before Ember

I have dealt with depression since I was a teenager. When I was younger, my depression was very cyclical and always felt chemical to me - something that was happening to my brain that I couldn’t control. That said, I’d never had any success with treatment. With Paxil, I had a poor experience with suicidal ideation, and I didn’t love Wellbutrin given some physical side effects. 

I’ve done a lot of “self-medicating” you could say, with a whole alphabet of recreational drugs. There are some I’ve had problems stopping and others that have led to secret behaviors. Meth became a very secretive, escapist behavior, and something none of my friends did. It was something I used to help keep myself out of the darkest part of my depression. It was a quick fix; that’s how I was using it.

COVID was rough for me, and then last year I lost a friend and couldn’t get out of the depression. I was laying on the couch, sleeping all the time. I wasn’t functioning, and it had never been that bad. Before, maybe I would sleep all day or call into work, but this time, I had to take a week off of work because I couldn’t function, and it scared me. I’d never had this little control.

I consulted my doctor at One Medical, and he suggested ketamine therapy. He told me they had partnered a lot with Ember Health, and that their patients had experienced a lot of success.

I had done ketamine recreationally, so I wasn’t scared of it. Ketamine was a very different thing to me than the other recreational drugs I’d done. I would never say, “I’m going to do a bunch of K to feel better.” It was more social, something I’d microdose with friends when we’d go out dancing. I always used to talk about it as the part of the evening where I would “do the work” of processing things in my life. It served as a stress release, and allowed me to let go. There’s this thought I have about therapy, that you have to put all the shit out of your brain on the table, reorganize it, and put it back in. If I’d had a bad week, I’d check out a little bit with ketamine, and it allowed me to do something similar. Though it was never the full experience in a therapeutic sense, it laid the groundwork for me. That was enough to want to try it in a medical setting for my depression.

Experience with Ember

My background is in customer success and continuous improvement, so one of the things I’ve appreciated so much at Ember is the focus on the experience. There’s a quality to it, from the decorations in the office to the follow-ups I’ve received in my care. 

When I was doing ketamine recreationally, it was never as visual or as much of a journey as when I experienced it medically. You have to let go of yourself for an hour and let your mind wander. You have to trust that even though it may be outside your comfort zone, it’s safe, especially in a clinical setting like Ember that doesn’t feel like a hospital.

During the last session in my foundation, there was a snap into focus and all the pieces fell into place. I saw a multi-pronged approach to get me out of my depression, and that it was possible, even though I didn’t know exactly what the plan was. There was this huge sense of relief that I wasn’t stuck. I had this feeling that I can get back to a place where I have control over how I’m going to deal with things in my life and how I’m going to approach this illness. It felt like a huge weight off my shoulders.

Traditionally I don’t love talk therapy, but ketamine allowed me to see that what I had to do was be vulnerable. I couldn’t go in with all the answers, I had to let somebody else who is an expert guide me into my next steps to realize the fulfilling life that I want. It’s a holistic problem, so I can’t just plug into an infusion once every three weeks and expect everything to be great. I also need to go to therapy, exercise, spend time with people I enjoy and be social when I don’t want to. There are other things that are part of the larger picture.

The Impact I’ve Felt

Ketamine allows me to have that flexibility to not be stuck in the same neural pathways I’ve always had. That is the most attractive thing to me about this treatment: that my brain chemistry is not set, that I can more easily change my behaviors and my perspective. 

I recognize ketamine isn’t a silver bullet. But treatment has given me a baseline to engage in talk therapy and pursue other lifestyle changes to help me build the life I want. It was sort of the perfect thing at the perfect time. I was very open to it, and it has given me the opportunity to see outside of my depression, to see that I did have some control over it and that it’s not just something happening to me that I had to ride out. 

In terms of how it impacted my use of other substances, there was a practical consideration because I was given guidance to not smoke weed or take Ambien before or after treatment. That was a behavior change for me because those were things I used to sleep better. Even without them, I’m having better sleep. There were cross-dependencies that I’ve been sorting out, that had become a cascade effect. I needed to deal with my depression because I felt the substance abuse was coming from the depression. I was medicating it, but using the wrong tools. There’s been a swap to do a therapeutic, science-based, results-based solution instead of what I’d worked out on my own, which is a more positive, healthier approach. I couldn’t deal with the substance abuse stuff without dealing with the depression first. 

When I talk to my friends about this, it’s sort of like, “What??” Everyone has been fascinated by it. People who deal with depression typically don’t talk about it and don’t ask for help. I was in a really shitty place, and I found this thing that works for me and I’m not ashamed of it. It’s a medical problem, just like my blood pressure. There’s been a de-shaming and an owning of my depression, and the solution, and how unique it’s been.

It feels like there’s been a lifting of this cover or blanket or cloud - whatever metaphor you want to use - that’s very hard to get out of your way, but offers so much relief when it’s gone. I know that I can function better in the world when I’m like this. It’s the way that I get to a more satisfying and fully lived life.