A bad trip?
Positioned by advocates as aparadigm-shifting mental health intervention, the dissociative drug has proved popular among those with the means to pay for private treatments, in clinics styled as high-end spas. But as one of the movement’s key players has their medical licence suspended, the drug’s ascent is now in doubt. WH takes acloser look at the tranquilliser turned therapeutic tool
It was the year before her 60th birthday when the anxiety and depression that had coloured Maria’s* adult life became more vivid. The rumination felt clawing – and rotating her past and her future over and over on the turntable of her mind began to keep her from sleep. Her usual coping mechanisms helped; medication, walking, self-talk. But the 59-year-old dreamed of a life without this pervasive blend of danger and numbness. It was a f lattering piece in a newspaper about a breakthrough mental health treatment that led her to Awakn – a newly launched clinic in Bristol, not far from her West Country home.
She watched a TEDx Talk featuring one of the centre’s founders, Ben Sessa, a leading psychiatrist in the psychedelic space, rhapsodising about psychedelic therapy, the novel modality on offer. Via quotes in articles from other leaders in the sphere, she absorbed metaphors about how the treatment would bring down ‘fresh snow’ on her brain, cleansing faulty neural pathways, replacing these with cleaner ways of thinking. She read books, too, including How To Change Your Mind – the wildly popular title by the nature writer Michael Pollan that’s credited with helping to bring psychedelic drugs as therapeutic tools into the mainstream. Between the proximity and the promise, it felt like fate that she would venture into this brave new world. In May 2022, she went for an assessment at Awakn; by July, she began treatment, which she started with a clear aim in mind: to be rid of her anxiety and never need psychiatric medication again. ‘I thought I’d be cured,’ she tells WH. She wasn’t.
Dissociation station
A dissociative anaesthetic, ketamine was synthesised in the 60s and put to use by the US as a combat medicine in the Vietnam war. Later, it would become a popular animal tranquilliser. Like many medical drugs, it also seeped into the underground scene, with users enjoying its ability to melt the mental maps we so often live by. Such enjoyment comes with a caveat, of course: too much can lead users into a ‘K-hole’, in which you might feel detached from your body while experiencing hallucinations. But it was research into ketamine’s potential as a way to ease treatment-resistant depression in the 2000s that led to the substance being talked about in a therapeutic context.
Subsequent research has examined the drug as a potential treatment for PTSD, addiction and eating disorde
