I believe that therapists, doctors, nurses and psychiatrists who recommend ketamine–and more and more are doing just that–should have a firsthand experience of ketamine themselves. 

Today I speak with Maria Hernandez, a psychotherapist in Philadelphia, who did just that. Maria was a participant at our Bethesda, Maryland ketamine assisted psychotherapy clinic, Calliope Health. 

We talk about the personal reasons each of us was attracted to ketamine for our own mental health and the overlap between the dissociative effects of ketamine and the hypnotic technique of Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy. I talk about my depression and how ketamine helped me get over my horrible fear of a divorce that needed to happen and Maria shares about how her ketamine and psychedelic journeys have helped her connect in healing ways to her son Andrew, who took his own life a few years ago.