PTSD is a debilitating anxiety disorder characterized by intrusive re-experiences of the traumatic events, avoidance of situations and stimuli that could serve as reminders of these events, and feeling jumpy or easily startled. Patients with PTSD are often also depressed, and many have significant memory impairments. 

While PTSD has long been associated with veterans of conflict, the disorder can strike anyone who’s witnessed, or been through, a life-altering or dangerous event.

For example, many survivors of sexual abuse, natural disasters, and car accidents can suffer from PTSD.

Your body and mind typically operate in a fight-or-flight mode and when you’re involved in a traumatic event, this hard wiring is affected. The result can be acute PTSD, which resolves itself on its own as your body readjusts, or long-term and chronic PTSD, which resists treatment.

Untreated Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder often leads to people developing anxiety disorders and depression. In severe cases, a person may even begin to start thinking about suicide as a way to escape from their symptoms. If the PTSD symptoms are severe, then a person may be unable to function in a normal environment. Avoidance and other symptoms may make a person stop going to work, driving or even being able to sleep at night. Over time, this severely affects a person’s quality of life.

The symptoms of PTSD vary from one person to the next as not everyone processes a traumatic event in the same way. For example, you may notice PTSD symptoms within months after the initial event, or they may crop up years down the road. In either case, these symptoms include:

• Flashbacks
• Feeling tense, edgy, and stressed
• Being easily startled
• Isolation and avoidance
• Excessive anxiety and fear
• Anger management issues
• Sleep disturbances
• Negative thoughts
• Loss of interest in activities you once enjoyed
• Depression
• Suicidal tendencies

Before using Ketamine to treat PTSD, many would experience extreme responses to common experiences within their environment that instantly remind them of their trauma.

For example, you may hear a car backfire and instantly begin to relive your experience with gunfire. Alternatively, a person may drive past the location of where they had a car accident and begin to remember the vivid details of the scene. For people who have lost a loved one, a trigger could be as simple as hearing a news story about the health condition that led to the death. A hint of perfume, certain food, and even the sound of a baby crying can all be triggers for your PTSD symptoms depending upon what caused your condition.

Since most of the triggers for this condition are things that happen every day, it makes it impossible to control your response. This is why it is essential to seek treatment for PTSD. Ketamine therapy can help when you notice that you are struggling with managing your reactions to common triggers.

What you experience is dependent on the amount of ketamine you receive and for how long the treatment lasts.

Some experience anything from being more aware of how their body feels, quieting of the mind, feelings of love and gratitude, all the way to feeling connecting to the Universe/God, death of the ego, and reliving past experiences from a different perspective.
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Ketamine can create novel experiences for the patient because of its dissociative property. Patients can have a “ketamine-induced non-ordinary state of consciousness.” ⁣
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According to Dr. Eli Kolp there are 4 types of experiences aka states: Empathogenic experience, Out-of-body experience, Near-Death experience, and Ego-dissolving transcendental experience.

Some PTSD sufferers will tell you that ketamine has allowed them to work through and better understand their trauma through another perspective, others will tell you it helped them to express gratitude. Each one’s experience is different, you have to try it to know what it will feel like for you.