Ketamine, the Treatment that can Break Through
Welcome to our cozy office where you can experience ketamine in a safe and comfortable space filled with plants and flowers, fuzzy blankets, musician curated music, and anything else you might need for your journey.
We provide ketamine as a medicine alone or together with psychotherapy. We offer in office ketamine as an intramuscular (IM) injection (like a flu shot) for treating mental health problems. Therapists or supportive people in your life are always welcome to join us for your journey and we're able to travel to your therapist's office as well. For a free consultation, contact us, we'd love to hear from you! [email protected] 408-767-2337 
What is Ketamine?
For more than 20 years ketamine has been used to help with depression and other mental health problems. Ketamine seems to help most with depression and anxiety, but can also be helpful for PTSD and there is emerging support for it's use with substance use and other mental health disorders. Ketamine is off label, meaning it isn't approved by the FDA for treating mental health conditions, though it is FDA approved as anesthesia. Many medications, including ketamine, are safely used off label. Ketamine often works quickly, people can start to feel better during the first session, and it is one of the medications that can help rapidly with suicidal thoughts. Usually a series of sessions are recommended to treat mental health problems, but it can also be used for psychotherapy more sporadically. Ketamine is used as a medicine by itself or it can also be used in combination with therapy to create a powerful synergy that can speed up the healing work you already do in therapy. How Ketamine Works We don't totally know why or how ketamine works. It is known to work in the brain by affecting the function of multiple neurotransmitters and ultimately ends up improving the neurotransmission of important neurotransmitters, reducing inflammation, growing new dendrites, and increasing neuroplasticity in the brain. Meaning, the brain actually changes and improves its physical structure as well as how it functions after receiving ketamine (the same happens with psilocybin-see the image to the right, it also happens with antidepressant SSRI's-but is slower). The overall effect is the potential to reduce mental health symptoms and emotional suffering. Some of these positive effects may be long lasting, sometimes they are short lived and some people may need ongoing treatment with ketamine to maintain the positive effects. Research suggests about 60% of people have a positive response to ketamine and it has been shown to be as effective as some antidepressants. Side effects are usually mild and transient and are explained in more detail in the informed consent below. Ketamine can also create a meaningful psycho-spiritual experience. The psychedelic or trance effects of ketamine can evoke deeply meaningful spiritual or psychological experiences. If you would like to bring your therapist to the session or have the session at your therapist's office we can do that as well. Home visits are available in some circumstances, too. If you're interested in a free consultation to see if ketamine could be helpful, contact us, we'd love to hear from you! [email protected] 408-767-2337
Ketamine Session Fees: Psychiatric Evaluation $350 Ketamine Medicine Session $400 2 hour session $500 3 hour session Psychotherapy Session $250 No show or late cancellation $125 (24 hours notice) Travel fee to your home or therapist's office is based on distance outside of the Gilroy and Morgan Hill areas. Insurance: Unfortunately, because ketamine is not approved by the FDA for mental health treatment, it is also not covered by insurance. The psychiatric evaluations and psychotherapy are often covered by insurance, based on your plan benefits. |
Ketamine Reading
Brainfacts.org Listening to Ketamine Ketamine—50 years in use: from anesthesia to rapid antidepressant effects and neurobiological mechanisms. Ketamine and serotonergic psychedelics: An update on the mechanisms and biosignatures underlying rapid-acting antidepressant treatment Clinical use of ketamine in psychiatric disorders Single i.v. ketamine augmentation of newly initiated escitalopram for major depression: results from a randomized, placebo-controlled 4-week study Worth the trip: psychedelics as an emerging tool for psychotherapy. Ketamine exerts its sustained antidepressant effects via cell-type-specific regulation of Kcnq2 Is (R)-ketamine a potential therapeutic agent for treatment-resistant depression with less detrimental side effects? A review of molecular mechanisms underlying ketamine and its enantiomers. Ketamine as an antidepressant: overview of its mechanisms of action and potential predictive biomarkers Ketamine for treatment-resistant depression: recent developments and clinical applications. Repurposing Ketamine in Depression and Related Disorders: Can This Enigmatic Drug Achieve Success? About Psilocybin Assisted Psychotherapy Neural mechanisms underlying psilocybin’s therapeutic potential – the need for preclinical in vivo electrophysiology. 
Visualization of the brain connections in the brain of a person on psilocybin (right) and the brain of a person not given the drug (left) showing higher connectivity and plasticity after psilocybin. From the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.
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Four types of Ketamine Sessions
The Psychiatric Evaluation is a time to see you for who you are and to understand your personal or spiritual intentions. The evaluation helps us understand what you are experiencing and is a chance to discuss if ketamine is a treatment that would be safe and potentially effective for you. It is also a chance to see what other treatments might help that are specific to you and your body so you have as many options to choose from as fits for you. We can diagnose mental health disorders and make recommendations about treatment, but seeing you, your wounds, and your spirit are most important. The evaluation is usually one hour, but can also be longer.
The Preparation session is the session where we can talk about what to expect during the ketamine session and from ketamine overall. We can get to know you better and look further into what you want to focus on in treatment, including setting intentions or an overall arc of therapy, more deeply understand the problems you've been experiencing, create safety and boundaries for the sessions, and discuss important life experiences that may make meaning from the ketamine experience. This session is usually one hour and is sometimes completed as part of the evaluation appointment.
The Ketamine medicine session is usually 2-3 hours. Most people will experience the medicine for about 40-60 minutes and will have about an hour afterwards to start to integrate or talk about the experience and it's meaning. Take your time, move slowly through the process so you can immerse yourself in the healing experience.
The Integration sessions are optional psychotherapy sessions and can happen on the same day as the medicine session, immediately after the ketamine session, and/or on another day after the session. Integration sessions are a chance to go deeper into the ketamine experience and can be combined with other psychotherapies, including parts therapy, trauma focused therapies, self-compassion therapies, or for spiritual growth. This is a time when we can talk about what or how you experienced the journey, emotions or experiences that came up, connect the present to the past, create meaning, or process the experience. Therapy/integrations session are usually an hour long.