What to Expect During Your Ketamine Session

Every person’s experience with ketamine is different.

As the medication begins to take effect, you may experience a sense of relaxation, altered awareness, or temporary distance from your usual thoughts and surroundings. Some patients describe a dreamlike experience, a changed perception of time, or a feeling of observing themselves and their emotions from a different perspective.

For others, the experience may be less comfortable, with temporary confusion, anxiety, dizziness, or unfamiliar sensations.

Within Sacred Medicine, these experiences are approached with curiosity rather than expectation.

You do not need to produce a profound insight, revisit a painful memory, or have a particular spiritual experience for treatment to be meaningful. There is no required way to feel or respond.

The purpose is not to escape reality, but to create an opportunity to encounter familiar thoughts and emotions with a different perspective.

1. Preparation and Intention
Before receiving ketamine, we review how you are feeling and discuss any intentions you may wish to bring into the session.

For patients already participating in Sacred Medicine, this may involve a familiar fear, emotional wound, relationship pattern, or protective behavior identified during the Sacred Journey.

An intention is not a task you must complete. It is simply a starting point for reflection.

2. The Medicine Experience
After ketamine is administered, you rest comfortably while the medication takes effect.

The environment is kept calm, with minimal distractions. You may prefer to close your eyes, listen to gentle music, or simply remain quiet.

Clinical staff monitor your response and remain available to provide reassurance or assistance.

You are not expected to talk continuously or analyze your experience while the medication is active.

3. Recovery and Reflection
As the medication wears off, you remain under observation until you are medically stable and sufficiently recovered to leave safely.

Some patients feel peaceful, reflective, or emotionally open afterward. Others feel tired, mildly disoriented, or need time to process the experience.

There is no pressure to immediately explain or interpret what happened.

4. Integration Into Sacred Medicine
The deeper work often happens after the medicine session.

During follow-up conversations, we may revisit the patterns and questions explored in your Sacred Journey, considering whether the experience offered new perspectives on fear, trust, vulnerability, acceptance, or your relationships.

We then explore how those insights might become practical changes in everyday life.

An important realization is only a beginning. Lasting transformation requires opportunities to practice a different response when familiar challenges return.

Patients receive individualized instructions before treatment. A few important considerations include:

• Medical evaluation: We review your medical and mental health history, medications, and potential contraindications before treatment.
• Food and medications: Follow the specific instructions provided by our clinical team regarding eating, drinking, and medications before your session.
• Appointment time: Plan to spend several hours at the clinic, allowing time for preparation, treatment, monitoring, and recovery.
• Transportation: Arrange for a responsible adult to drive you home. You should not drive, operate machinery, or engage in hazardous activities until the following day after a full night’s sleep.
• Rest afterward: Plan a quiet remainder of the day without major responsibilities or important decisions.
• Support person: A spouse or trusted support person may accompany you. Whether they remain in the treatment room will depend on your preferences and the clinical circumstances.

No. Ketamine is not appropriate for every patient, and the decision to proceed requires an individualized medical evaluation.

Possible side effects include nausea, dizziness, sedation, dissociation, anxiety, temporary increases in blood pressure or heart rate, and, less commonly, more serious complications. Repeated treatment may carry additional risks.

Ketamine is FDA-approved for anesthesia, but its use for psychiatric conditions is off-label. Research continues into its benefits, limitations, and use alongside psychotherapy.

Our goal is to offer ketamine responsibly, when its potential benefits justify its risks, and within a broader plan of care.

Ketamine therapy does not replace emergency care. If you are in crisis, call or text 988, or call 911.

At Hill Family Medicine, we do not measure healing by the intensity of a ketamine experience.

We are more interested in what happens afterward.

Can you begin recognizing a familiar fear before it controls your behavior? Can you approach a difficult relationship with greater honesty and compassion? Can you become less dependent on old defenses that once protected you but now limit your life?

These are the questions Sacred Medicine seeks to explore.

Ketamine may offer a different perspective. Sacred Medicine helps you explore how to carry that perspective into a new way of being.