Mental Health Dissociative therapy?

[Listening]

Is there anything out there to read? Like a book or whatnot?

I'm thinking that dissociatives can be useful at the very least for letting go of things systematically. But how and what those things are requires some guidance I believe...

Also going to ask my analyst.

 

[wezface]

I kind of doubt it. Dissociatives make everything go away, sure, but it's definitely not dealing with it. If you're interested, there's some good evidence for MDMA use in psychotherapy and pure MDMA therapy which has just been approved for testing by the FDA, and I think this is a far more realistic path with far more potential benefits.

 

[neurotic]

i don't have any experience with dissociatives that could serve of guidance to you, but you could give this thread a read: Oral ketamine for treatment-resistant depression, ebola posted in the first page about repeated low doses providing a two week long mood lift, or something you could read it

or you're looking into higher, 'hole' doses of ketamine providing insight or changing something in the background? idk... didn't regular psychedelics work? MDMA is promising too but i'm afraid of MDMA because of its nasty metabolites 8(

what exactly do you want from therapy?

im not formally educated on the subject btw

 

[Bluuberry]

It's really hard to stick to therapeutic use and it usually leads to abuse, from what I've seen and experienced. I will say that in the short term it has been incredibly therapeutic, but once patterns of use fall into abuse then that all goes out the window.

 

[Listening]

It's really hard to stick to therapeutic use and it usually leads to abuse, from what I've seen and experienced. I will say that in the short term it has been incredibly therapeutic, but once patterns of use fall into abuse then that all goes out the window.

I agree 100%. I think there is therapeutic potential, but it's probably outweighed by the risks of abuse in the name of "self-medication". This is why I'm considering working on it with my analyst (who is also a psychiatrist) so that I have someone impartial helping to guide the use.

We shall see.

 

[Listening]

I kind of doubt it. Dissociatives make everything go away, sure, but it's definitely not dealing with it.

With due respect, I've done some important work with dissociatives that has had lasting positive effects. Also, for myself at least, dissociatives do not make "everything go away" but instead allow me a detached look at myself where I'm no longer caught in the typical push and pull of aversion and desire. This space can be quite useful for re-examining aspects of your psychology that would otherwise be "too close to home".

Anyway, as I say above, I admit that it's not obvious that these good aspects can be harnessed without eventually going totally off course. Nevertheless, for good or ill, I'm on the road to find out.

 

[AlphaMethylPhenyl]

Honestly I'm don with dissociatives as the only other class of drug that would come close to being as detrimental for me would be THC. I'd say it's proabbly a toss-up between THC and DXM/Ketamine and relatives. At the low dose which hey give it to people, I'm not sure, but I'll just err on the side of caution.

But, they can certainly be helpful for a sector of people.

Weszface I'm a bit surprised that you don't seem to have heard of the recent trials using NMDA antagonists to alleviate treatment-resistant depression.

I don't think one needs much guidance when consuming NMDA antagonists--that is, unless you consume so much that you shit your pants or something lol.

It's not like psychedelics where you need a trip guide. As far as I'm aware, NMDA trips don't have the potential to cause a "bad trip" like psychedelics might. I haven't done either in quite a long time but as I recall there's sort of a safe, if occasionally poignant, feeling with NMDA antagonists whereas you're basically dumbed down to a child at roughly the same magnitude of dose when one takes a psychedelic, and it can be frankly terrifying.

Honestly, if you live in a country which they're conducting trials with NMDA antagonists and you have treatment-resistant depression without psychosis, you're free to ask if you can participate in a trial.

But this begs the question: what else have you tried? Personally, and I'll never use hallucinogens (including THC) again, I would rather try an NMDA antagonist than get ECT...but ECT is definitely an option if you're treatment-resistant and have tried enough medications (I'm staying away from both though, I value my memory).

I've gone through basically the ringer in terms of trying antidepressants.

 

[Listening]

Weszface I'm a bit surprised that you don't seem to have heard of the recent trials using NMDA antagonists to alleviate treatment-resistant depression.

I don't think one needs much guidance when consuming NMDA antagonists--that is, unless you consume so much that you shit your pants or something lol.

Well, there are two different topics worth discussing here and I'm sorry that I totally failed to distinguish them in the OP:

1) Yes, there seems to be a lot of interesting / promising stuff with regard to using dissociatives to tackle treatment-resistant depression. That is, the after-effects of the drug can have a positive, possibly lasting effect. This is not what I'm talking about, but is worth a discussion of its own.

2) Aside from those "anti-depressant" after-effect, I believe that dissociatives are also useful to directly reveal and tackle unresolved psychic material during the trip. This one is trickier, and I believe that it could be aided by some guidelines that can be loosely applied to the process. For example, it depends heavily on what is on your mind while entering the dissociative space, as well as how you work with the thoughts and feelings that surface. Similar to how there are methodologies for working with psychedelics to this end (Stanislav Grof, etc), I think that dissociatives are due for some good research in this direction.

Anyway, probably no one has a real answer to my question so of course feel free to discuss either of these two things.

 

[Phenpsycho]

Don't think there's very much professional articles on this subject but at least they're starting to investigate using them for depression and anxiety.

Personally ive only ever used dxm for around two years straight everyday so that's no good but I was pretty much manic for those two years and it killed any anxiety/depression I was feeling but it also made me believe in magical thinking to the point I believed I was born to correct the morality of humanity by doing good/bad things at specific times to gain influence. I was convinced I was the second coming of Christ for two whole years. I still grapple with those delusions and a part of me really misses living in my own delusional world 24/7 like that.


3 Meo pcp I tried several years after the dxm parade had ended and cried for the first time in a decade under its influence and learned of a lot of repressed fear/ childhood abandonment that caused me to turn to drugs in the first place to deal with them. I wasn't doing this work with a therapist though so I never worked those feelings out with anyone yet but just the crying was an incredible release of pent up emotion and pain that made me feel like i had a new breath of life in me even when it wore off. It made me cry like a fucking baby and having a good cry after not shedding a tear in a decade is euphoric on its own even though it seems like you're hurting from someone else's perspective.


To me dissociatives work on my depression and anxiety in surprising ways. They make the world seem so alien and strange and impossibly unlikely to ever exist in the first place that I can forget about my human condition and just focus on the overwhelming strangeness of everything. This is quite different to how the traditional meds work on me. Ssris made me see the world as a pointless pastel painting that was mounted on reality with iron bolts and benzos just blow my anxiety up in a cloud of carelessness for a day or a few hours or whatnot. The altered state of a dissociative works on my anxiety by flinging everything in my face and making me realize how circus like life is in the first place; when I look at existence as a circus act I'm a happy carefree performer in the act. I guess they take the personal nature out of things but that also allows for me to be able to see things more closely even if that closeness is perceived through the lens of some chemical that feels like it came from a different universe.

 

[Undivided Mind]

Erowid has your answer