ketamine-assisted psychotherapy (KAP) for DID

I've been in psychotherapy for DID mostly continuously since 2011 and I've come a long way. Our system has been stable for years now but really punching through to significant new information and real healing has been much slower for a few years. So with our therapist we decided to try ketamine as an aid during therapy. wikipedia article on KAP

It's an odd process. You take a troche or lozenge and dissolve in the mouth but you don't swallow. Instead, you swish it around with saliva for 15 minutes, then spit it out. It tastes very bitter, kind of metallic, but it wasn't a big deal for me since it has a numbing effect.

From these 15 minutes to an hour after that, the ketamine has strong physical-mental side effects, somewhat hallucinogenic and dissociative but not unpleasant for me, since I knew what was happening and we don't have any uncontrolled switching. During the process one focuses on a particular issue.

Our focus was trying to find out more about a pair of young alters who were threatened to remain silent by the abusive father. They were fairly locked away from us but KAP allowed them to visit therapy and tell us a little about themselves. We didn't even realize one of them was mute, but he's not now. Working with them has felt really nice and healing, with growth continuing outside therapy kind of on its own.

The first session was 50mg, then 75, then 100mg, which I've found is a good amount. The therapist you work with may need to have done KAP themselves and it would certainly help for that to have happened. Mine has had some trainings on it. Although the strongest part of the effects wear off after an hour, the "mind opening" affect stays with you physically for many hours, even a day or two. I wasn't personally aware of that much but my therapist says it's a factor. I know I didn't feel completely normal for a couple hours but I was able to take public transportation home.

I'm going to continue this ketamine-assisted psychotherapy as long as I can. It's not cheap but it's important for me. I saw a specialist to have it prescribed for $375 and the ketamine itself is costing me about $15 per session. I'm not sure how much insurance covers yet. I know that advocacy for the use of certain psychedelics in the treatment of trauma has grown tremendously in recent years. It doesn't seem common for DID but I think it will become more so.

The specialist recommended a KAP session last 2.5 hrs and there be some time afterwards to wind down, but my therapist knows and trusts me. I take a lozenge, then 15 minutes later begin therapy. An hour and a half later (my usual length of a session) and I'm ready to leave. I feel a bit dizzy for another hour as I would if I turned around in circles 3 times, so I walk carefully but no big deal. Just sharing in case this comes up for anyone else.

It reminds me of the AFTD conference of March 22nd and 23rd this year. One of the conferences was about substance-assisted psychotherapy for DID and the spokeperson was Dr Ansgar Rougemont-Bücking. He uses ketamin and LSD (not together, it's either one or the other). If it intrests someone I can browse through the notes I have and see what references of books, papers... he talked about during his conference.


Thanks you Zor for sharing the experience about going through this kind of therapy, it's very different to have the pov of the patient compared to have the pov of a therapist during a conference! I hope you can have it as much as needed!

Thank you for this information. We actually logged on here to see if anyone had ever tried it. We can’t find others with DID to know.

I've had six or seven sessions so far and the progress is so much better with ketamine than without, I'm determined to use it for most future sessions. The connections inside are just better, alters feel more comfortable fronting during the work (which has usually been a challenge for us), and it has boosted our ability to recall and process/understand trauma.

The dizziness I experienced after a 1.5 hr session is really minimal. The "openness" effect appears to last for many hours beyond the session and when I journal, it's more productive. For the length of the session, the ketamine increases the dissociation but in a good way, a safer way.

In combination with ketamine--ior maybe separately at first--my therapist wants to begin utilizing DBR (Deep Brain Reorienting), which is a very new therapeutic approach. If this happens, I'll make a separate post about DBR.

I also want to try using EMDR in combination with ketamine. We've been using EMDR off and on for a few years. I'm older and need to maintain stability for my job and financial reasons and I feel this limits my ability to make faster progress in therapy. My adopted son has DID and his healing is proceeding more rapidly now.