Inside a session, soft touch and the safety to feel what's ready to unfold.
People ask me what makes a ketamine clinic safe. They mean the dosing, the monitors, the training. Those things matter, and we have all of them. But the safety patients actually feel during a session isn't built out of equipment. It is built out of presence.
The decision to stay in the room
I sit with patients during their infusions. Not always at the bedside, but in the room. That is a clinical decision, not a hospitality one. The dissociative window is when most of the therapeutic shift happens, and it's also when people feel most vulnerable. Knowing someone is there changes what is possible in that window.
A small ritual
Before we start the IV, I ask one question. What do you want to make room for? Not a goal. Not a problem to solve. A direction. The answers are usually quiet. Rest. Quiet. To stop being so tired. We hold that thread through the session.
Ketamine does not give you the thing you ask for. But it tends to clear enough static that you can recognize it when it arrives on its own.