Ketamine Didn’t Take Me to the Cosmos. It Took Me Home.
When I started ketamine treatment, I didn’t drift into galaxies or meet spirit animals. I wasn’t floating in some psychedelic daydream. Instead, I landed right back where everything began—home. Not just emotionally, but literally: Curitiba, Brazil. The smells. The streets. The soundtrack of my youth. My body was in a chair in Utah, but my soul? It was dancing through Jovem Pan’s Eurodance playlists, walking past street vendors, sitting in the classroom where I first felt broken.
If I’m going to talk about what ketamine is helping me uncover, I have to start there—with the roots I tried to outrun. Because healing isn’t about becoming someone new. It’s about returning to the parts of yourself you were forced to abandon just to survive.
Psyche. Delos. Soul Reveal.
The word psychedelic comes from Greek: psyche (soul) and delos (to reveal). And that’s exactly what this journey has been—a soul reveal. Not through trippy visuals or angelic downloads, but through flashbacks, echoes, and emotional muscle memory.
As a child, I was obsessed with techno and Eurodance. Jovem Pan was my life source, blasting the energy I didn’t know how to express. That music didn’t just hype me up during the day—it was my lullaby at night. It matched the storm inside me. This song? The Summer Is Magic. Still gives me chills.
Brazilians don’t do subtle. We’re loud. Expressive. Full of color, flavor, volume. You see it most in how we sing Happy Birthday—listen to this chaos. Now compare that to the American version, which, let’s be real, sounds like a funeral. I love you, my American friends—but that birthday song was one of my biggest culture shocks. Why are we mourning someone’s life instead of celebrating it?
The Loud Kid Who Felt Invisible
I was a shy, undiagnosed ADHD kid growing up in Brazil. That’s not a quirky childhood anecdote—it was hell. I couldn’t focus, couldn’t sit still, couldn’t keep up. The only reason I passed third grade was because my teacher, Professora Daniela, stayed after school with me every single day. She saw something in me I couldn’t even see in myself.
Still, I felt powerless. How do you ask for what you need in a world that doesn’t feel safe?
Then came the move to the U.S.—Utah. And four years later, ninth grade. And suddenly I wasn’t invisible anymore. I’d walk down the hallway and people would yell my name like I was a celebrity: “Fernando!!” I didn’t know how to handle it. It was like being handed a megaphone after years of being muted. And yeah—I got loud. Obnoxious. Disruptive. Still undiagnosed. Still emotionally raw. I didn’t have the tools to regulate any of it.
Then came the whiplash: I had to move again. Three moves in two years. Every time I found a sense of belonging, the rug got ripped out from under me.
But nothing compares to what broke me open during the first half of senior year. I won’t unpack it all here—but let’s just say I was spiraling. Hard.
And yet… people showed up.
I’d wake up in class to handwritten notes, cookies, even flowers—sometimes left at my house. A girl from Spanish class showed up to school, still swollen from wisdom tooth surgery, just to see me before I moved.
After I left, my Pleasant Grove friends made a damn club just to be in the yearbook. They mailed me a hoodie with my name embroidered on it. The debate team went to Georgia and hand-delivered my yearbook. Who does that?
Receiving What I Didn’t Know I Deserved
For the first time, I wasn’t chasing love—I was receiving it.
When you grow up emotionally neglected, you learn to perform. To people-please. To disappear in just the right way so you don’t upset anyone. But here they were—loving me just for existing. Not because I was useful. Not because I was easy. Just because I mattered.
That cracked something open.
The Healing of Feeling Big
I used to think my problem was that I felt too much. Too intense. Too dramatic. No brakes, no filters. Just a firehose of feelings and nowhere safe to put them.
Ketamine didn’t quiet that down. It turned up the volume. It brought me face to face with every emotion I’d shoved into the corners of my nervous system—rage, longing, grief, shame, even love. But instead of exploding, they unfolded.
I went back to Colégio Marista Santa Maria. Parque São Lourenço. Passeio Público. I saw the boy I used to be—trying so hard to be good, to be quiet, to not be too much.
And I got it. I didn’t need to stop feeling big. I just needed a container big enough to hold all of it.
That’s what ketamine gave me.
Not a high. A homecoming.
Psychedelic Doesn’t Mean Escaping Reality. It Means Finally Facing It.
I didn’t dissociate—I re-associated. With my pain. My story. My joy. My worth. I finally stopped running from the boy I used to be—and started speaking for him.
This isn’t a miracle cure. It’s not a shortcut to happiness.
But it is a space to feel all the shit you’ve been too afraid to touch.
Ready for Your Return?
If you’re holding pain that therapy alone couldn’t crack, if you’ve felt like you’re just too much—maybe it’s time to try something different. I trusted Better U with my journey, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
Go to betterucare.com and use code NANDO84 at checkout.
Start your return.
