Finding Creative Outlets Post Ketamine

 

If you’ve done ketamine therapy, you already know—the real trip starts after the session. The medicine cracks your emotional armor wide open, and for the next 24 to 48 hours, you’re swimming in a flood of insights, memories, grief, hope, and sometimes straight-up chaos. Especially if you have ADHD like I do, your brain’s just on. Constant downloads. Constant spinning. No off switch.

And then what?

That’s where creative outlets saved my ass.

As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, ketamine sessions often come with journal prompts. You reflect beforehand, and then again after. In my case—someone with deep grief wounds—I was asked to write letters to loved ones I’ve lost. In later sessions, I imagined how they would write back. Sounds heavy? It is. It’s also healing. It cracks open emotional doors I didn’t know were still sealed shut.

But you don’t get to stay in that soft, spiritual state forever. Eventually, the trip fades, and you’re left with the hangover. You feel exposed, vulnerable, sometimes straight-up raw as hell. I even made the mistake of doing a session too early once to try to “fix” that feeling—spoiler: it backfired. You can’t rush integration. You have to live it.

So how do you hold yourself through that emotional storm?

You create.

Right now, I’ve got this blog. I’ve gone back to jiu-jitsu. My love of math came roaring back—and not just as an academic pursuit, but as a source of self-compassion. I even wrote about that here.

Since my cousin died, I picked up the sax again. I’ve done improv classes. I’ve thrown myself into my Amazon FBA business. I'm prepping for actuary exams. Every one of those things is a way to anchor myself after the ketamine sessions. Not to escape the pain, but to process it. To transmute it.

I’ve realized that sharing my ketamine journey publicly has added another layer of meaning. Just being real about the ups, the missteps, the breakthroughs—it gives me purpose. And it lets others know they're not crazy for feeling completely unmoored afterward.

So if you’re on this journey too, I want to say this:

Don’t let the insights rot inside you.
Create something.
It doesn’t have to be pretty.
It just has to be real.

And if you're considering starting ketamine treatment, I highly recommend checking out Better U. Use my promo code NANDO84 to get started with a $100 discount. It’s a way to support my journey and maybe change your own life in the process.

Let the medicine crack you open.
Let creativity be the way you stay open.
This is what healing actually looks like.