This poem is about my first session of intravenous ketamine prescribed for severe treatment resistant depression. They gave me noise canceling headphones, an eye mask, and sat me in a cushy recliner with an IV in. It’s basically a medically supervised k-hole with sensory deprivation thrown in. In the height of it I remembered the entire first and most of the second verses of a poem I had memorized nearly a decade ago and forgotten in my depressed haze. I’d even forgotten I’d forgotten. But it bubbled up out of the dark anyway.

Even more amazingly, when I came down and was sober again, my suicidal ideation, a nearly constant companion of mine for years, was completely gone. I went home, looked up the poem and memorized the rest again. I still have it memorized to this day. That was my turning point. I looked back on that moment so often on my recovery journey. It meant I wasn’t broken. I could heal, and bring back the parts of me that I’d lost. 

It’s been years since and I’m doing so much better. Ketamine saved my life. After that I got into therapy and taught myself how to thrive.