Integration Unlocks the Full Power of Ketamine Therapy
Therapy with ketamine will crack your mind open like a cosmic egg. You will enter an altered state in which you will see, feel, and understand things in ways that words can barely capture. You will experience profound realizations, past traumas, buried memories, and repressed feelings.
What are you going to do with all that?
How are you going to make sense of what you’ve seen, what you’ve felt, and what’s surfaced?
Through something called integration. It’s the bridge between a ketamine session and real, lasting change. It’s the process of making sense of what surfaced, weaving insights, emotions, and experiences into the fabric of everyday life.
Let’s say you had a vision of carrying your mother’s anxiety like a heavy backpack. You could walk out of the clinic say “Well, that was wild!” and be done with it.
But insights that aren’t used as instruments for change inevitably fade into uselessness. Integration is the hard work of learning to set that backpack down, one strap at a time, even when your shoulders feel naked without it.
How Does Integration Happen?
By talking to a therapist or a trusted friend or family member who can help you process your feelings.
By journaling to reveal patterns you didn’t see before—repeating themes, unresolved grief, or unexpected connections to your past.
By meditating or using mindfulness to reflect on images, visions and feelings that might reveal themselves more fully over time.
Through creative expression–drawing, music, movement—that can bring clarity when words fail.
When Is The Best Time For Integration?
Imagine your mind after a ketamine session like the first few hours of a pristine snowfall. Those deeply worn trails of depression – the self-critical thoughts, the rumination loops, the avoidance patterns – they’re all covered now under fresh, untouched snow.
Those first 24-48 hours? That’s when the snow is at its most powdery, most perfect for laying down new trails, for turning insights into actions and changing patterns of behavior.
Scientists call this the “golden window of neuroplasticity” – it’s when the brain is most receptive to change, the best chance to forge entirely new paths through this powder, creating fresh trails far from those old rutted pathways of depression.
Now, snow doesn’t stay fresh forever. If you don’t use this “golden window” or neuroplasticity to carve new trails, the powder melts, and you could easily slip right back into the same worn paths that depression etched over years.
But don’t fret if you miss that first perfect window–I often did when my therapist wasn’t available. The opportunity for change doesn’t just disappear. Yes, the brain is most malleable in those first 24 to 48 hours, but that doesn’t mean change can’t happen outside that window.
Besides, integration isn’t just one conversation with your therapist, one journaling session or one meditation session. It develops over time. Some insights might take days to unfold, while others play hide and seek with your consciousness for weeks.
A Personal Example of Integration
I want to show you a concrete example of ‘integrating’ a psychedelic vision, processing it and coming out the other side a more whole person. It will also show you the importance of having a therapist. Let’s start with the vision:
A monstrous wolf, its eyes glowing an eerie red, appears and begins devouring me alive. The beast tears into my entrails with a savage hunger. I can feel its fangs breaking into my skin, see its back teeth grinding my intestines, and feel every mouthful of me slide into its stomach.
Had I not been protected by ketamine’s “thick glass” sensation—a dissociative effect that creates a buffer between the mind and the emotions, allowing me to observe without being overwhelmed—I might have been consumed by sheer terror.
I have the presence of mind to ask the wolf why it is eating me. The wolf’s piercing gaze answers with brutal clarity: “To survive.”
As the wolf’s eyes lock onto mine, I am struck by an awful revelation: I am the wolf itself.
Self-Hatred as a Misguided Form of Survival
In therapy, I described the vision, hoping to make sense of it. My therapist, Joseph, leaned forward and said, “That wolf represents the self-hatred that often fuels depression.”
He explained the vision as an unsettling truth about the self-destructive elements often present in severe depression. Interestingly, he said that parts of ourselves that act destructively are not doing so purely out of malice or hatred but out of a distorted sense of self-preservation.
I shook my head in disagreement. “That wolf was evil,” I said. “I saw it in its eyes.”
“Yes,” he said, “But how did it answer when you asked why it was feeding on you?”
A quick burst of realization. “Self-preservation,” I said. “The wolf said it was doing it to survive.”
“Exactly,” Joseph said. “This is how the brain, in a twisted form of self-protection, might turn inward, attacking its own sense of well-being to avoid dealing with external threats or unresolved emotional wounds.”
He went on to say that self-hatred can be a desperate grasp for control, safety, or a way to cope with or numb the pain. It can reframe self-destructive aspects of depression not as irrational or purely harmful, but as deeply ingrained parts of the self, fighting to protect or endure in the only way they know how—even if that means turning against the very person they belong to.
I shook my head, trying to understand.”Are you saying the wolf wasn’t a predator but a misguided protector?”
“Yes,” Joseph said. “The wolf isn’t your enemy–it was trying to tell you something.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Why don’t you ask it?” he replied.
“You Can Survive Without Devouring Me”
The next day, I turned on some psychedelic music, closed my eyes, did some breath work and eased into a meditation trying to summon the wolf. It appeared, but not as I’d hoped. I wanted it to sit before me, to answer my questions, but it refused.
Soon, I found myself in the wilderness with the wolf, experiencing that familiar sensation I got while on ketamine—of being the very thing I was observing. “You don’t have to eat me to survive,” I said to the wolf. “There’s better, more nourishing food out there—deer, elk, moose, rabbits. They’d give you more strength, help you thrive.”
The wolf tilted its head, seemed to understand, and then bolted into the woods, hunting for something better—more satisfying. As it ran, I could feel its agreement with the questions I threw at it: Isn’t it more thrilling to hunt than to settle for whatever’s in front of you? Won’t you grow stronger, sharper, more cunning with every chase?
Becoming The Wolf
The next day, I meditated again. I tried to let go, surrender, to release myself from my conscious mind the way I surrendered to the ketamine. Out of nowhere, the wolf appeared, sprinting through the wilderness. It was like I was watching from behind, like a GoPro strapped to a Jeep, chasing the wolf as it ran. But why? Was it running from me? Or toward something I couldn’t see? And why couldn’t I inhabit the wolf this time like I did in the ketamine vision and the previous day’s meditation? I was stuck on the outside, just watching, and I couldn’t figure out why.
I felt like I was on a ketamine trip in the sense that visions came to me that I couldn’t control. How could this be? I wasn’t on ketamine. It was a conscious meditation, why couldn’t I control it?
Soon, I felt myself slipping into the wolf, inhabiting it fully. I wasn’t just watching anymore—I was the wolf itself, feeling the sheer joy of running at full speed, every muscle engaged, my mind fixed on the hunt. There was an unsuspecting moose up ahead, and the wolf (me) was locked in, ready. But then the image faded, disappearing before I could hold onto it. Still, it left me with this strange sense of hope. Somehow, I had convinced the wolf that devouring me wasn’t the path to survival—there were bigger, better prey out there. It felt like a small victory, though I couldn’t say why.
For the next few days, the wolf burrowed into my thoughts, becoming an obsession. I scoured the internet, diving into pictures and videos of wolves, trying to decode their behavior, searching for clues about what my meditations were trying to tell me.
The next day, I meditated again, and the wolf came right back, effortlessly. It was running full speed, but this time, it wasn’t just searching for food—it was scanning the landscape, alert, guarding against threats. It was hunting, but now, it was also protecting.
It took me a minute to realize what it was protecting. Me. A warmth spread across my chest as I realized the significance of the image: The wolf thought I was worth guarding.
A part of me scoffed at the absurdity of it all. Really? Taking life lessons from an imaginary wolf? What’s next, a talking duck handing out motivational speeches? But then it clicked—these weren’t just random images. They were messages from my subconscious, clawing their way into my conscious mind. I remembered what Joseph had said earlier—the subconscious speaks in metaphors, and while the metaphors themselves aren’t real, the messages they carry are.
Unraveling the Mystery of the Wolf’s Message
The next day, I meditated on the wolf again. I was in the woods with him. I tried to connect, make contact, but he was cold, kept his distance, eyes locked on something far beyond me. I tried to pet him, touch his fur, make eye contact, but he pulled back, unmoved by my attempt to connect. And then it came, a blunt and callous message from the wolf that left me disoriented and demoralized: “I am not your friend.”
The image faded, and I was left with a lingering sadness. I kept dwelling on the wolf’s hurtful message. Why had my mind transformed a predator into a protector, only to have it declare I wasn’t worth knowing? Why would it play such a cruel hoax on me?
For days, I couldn’t shake the wolf’s abrupt and wounding message. If he wasn’t my friend, then what was he? Why make so many appearances in my meditations if he didn’t want anything to do with me? Wanting to understand, I meditated on him again.
The images came quickly, vivid and sharp. The wolf was suddenly in the middle of snowy mountains, standing near the edge of a cliff, baying, howling at something out of sight. But I wasn’t out there with him—I was inside a small house nearby, sitting by a fireplace, wrapped in warmth and a surprising sense of safety.
When the Lesson is Learned the Teacher Disappears
A sudden understanding. The wolf wasn’t howling into the void; he was communicating with other wolves scattered around the mountains. The howls were signals that said, “Michael’s fine, but keep an eye out. Alert me if you see anything suspicious.”
In that moment, everything clicked. “I am not your friend” wasn’t an insult. It was the wolf explaining its role. He wasn’t here to comfort me or be my friend. He was here to fulfill a primal function—protection—and he didn’t need my friendship to justify his mission.
The wolf’s purpose, I came to understand, was to show me what unconditional love looks like. I didn’t need to do, be or offer anything to “earn” the wolf’s attention or protection. The wolf had arrived from the depths of my subconscious to deliver a message: You belong. You are valued. You are worth protecting.
This was a profound moment for me, nicked only by the lingering suspicion of its veracity. Did I just make up this shit so I could make myself feel better, so I could tell myself what I wanted to hear? Or was this an example of what the ketamine clinic’s director, Dr. Karen Giles, meant when she said, “healing is not necessarily going to come in the form you expect or want. Trust the process.”
In the weeks that followed, I could not call forth the wolf in my meditations. I tried everything—breath work, psychedelic music, visualizations, chanting—but no matter how hard I reached, the wolf wouldn’t return. It was as if it had done what it came to do, delivered its message, and moved on. The lesson was over, the wolf had nothing left to say.
Continuing the Journey After the Drug Fades
Joseph, my therapist, said that my weeks-long engagement with the wolf was a clear example of how ketamine-assisted psychotherapy can work at its most effective. It captured the full arc of the therapeutic process—using ketamine to access deeply buried subconscious material, actively engaging with that material during the critical window of neuroplasticity, and integrating the insights into daily life to shift self-perception.
One question kept gnawing at me—why did my meditations feel so much like my ketamine visions? The drug had long since left my system, yet when I meditated 24 to 48 hours after a session, I still had no control over what I saw. The scenes unfolded on their own, vivid and immersive, with the same feeling of being both the watcher and the watched.
Psychedelic Visions Can Bring Inner Healing
According to Joseph, it was the lingering echo of the ketamine still at work on my brain. Meditating during the “golden window” of neuroplasticity had allowed access to a deeper psychological space than normal, making the meditative experience resemble the vivid, uncontrollable nature of psychedelic visions.
In the context of ketamine therapy, neuroplasticity means that for about 48 hours after administration, the brain is temporarily rewired, making it easier to break old patterns, adopt new ways of thinking, and process deep emotional material that would otherwise remain stuck or hidden.
Thinking back to the wolf, I wondered if that was exactly what had happened. Without any conscious effort on my part, the wolf had transformed—from predator to protector. I hadn’t directed the process, yet something fundamental had shifted. And maybe that’s why I could no longer summon it. The rewiring was done. A new path had been paved, lined with the fragile but unmistakable signs of self-worth.
