Journey vs. Medicine?
Trying to understand were ketamine lies in terms the traditional medicine vs. "journey" therapy medicine. By which I mean...
Traditional medicine you take periodically and it operates biochemically on the problem or easing symptoms -- aspirin, xanax, SSRIs. Take the pill at the right time, done.
Then on the other hand there is medicine used for "journeys" a psychedelic experience where you become aware of a memory, insight or perspective that allows you to make breakthroughs along the lines of psychotherapy, working with parts of your psyche, defenses, unconscious etc. ... that classic example for this would be MDMA for processing trauma - it isn't about the chemical or the serotonin it causes it's how inward empathy, fear lessening (amygdala), memory changes allow you to get closer to trauma memories and process them. It's not ongoing treatment it's one-off or a few times -- cycles of journey followed by integration to make sense of and benefit from the insights.
Those are 2 different mechanisms and I guess they can co-exist...
I've generally only heard of MDMA as a "journey" medicine.
I've heard classic psychedelics mushrooms, LSD, various plants (and frogs :-) ) - those seem like journeys with associated integration.
Mushrooms interestingly can cause neurogenesis and that is the proposed mechanism as I understand for treatment resistant depression. So mushrooms can be a journey medicine as well as regular.
Which brings me at last to my question -- trying to figure out where Ketamine lies in these terms. Clearly it is used as a regular medicine for treatment resistant depression, via neurogenesis (like mushrooms but I don't know exactly the same or not).
As the same time I hear people say it helps with PTSD which I assume is via a journey + integration mechanism.
In this sub I'm reading both reported. I'm trying to figure out whether its one or the other or both. I don't see much talk of the journey + integration framing I read for others.
Thanks in advance for thoughts.