KETAMINE THERAPY IS GETTING GROOVIER (PART II)
Inside a live music event where doctors inject patients with ketamine
My journey to the fringes of ketamine therapy began in a new age sanctuary in Los Angeles, where I was invited to participate in a pioneering experiment. Would this be like a concert, except with doctors running around with ketamine injections? Or would it be more like a psychedelic ceremony, except instead of a shaman, a guy is playing synths in the corner? With tickets costing $650, who the hell is paying for this kind of thing anyway? Catch up on part I here, before diving into these questions (and more) below…
The ketamine concert/ceremony is on the second floor of a new age sanctuary, through an outdoor patio and a pair of sliding glass doors. Guests haven’t arrived yet, but headliner Don Slepian is already hunched in front of a keyboard synth on a low stage, noodling around. Warm tones emanate from every corner of the room, thanks to glossy white modular speakers from Mobius Acoustics—a hi-fi spatial sound company that’s been powering music gatherings across LA.
Looking around the venue, I try to glean the vibe from a confusing assemblage of decor: curtain-like vines hanging from the ceiling, mandala paintings on the walls, a panel of red LED lights behind the stage, a neon sign that says “love.” It’s giving… Robot Heart Burning Man ecstatic dance hippie meets EDM raver. Is that going to be the crowd tonight?
Earlier in the week, I’d posted about the event on Instagram, and someone had angrily commented:
This reaction felt a little binary to me—there are waaay more drugs available for us lowly proletariats than street fentanyl, babe!—but I understood the sentiment. The prices of legal psychedelic therapy are outrageous: in Oregon, one of the only states in America where you can legally trip on mushrooms, a single session at a psilocybin service center can cost anywhere from $1000 to $3000. While ketamine therapy is slightly cheaper, ranging between $400 to 800 per session, most clinics recommend several rounds of treatments, which ultimately brings the cost up to the thousands. After the last few years of hype around psychedelic therapy as a cure-all for mental health conditions, newly-opened shroom centers are already shuttering from lack of business, and it seems like few people can afford a luxury trip. No wonder people are pissed.
Some experts say that the industry is just going through a rocky early stage, and prices will stabilize once these substances become federally legal and insurance companies get on board. Another justification for these price tags is that you’re paying the hourly rate of a licensed therapist to sit in the room with you for the entire duration of a trip—plus a couple counseling sessions before and after.
However, the ketamine therapy industry currently operates through a legal loophole, and there is a wide range of experiences you could get when you put your credit card down, plus often short-lived or mixed results. In the end, the real competition is coming from the underground. As a friend jokingly remarked the other day, a baggie of ketamine, which has hovered around $100 for the last few years in the United States, is one of the few commodities that has been impervious to inflation.
Back at the new age sanctuary, there are seven mattresses arranged in a circle around the stage for tonight’s event. More spots had been available—but they hadn’t sold.
So who exactly is the market for a luxury ketamine musical experience?
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I slide into my bed and ask the ponytailed man sitting in lotus pose on the mattress next to mine what he thinks of the ticket price. “Well, it’s really high!” he says with a chuckle. “But I don’t know how you can do this in a way where the price point could be lower,” he continues, telling me that he’s a producer for commercials on TV and is thus “very conscious of how much things cost.” Tonight, we’re paying for not just the ketamine, but also what is essentially a private concert. The producer also notes that he’s done underground MDMA therapy before—and that session cost $2500.
“It’s cool doing [psychedelics] above board,” the producer says. “Buying drugs and all of that stuff… it’s a bit…” He trails off and makes a searching gesture with his hands.
“A bit what?” I ask.
“It’s a bit… scary!” he exclaims. “Besides, this wouldn’t be a regular thing… maybe every couple of months.”
One of the doctors then taps me on the shoulder and pulls me into a side room. First, he slides a blood pressure monitor around my arm, because ketamine can raise blood pressure, especially in higher doses. We had also been advised to arrange a ride home, and stop eating four hours before the treatment to prevent nausea. This level of precaution seems almost absurd considering how many times I’ve k-holed in the club, but the medical attention imparts a sense of care that turns out to be useful when we discuss the next step: what dosage I am going to take.
Depending on your bodyweight, 100mg of ketamine injected intramuscularly can trigger an acute state of dissociation that can feel like you’re suspended on the chill side of death. Typically, I’d be afraid to touch that threshold, but tonight, knowing that this kind, gentle doctor will be monitoring my vitals, I tell him that I’m ready to go in “It seems like a unique opportunity to do that,” he replies with a smile.
The doctor then tells me that the ketamine will be administered in two rounds: the first dose will be lighter, to ensure that I can give informed consent for a second, heavier dose later in the evening.
“Don’t worry, you won’t have to remember your exact dose,” he assures me. “When I come around later, I will just give you three options: remain where you’re at, go slightly deeper, or a lot deeper.”
I nod, and my gaze drifts to a supermoon radiating white light through an open window. Amidst the frenzy of interviews and taking notes for this story, I haven’t taken a beat to breathe.
Mark catches my thoughtstream. “I know you’re reporting on this,” he says. “But I encourage you to have this experience for yourself as well.”
“I know, I know” I say, but my inner monologue begs to differ: hurry up and get more quotes before you’re too fucked up to think.
So I rush out of the room, sidling up to Slepian as he finishes playing his warm-up set. The septuagenarian looks at me with wide eyes and an easy smile. Something about him reminds me of a cuddly skunk—playful yet distinguished, with waves of silky white hair. When I ask what drew him to this performance, he pauses, then answers in a slow monologue as if relishing each word.
“This is more functional music than music for entertainment—it’s a way to help guide and support the psychedelic journey,” he says. “In our society, we’ve lost track of a lot of functional music outside of ceremonial music in church. Music is a very powerful guide that we can reclaim. We’re not doing anything new here that hasn’t been done in thousands of years. What’s old is new again.”
“How has psychedelics influenced your music,” I ask.
“Well, how do I explain this…?” He smiles playfully. “Life is like a scrabble game. You put tiles down to form words, then you reach in the bag and get new tiles. The psychedelic experience is like getting new tiles—it opens up new possibilities for how you can be. It’s still you, the same board. The circumstances don’t change. You change.”
Then, a gong rings. It’s time to begin.
I return to my mattress, and the two doctors who run The MCPI Group take seats beside the stage. After leading an opening meditation, they ask if anyone wants to share an intention. The room stays silent, everyone averting their gazes. After a long pause, a man in the far corner of the room finally raises his hand. “This isn’t really an intention, but I just wanted to say—I am here because this feels like we’re at the start of something.”
Don strikes a note on the keyboard, and we lie back against our pillows and slip on our eye masks. The doctors start making their way around the circle, one of them holding a giant plastic vat of needles loaded up with liquid ketamine. As they get closer, the smell of alcohol swabs pinches my nose—this clinical sterility a visceral reminder that despite appearances, this is not a typical LA sound bath.
“Tell me when you’re ready,” the doctor whispers in my ear. I take a deep breath. A needle pricks my deltoid, and a sharp sting ripples through my arm. Immediately I am sinking into a dark and quiet nothing. Ketamine always feels like an ablution—my brain going blissfully blank as if dunked into a salt bath. Slepian is now playing low droning sounds in between flourishes of classical arpeggios on the keyboard, and I have the sensation of being inside the black ridges of these deep, tectonic groans. I lie still, awaiting visuals to unfold, trying as unobtrusively as possible to nudge meaning into being. Tripping is always this great search, fueled by the belief that through an alchemy of chemistry and music, greater illumination is attainable. But this time, the canvas of my mind remains black.
Eventually I get frustrated and start wriggling around and flipping around the bed in some futile attempt to optimize the positioning of my head. (Yes, I’m a Type-A psychonaut.) The doctors come around with the second dose. “A lot deeper,” I quickly respond. Again comes the sterile smell of alcohol signaling that I’m about to go under, and this time the needle hurts even more than the last. 100mg is the highest dose I’ve ever done, but the portal still doesn’t open. No rapture, no anguish, no confrontation with destiny. Sometimes you’re just standing at the gates, waiting for a deliverance that never comes…
Hope you’ve been enjoying this deep dive into the musical frontier of psychedelic therapy. The final chapter of “Ketamine Therapy Is Getting Groovier” will drop later this month, subscribe to make sure you don’t miss it!