cityscape

Navigating New York City’s Multitude of Ketamine Clinics

Illustration: by Lalalimola

Over the past few years, a rash of psychedelic clinics — places where you can be administered ketamine in zero-gravity chairs — has opened around town. Writer Paula Aceves spoke with a dozen medical professionals and patients to figure out which is best for whom.

Ketamine has primarily been tested, and found to be extremely effective, as a treatment for depression — but some early research findings suggest it is also moderately effective at treating general anxiety disorder, PTSD, and addiction, as well as chronic physical ailments such as headaches. It’s not FDA approved in all forms for all uses, though, and before starting any treatment, consult a doctor.

If you don’t have a psychiatrist, try Mindbloom. Most boutique psychedelic centers we spoke to don’t ask for a referral, instead opting to perform medical and psychiatric intake themselves — with Mindbloom (mindbloom.com; $89 a week for six sessions), you fill out a five-minute questionnaire, then do a remote consult with one of its on-staff clinicians. Other places, like Ember Health (Brooklyn Heights, Chelsea, and the Upper East Side; $500 per infusion), are slightly more rigorous: They consult with each patient’s individual psychiatrist or therapist throughout the process.

Opt for a lozenge if you want to stay lucid. There are four delivery methods when it comes to getting ketamine treatment: lozenge, nasal spray, IV, and intramuscular injection. The last two make for a more spiritual experience, as opposed to the dreamy, though still mostly lucid, high you get with a nasal spray or lozenge. (Lozenges apparently taste, per Sarah Rose Siskind, a comedian who hosts a monthly show about psychedelics, “how I’d imagine cleaning supplies might.”)

If you’re worried about a bad trip, go for an IV. “For the IM shot, they use a really tiny needle, and you hardly even feel it. Having had that incredibly easy experience, I don’t think I could ever do IV,” says Brian, a regular at Field Trip (137 E. 25th St.; $3,500 for four sessions). But health-care consultant Daniel Zahler, who opts for IV at Nushama (515 Madison Ave.; $4,000 for seven sessions), says IM may not be “as controlled as IV.” Per Jay Godfrey, a cofounder of Nushama: “With an IV, you can stop the drip and, therefore, stop a bad trip. With IM, you can’t.”

Field Trip and Nushama are ideal for anxious first-timers. They both have a litany of perks — playlists curated for a calming experience, blankets, zero-gravity chairs, sleep masks. Field Trip starts with an especially low dose of the medicine to gauge your sensitivity. And Nushama’s protocol finishes with an in-person integration, in which you can talk to a doctor or guide about the experience and how to glean insight from it. Nushama regular Andrea E. (who says Dr. Steven Radowitz is particularly “kind and understanding”) likes that there’s “a therapist to just sit there with you while you’re coming out if it. It means you’re able to talk to somebody right away about what happened or just what you’ve been dealing with mentally or emotionally more generally.”

Book a moon pod if you go with a friend. Nushama has a group-therapy room complete with multicolored moon pods and a couples’ room with a terrace. Field Trip too provides the option of “guided group experiences” for up to seven people. Groups and couples trip in the same space, though they still keep the blindfold on. As in other forms of group therapy, some groups are curated based on their respective conditions or traumas; Nushama is working on organizing groups of military veterans and of women who have survived sexual abuse.

Avoid negative media a week before. Most centers suggest that for at least 48 hours but ideally a week before your session you avoid any negative media or controllable stressful situations (per Dr. Leonardo Vando, ketamine brings down your cognitive defenses, and exposure to negativity may prompt a bad “journey”). Someone we’ll call Henry says he made the mistake of talking to his father right before the experience. “He just didn’t get why I was doing it,” says Henry. “It really stressed me out. During the session, all I could think about was him.” The standard is to ask that you abstain from alcohol for at least 24 hours before your session because the drug can cause an increase in blood pressure.

A dual diagnosis will help you get insurance coverage. So many mental-health services aren’t covered by insurance, and it’s especially unlikely to cover fairly novel ones like psychedelic treatment. Per Godfrey, a dual diagnosis of something physical like chronic headaches aids significantly in filing a claim. Laura, a patient at Field Trip, says insurance subsidized most of the cost given her chronic migraines — though, she admits, she may have exaggerated their intensity just a bit.

If it’s all too expensive, try a research study. There are a number of them testing the effects of psychedelics all across the country, and they provide an FDA-approved way for people to experiment under the best conditions — for free. Yale, for instance, is currently recruiting for a study on psilocybin’s effects on depression (contact emmanuelle.schindler@yale.edu); NYU runs psychedelic studies regularly too (clinicaltrials.med.nyu.edu).

Navigating New York City’s Multitude of Ketamine Clinics