'SPECIAL' RETREAT GIVES 'EM A SHOT
Ritzy getaway for ketamine therapy
Candace Moore “shot dope” in her neck for five years while suffering from mental illness. She eventually kicked the habit, only to turn to an array of prescribed medications and therapies in her yearslong battle with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.
“Nothing seemed to really have some significant improvement,” Moore, 37, of California recently told The Post, explaining she could never “get a good diagnosis or treatment.”
The life-changing breakthrough, she said, came from an unexpected source: therapy combined with ketamine, a drug known on the streets as “Special K” — and courtesy of a doctor set to offer the treatment in a boutique hotel at the foot of Northern California’s famed redwoods.
Once best known as a horse tranquilizer and club drug, the dissociative anesthetic is now used to treat desperate patients with issues such as depression, anxiety, alcohol abuse, prolonged grief and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
It can be legally prescribed in all 50 states, and its growing popularity seems epitomized by the posh immersive therapy retreat overseen by Dr. Carrie Griffin.
For $2,995, patients can embark on a three-day “intermuscular ketamine journey” starting in June under Griffin’s care at the Scotia Lodge at the entrance to the Avenue of the Giants, a scenic highway through Humboldt Redwood State Park. The experience comes complete with guided music as well as tub-soaking treatments, facials and hemp-infused massages.
Organizers say the psychedelic healing journey, designed for six to 18 clients at a time, is the first of its kind in the US, comparing it to similar excursions in destinations such as Costa Rica and Panama.
Tranquility
Small doses of the dissociative drug help regenerate brain neurons, said Griffin, 39, an osteopath who trained in ketamine-assisted psychotherapy during the COVID-19 pandemic and eventually launched the Humboldt County Center for New Growth.
“I have really found it to be as profound as the evidence suggests,” she said. “Pretty consistently, we get results that people are able to have lasting results from anywhere from four weeks to six months after a course of ketamine treatment and effectively change their baseline mood by 70 to 75%.”
Griffin said a significant part of the treatments is its setting in a reclaimed, stately and rustic hotel because highly stimulating environments “can create some pretty terrifying experiences.” But in a supervised setting, “There’s a level of hopefully safety and security there that . . . in and of itself begins a corrective experience.”
A typical four-hour $750 session, as described by Griffin and Moore, starts with an hour of talk therapy before the patient lies down and is given noise-canceling headphones and sunglasses in a “sort of ceremonial” process.
After breathing exercises and “flight instructions,” Griffin or another practitioner would inject a dose of ketamine.
“You get a feeling over your body of warm,” Moore said. “You start to feel . . . you are in a truly disassociated space, [but] I still have my cognitive mind,” which allowed her to “look in on my life” and recognize her self-worth.
The treatment is not without its downsides. Moore said she threw up after her first few sessions even after taking an anti-nausea pill.
Still, Moore is such a champion of the treatment that she has talked it up with her colleagues at the Humboldt County Department of Health and Human Services, where she manages a staff of eight people in the IT department.
“I am that passionate, like to be able to say, ‘I want you to know that you guys . . . see me as this amazingly strong, emotionally intelligent, high-capacity human being. Let me be honest about how I got here,’ ” she said.