Alejandro: What Changes When the Stress Doesn't?

A Note About This Story

This story reflects one person's experience with medically supervised IV ketamine treatment. Individual experiences vary, and Alejandro's account should not be interpreted as evidence that another person will experience similar results.

When the Workday Doesn't End

Alejandro has spent most of his life fixing things.

His family immigrated from Cuba in the early 1970s. He has lived in Miami for approximately 53 years, been married for 30, raised a daughter and spent decades working in the automotive industry.

For roughly 30 years, he has been fixing Hondas.

Problem-solving comes naturally to him.

When something isn't working, he wants to understand why—and find a way to make it work again.

He approached his mental health much the same way.

Alejandro says he had lived with depression and anxiety for roughly 17 years. He had worked with a psychologist and psychiatrist, taken antidepressant medication and completed a course of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, or TMS.

But eventually, work began consuming increasingly more of his life.

Alejandro supervises approximately 100 people in an operation serving roughly 200 customers each day.

His job required him to be the person motivating everyone else.

Internally, he was struggling.

“I still had to show up as the upbeat, motivating person encouraging everyone else, even when internally I was struggling.”

He was sleeping perhaps two or three hours a night.

A difficult interaction at work could remain with him long after he went home. He would replay it at night, anticipate the next day's problems and sometimes physically feel the stress in his chest.

What makes his story particularly interesting is what wasn't going wrong.

His marriage was good.

His relationship with his daughter was good.

He had friends, family and a strong support system.

The problem wasn't everywhere.

But one part of his life had become powerful enough to follow him into all the others.

Eventually, Alejandro began considering taking six months away from his career—even knowing the financial consequences.

“I knew I needed to find another way forward.”

Trying Something Different

Alejandro had already spent years seeking help.

He had been seeing mental-health professionals for approximately a decade and had taken Lexapro and Wellbutrin on and off for many years. At the time of his interview, he remained on those medications.

He had also completed TMS.

Alejandro says TMS produced some improvement for him, but not enough that he personally wanted to repeat the process.

That distinction matters.

His experience with one treatment isn't evidence about whether that treatment works for someone else.

He had also begun reading about psilocybin when he heard ketamine discussed on a podcast.

That sent him researching again.

Eventually, he found Ketamine Lounge in Miami Beach and decided to undergo a series of seven medically supervised IV ketamine treatments.

The First Journey

Alejandro had never used a classic psychedelic.

Going into his first ketamine treatment, he wondered what he might encounter.

His parents had died several years earlier. Part of him wondered whether he might see them.

But he says the preparation he received encouraged him not to enter treatment demanding a particular experience.

So he tried to let the expectation go.

“Whatever was going to happen would happen.”

What followed was intensely visual.

Lying in a recliner with an eye mask and music playing, Alejandro remembers feeling as though he were melting into the chair.

Then came space.

An asteroid belt.

Images opening into other images.

Scenes that seemed connected to his longstanding interests in science, history and mythology.

At one point he felt as though he had entered an underworld reminiscent of Greek mythology.

But what stayed with him wasn't fear.

It was safety.

During another part of the experience, Alejandro felt enveloped inside something resembling a cocoon.

The closest analogy he could find was being inside his mother's womb.

“I felt incredibly safe, and I didn't want to leave that feeling.”

These experiences were real as experiences.

What they represented neurologically, psychologically or symbolically is a different question.

Brazen doesn't need to answer that question for him.

Does the Experience Matter?

Ketamine can produce substantial changes in perception, sense of self, time and the relationship between the person and their surroundings.

But an unresolved question runs through psychedelic and ketamine research:

How much does the subjective experience itself contribute to therapeutic change?

Alejandro's sessions became increasingly visual and, in his description, were consistently accompanied by feelings of safety, control and joy.

He also places considerable importance on the environment surrounding treatment.

The room didn't feel like a conventional medical office to him. The staff, preparation, music, recliner and knowledge that someone was nearby all contributed to his sense that he could enter an unfamiliar state without becoming afraid.

That doesn't establish that comfort caused his later improvement.

But it raises a question Brazen continues to encounter:

When a treatment alters consciousness, does the environment in which consciousness changes become part of the experience of treatment?

The Problems Stayed

The most revealing part of Alejandro's story happened outside the treatment room.

His job didn't change.

His responsibilities didn't change.

The same kinds of problems continued arriving.

What Alejandro says changed was their ability to remain inside his mind.

Before treatment, a negative event at work could trigger a thought that stayed with him for hours. He would replay it, carry it home and continue thinking about it when he should have been sleeping.

After treatment, he describes something different.

The thought could still arrive.

But it didn't always stay.

“The negative thought would come in and almost bounce off, and within a few minutes, I could move on.”

That may sound like a subtle distinction.

For Alejandro, it wasn't.

He began becoming better able to separate what he could change from what he couldn't.

A difficult day no longer necessarily meant a difficult night.

“I still had the same responsibilities and the same problems arriving every day, but what changed was the way I reacted to them.”

This is perhaps the central idea in his story.

Not the elimination of stress.

A different relationship to it.

When a Thought Stops Sticking

Depression and anxiety are not simply collections of negative thoughts.

But patterns of repetitive negative thinking—including rumination—can play an important role in how psychological distress persists.

Alejandro doesn't describe becoming incapable of having negative thoughts.

He describes becoming less captured by them.

The distinction is worth considering.

Mental wellbeing may not always mean creating a mind in which difficult thoughts never appear.

Sometimes the meaningful change may be in what happens after they appear.

Can the thought be noticed without becoming an entire evening?

Can a problem remain a problem without becoming everything?

Can an emotion be experienced without automatically becoming an identity?

Alejandro isn't answering those questions scientifically.

He's describing what changed for him.

Singing in the Shower

Some changes are difficult to measure.

Alejandro noticed one of his while taking a shower.

He started singing.

It sounds trivial until he explains that he hadn't done it for perhaps five or six years.

He also began waking with more energy.

His wife noticed a difference.

His daughter noticed.

Alejandro jokes that even his dogs noticed.

He smiled more. He felt friendlier. He became less easily aggravated.

He is careful not to describe himself as suddenly euphoric.

“It isn't that I'm suddenly bouncing up and down happily all the time. I'm just simply in a better headspace.”

There is something useful in the ordinariness of that description.

Mental-health outcomes are often measured using clinical scales.

Those measurements matter.

But people also experience recovery through ordinary moments:

sleeping;

wanting to get out of bed;

laughing;

calling a friend;

returning to something once enjoyed;

or realizing that, without consciously deciding to—

you're singing again.

What Research Can—and Cannot—Tell Us

Ketamine has substantial evidence supporting rapid antidepressant effects in treatment-resistant depression.

But important questions remain about durability, maintenance strategies, individual response and how changes in symptoms translate into changes in everyday functioning.

That last question is particularly relevant to Alejandro.

Research can measure depression scores.

Alejandro describes something more mundane:

what happens when he gets home from work.

His experience cannot establish that ketamine caused every change he noticed.

He remained on other medication, had longstanding psychiatric and psychological care, had strong family support and was interviewed relatively soon after completing his initial series.

Those aren't footnotes to the story.

They're part of it.

Human lives rarely contain only one variable.

Early Days

At the time Alejandro was interviewed, only about a week had passed since his final treatment.

That matters.

A powerful short-term improvement isn't the same thing as knowing what will happen six months or several years later.

Alejandro knows that too.

He remains under care.

His job remains demanding.

His responsibilities haven't disappeared.

And his experience doesn't tell us what another patient should expect.

But after years of feeling differently, he noticed something had shifted.

For his final question, Alejandro was asked to choose one word for the experience.

His answer was immediate:

“Fantastical.”

But perhaps the more revealing phrase came afterward.

“The stress in my life hasn't disappeared. The difference is that I don't have to carry every problem with me anymore.”

The Question That Remains

We often imagine successful mental-health treatment as removing the thing causing distress.

Sometimes that's possible.

Often it isn't.

There will still be difficult jobs.

Conflict.

Loss.

Responsibility.

Uncertainty.

And thoughts we'd rather not have.

Alejandro's story leaves us with a different way of thinking about change.

Perhaps the question isn't always whether the problems disappear.

Perhaps it's whether they still possess the same power to follow us everywhere.

If the circumstances of our lives remain the same, but our relationship to them changes—how much of our life has changed with it?

Experience Disclaimer

This story reflects Alejandro's individual experience. Individual experiences should not be interpreted as evidence that ketamine or another treatment will produce similar outcomes for others.

Medical Note

Ketamine is FDA-approved as an anesthetic. Racemic ketamine is not FDA-approved for psychiatric treatment; its use for depression and other psychiatric conditions is off-label. Treatment decisions should be made with appropriately qualified healthcare professionals.

Disclosure

Alejandro received treatment at Ketamine Lounge in Miami Beach. The founder and publisher of The Brazen Word is also a founder of Ketamine Lounge. This relationship is disclosed because it is directly relevant to the subject of this story.

Research Context

Current research supports rapid antidepressant effects of ketamine in some people with treatment-resistant depression, while questions remain regarding durability, maintenance strategies and longer-term outcomes.

Alejandro's personal experience should be understood as an individual account rather than clinical evidence.

Sources & Further Reading

Psychological Medicine — 2026 Cognitive effects of intravenous ketamine in treatment-resistant depression: A systematic review

Journal of Psychiatric Research — 2026 The effects of ketamine and esketamine on functional outcomes in major depressive disorder and treatment-resistant depression

Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics — 2026 A Systematic Review of Long-term Safety Outcomes of Ketamine and Esketamine in Patients with Treatment-resistant Depression