X
May 22
  • Written By Scott Drochelman

    • # 185 – Vanessa Hurr and Lacie Hamilton

    Vanessa Hurr and Lacie Hamilton

    How KAP Relieved Her Sadness

    Vanessa Hurr considered herself a high functioning sad person after the death of her brother to an overdose in April 2020. The grief and sense of loss surrounding his death was compounded with extreme isolation due to Covid. 

    Vanessa was previously on the Courage to Change in episode 117 and at the time her grief took the form of achievement. She poured herself into projects and the non-profit she founded. She powered forward, trying to get somewhere without really dealing with all she was feeling.

    Then an opportunity presented itself to participate in Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy, a form of treatment with promising outcomes in the mental health space. The treatment would enhance the neuroplasticity of her mind and facilitate progress which would typically take years of work. 

    In 4 sessions, Vanessa experienced a transformation that changed her experience of her brother’s death and her entire outlook on life. It even provided her the opportunity to see him one last time and give him the goodbye she’d always wanted.

    Episode Resources

    Connect with Vanessa

    Connect with The Courage to Change

    Lionrock Resources

    ****

    Episode Transcript

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Coming up on this episode of The Courage to Change sponsored by Lionrock.life.

    Vanessa Hurr:

    I spoke to a good friend of mine during that time too, and she said something to me that has stuck with me. She just said, “You know, I never worry about you.” And my immediate thought was, “Wow. Well, I must do a really good job of playing this off, like everything is fine.” Not only have I convinced myself that tomorrow is a new day and we’re just going to keep trudging along. But I have told everyone, “Don’t worry about me. I’m okay. Here we are just going through the motions.” It’s like, “Wow, you’ve got everyone fooled, including yourself.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Hello, beautiful people. Welcome to the Courage to Change Recovery podcast. My name is Ashley Loeb Blassingame, and I am your host. And today, we have an awesome episode for you. We have Vanessa Hurr back with us. Vanessa considered herself a high functioning, sad person after the death of her brother to an overdose in April 2020. The grief and sense of loss surrounding his death was compounded with extreme isolation due to COVID. Vanessa was previously on the Courage to Change in episode 117, and at the time, her grief took the form of achievement.

    She poured herself into projects and the nonprofit she founded. She powered forward trying to get somewhere without really dealing with all she was feeling. Then, an opportunity presented itself to participate in ketamine assisted psychotherapy, a form of treatment with promising outcomes in the mental health space. The treatment would enhance the neuroplasticity of her mind and facilitate progress, which would typically take years of work.

    In four sessions, Vanessa experienced a transformation that changed her experience of her brother’s death and her entire outlook on life. It even provided her the opportunity to see him one last time and give him the goodbye she always wanted. In addition, we have Lacie Hamilton here, Vanessa’s guide, and a licensed therapist to give us some analysis, add some color, and offer some expertise explanation around what it is that Vanessa experienced. It is an incredibly powerful episode that highlights what recovery can look like, what recovery from trauma can look like, and another modality of treatment.

    I want to be clear that we are not advocating this for every person. We understand that especially those suffering with addiction might be triggered by this conversation, especially if you’re new into recovery. And if that’s the case, I invite you to skip this one. You can always come back to it at another time. All therapies should be done responsibly. As you’ll hear, this therapy is done with incredible care and expertise. The Courage to Change is here to shed light on all different types of recovery, all different modalities, and all different experiences. This is just another one of those.

    We are not suggesting that this is the right one for you, only that this is another option out there that some people have found success with. Again, if you’re in early sobriety and this might be triggering for you, I invite you to make a really good decision. So, without further ado, I give you Vanessa Hurr and Lacie Hamilton. All right, everybody. Let’s do this.

    You are listening to the Courage to Change, a Recovery podcast. We are a community of recovering people who have overcome the odds and found the courage to change. Each week, we share stories of recovery from substance abuse, eating disorders, grief and loss, childhood trauma, and other life-changing experiences. Come join us no matter where you are on your recovery journey. Ladies, Lacie, Vanessa, thank you so much for being here.

    Vanessa Hurr:

    Happy to be back.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    This is very exciting. I am really, really loving our sequel to actually both your episodes. We are going to talk today, Vanessa, specifically about some amazing work that you have done. Can you talk a little bit about why you wanted to do this in the first place?

    Vanessa Hurr:

    So, Lacie and I were connected and we found an opportunity for me to be able to do some ketamine assisted psychotherapy sessions with her as my guide. And after having gone back and listened to my original episode with you, I can so distinctly see the hurt and the pain emanating from that session. And to do a quick recap, in that original episode, I had talked about how in April of 2020 there was a lot of change. The pandemic was full force. We were all kind of hunkering down.

    I was at home celebrating my son’s first birthday as one does via Zoom, and I had gotten a call from my parents that said that we had lost my big brother and it was to overdose.  My sister and I showed up at that motel room before the police got there, and we were with my brother who had clearly passed. He was on the floor. We could see what had transpired in the motel room. There was some blood from where he had hit himself in the face when he had collapsed. And it was just a surreal experience.

    When re-listening to that episode, I can almost hear my mom crying. I can picture my dad outside pacing this motel room door. And in the months after that, I go back to a lot of what that looked like. We weren’t able to hold a memorial service for him. People couldn’t even come to my home to grieve with me. It was isolating, it was devastating. It was heartbreaking.  I had two children under the age of two in my home and I had just started a new job.

    Previously, I’d worked in the live events industry for over 10 years as a photographer, and that was completely of 180 from what I started doing with my new role, which was remote work and development. So, everything was very uncertain, very different and scary and sad and hard. So, going back to listening to that episode where I talked about all of the things that I wanted to do to try and make that situation of lost right.

    I wanted to be working to get my nutritional consultant certification, so people that were suffering from substance use disorder, I could talk through what that could look like from a food perspective in terms of healing through this basic necessity of food. I started a nonprofit so that I could do things in my own community in terms of helping people build momentum in their recovery from substance use disorder, anxiety, depression, PTSD. And I’m hearing myself talk on that episode and I’m talking, talking, talking, trying to power through and soldier through that avalanche of grief. And so, my encounter with Lacie could not have come at a better time.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Lacie, did you listen to the episode?

    Lacie Hamilton:

    I did not. I went into my interactions with Vanessa really wanting to be with her in the moment, whatever that was going on. I had context. I knew about her brother’s overdose. That is typically how I run sessions too. I meet with people beforehand definitely, but I don’t have to have the full-on history. Similar to other therapeutic modalities where enough context to get us through is what we can work with and not necessarily needing every nitty-gritty details. We don’t want to re-traumatize.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Vanessa, what did you know about any type of psychedelics or ketamine before you knew it was being used in a therapeutic way?

    Vanessa Hurr:

    I knew that as a teenager, I had really embraced the rave scene and it was fantastic. But again, it was never a situation where it was closely monitored. Decades ago as a teenager, it wasn’t something that was prescribed to me. So, when the topic of ketamine assisted psychotherapy got on my radar, and then as part of my professional life and I’m having to read these research articles and studying and becoming aware of organizations like MAPS that are so profoundly committed to educating and reducing human suffering. MAPS is the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies.

    And they are truly at the forefront of really harnessing and honing in on educating people, providing resources, sharing information on trials and studies about the headway that’s being done with psychedelics. And again, in reducing human suffering, whether it’s PTSD, anxiety, depression, trauma, eating disorders, what they are doing is incredible. So, really coming across pieces of information like that, I was like, “Wow.” Well, prior to talking to Lacie, doing the research, doing the research, I’m like, “This is really incredible.” And she was talking me through, “What do you think you want to talk about?”

    And I couldn’t help but have this overload of tears when the subject came up that I couldn’t even, I was like, “Where did that just come from?” I couldn’t even make it through the conversation with her without saying this happened and I am so clearly suffering. And going back to what you said, the only words that I can describe that period of life would be existing as a highly functioning sad person.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, I love that description. I think it really cuts to the bone for anyone who has had that experience. And I think there are so many highly functioning sad people. And the difference between experiencing sadness and being sadness, all of us experience sadness. We might even experience sadness for chunks of time. But when you’re a sad person underneath, you’re experiencing happiness. But ultimately, the foundation is sad. It’s not a mixture of things, it’s a layering and the sadness is always present at some level.

    And I think people with depression and all sorts of different struggles experience this. And I just love that description. It really is, it’s basic. I’m a high functioning sad person. So many people are going to hear that and go, “Yeah, me too, me too. And I want to jump in here as the resident alcoholic, both of you did not struggle with advanced addiction, did not find yourselves in the throes of addiction. And ketamine assisted psychotherapy is a touchy subject for people who struggle with substance use disorders and people who treat substance use disorders and I am well aware of that. And I know that having this conversation for people who struggle with substance use disorder can be triggering.

    So, if you are feeling triggered, I encourage you to take a beat and listen to some other episodes. The value of what we are about to talk about goes beyond the modality of what was used in this session. I do think it’s very interesting, but what we are about to talk about is what it can look like to heal from trauma. So, I encourage you if you’re able to listen to that piece and listen for the thread of, “Oh my gosh, what can be done? What can be experienced?” And people who have really stable recovery are able in a very controlled environment at times, depending on the case to use ketamine assisted psychotherapy safely to do this type of work.

    But I want to be clear that in this situation, that was not part of either of your experiences. And so, if you are looking at it from that perspective, we are not including that at the moment. Right now, we’re just talking about using it to really recover from trauma in a very controlled, monitored, safe by the book environment. There’s my spiel. So, Lacie, can you tell me about the setup for the first session? And then I want to hear what that was like for you, Vanessa, on your end.

    Lacie Hamilton:

    So, I met with Vanessa before the medicine ever became involved like I do for any of my people. And I really get to know what are we hoping to get out of this? And I like to use the magic wand question when people are like, “God, I don’t know. I just don’t want to feel this way anymore.” Or whatever it is that come up. If you had a magic wand, what would that look like? What does that actually mean to you? And that’s where I really started to get the gist of Vanessa’s story in detail that she was still suffering.

    We had this conversation and like she mentioned earlier, this well of emotion came up and it was very clear to me that her grief process was not where she wanted it to be. That happens quite a bit. Grief comes up pretty much in every single session that I’ve come across so far. And not grief in the way that she was experiencing necessarily of loss and death. There are other griefs that come into play, loss of identity, loss of dreams, hopes, maybe all of the above. And compounding her grief was maybe even some grieving on behalf of her brother and what he lost in this as well.

    And I am getting chills right now thinking about her story. She decided to just blow the lid off of this thing. And a lot of times, we go in pretty gently with the first session and she wanted to head on. And I was like, “Okay, wow. We’re going there. This is going to be massive,” and it was. And so, we come into the session for the actual medicine session, and I always spend a pretty good chunk of time talking about the intention, mainly because a lot of people come in and they’re like, “Oh, well, I want to talk about this.” And then, they give me 15 minutes of material. It’s really hard to go into a session with something like that to hold onto as your guidepost.

    And so, what I do is I take something that’s way up here and I filter it down into a statement, a question, an affirmation, whatever it needs to be. And so, through talking to Vanessa, that’s what we got to.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Two things about that. Number one, were you in person?

    Lacie Hamilton:

    We were not in person. We did this just like we’re doing this now. So, it was live.

    Vanessa Hurr:

    Thousands of miles away. Yeah.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yep. Okay. And then, the other piece you said, I take this and fill, and for those of you just listening, you showed a funnel with your hands. I take this big idea and I filter it down. Can you give an example of the said idea and filter it down to this phrase? What would that look like?

    Lacie Hamilton:

    I actually think this would be great to have Vanessa jump in and how she shared this massive thing and then what we got to out of all of this grief coming, pouring out and how we whittled it down.

    Vanessa Hurr:

    It’s borderline embarrassing, right? Because I felt like Lacie and I were having a normal conversation as we are now and started talking about what these sessions could look like. I did not mean to just unload, but I’m like, “Well, here it is, and here’s how I’m feeling so deeply about this thing.” My glass is half full. So, I feel like since my brother’s death in April of 2020, it’s always been like, “Well, tomorrow’s a new day and everything’s going to be fine, and I’m fine.” Here’s all the things that I’m doing to combat this grief, and here’s how I’m going to make this right, keeping myself incredibly busy, embarking on 10 million things.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    You know what fine stands for, right?

    Vanessa Hurr:

    Huh?

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Fucked up, insecure, neurotic, and emotional.

    Vanessa Hurr:

    Great. It sounds about right.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Fine. There you go.

    Lacie Hamilton:

    I do just want to shed light on here that Vanessa keeps on using the word doing. “I was doing so many things.” And this is where we shifted a lot of, I am doing, distraction is a wonderful tactic to get away from dealing with trauma. And we leaned in the opposite direction and went with feeling, which is pretty common. She was doing a lot of things to avoid the feeling.

    Vanessa Hurr:

    I spoke to a good friend of mine during that time too, and she said something to me that has stuck with me to that day. And she just said, “You know, I never worry about you.” And my immediate thought was, “Wow. Well, I must do a really good job of playing this off like everything is fine.” Not only have I convinced myself that tomorrow is a new day and we’re just going to keep trudging along, but I have told everyone, “Don’t worry about me. I’m okay. Here we are just going through the motions.” It’s like, “Wow, you’ve got everyone fooled, including yourself.”

    But so, Lacie and I have got it on our calendar. We’re going to do this first session. I go over to a girlfriend’s house so that I’m not in my home. It’s a lot less distractions. It’s child free home, and I have my medication, I have my eye mask, I have my journal, got my laptop set up. And I have it in my mind, having done psychedelics in the past that I have a very clear idea of how this whole thing’s going to go down. I’ve got this. Take my medication. I lay back in this black leather fancy Eames chair of my friends. The medication is coming on, and again, I have my eye mask on, so everything is completely dark.

    I wouldn’t say annoyed is probably not the right word, but also annoyed because I’m like, this is not nearly as intense as I thought it would be. I’m just swirling around in my thoughts. And Lacie and I had set an intention at the beginning of our session of it’s okay to grieve up until that point. Of course, you tell yourself it’s okay to grieve and that you should cry when you’re ready to cry. But when you have small children in your home and you have life and you have work, grief just kind of comes to you in waves. There’s really no preparing for that. No one can help you if you’re having a grieving moment and your children are there, you’re really just kind of powering through whatever it is.

    And so, I’m in my session and I keep trying to come back to my intention of it’s okay to grieve. It’s okay to be sad. I can cry right now. But my brain is telling me, “No, you’re not sad right now. We’re happy. We’re going to go through this session.” And now, I’m getting slightly frustrated at myself because I’m trying to come back to my homework and come back to my homework and say, “It’s okay to grieve. That’s what we’re here to do. So, grieve.” But my brain is fighting this. And it’s saying, “No, we’re not going to do that right now. You’re just going to keep wandering around.”

    And so, I’m sitting in this chair and I’m sitting in this chair, and at this point, it feels like decades have gone by. And all of a sudden in my earbuds, I can hear Lacie calling me back to the room, and she’s talking to me slightly. And almost as quickly as she finished her sentence, in the blink of an eye, all of a sudden, I’m standing, standing, right? I’m not literally standing. I’m lying in this chair. But in my experience, I’m standing and I’m walking through this field. It’s completely surrounded by these overgrown trees. I can only describe it as Northern Wisconsin.

    This tall grass is up to my knees. It’s covered in dew. Everything is a little bit wet. So, the tips of my fingers are getting wet. The boots on my feet are wet. I’ve got my favorite jean jacket on, and everything is completely bathed in this golden early morning light, and it’s dead quiet. I can’t hear the music anymore. I can’t hear Lacie talking. I am watching myself from a third point of view, almost like I can see myself from the shoulders down, just walking. I have my hands in my tucked into my jean pocket and my head’s kind of down.

    And then, I hear Lacie talking to me, and she said, “What are you feeling right now?” And I just said, “I am exhausted. I have been walking for miles and days and I am so tired. My legs are so tired.” You can hear a pin drop. It’s so quiet. And I just lifted my gaze and I just saw my big brother standing there, and he was maybe 10 feet in front of me. And it stopped me in my tracks because in that moment I just said, “Oh my God, he’s been sitting here waiting for me this entire time to get to him.” And he looked good. He looked like he was in his 20s, and he had this white crew neck sweatshirt on.

    My family calls me Nessy, but he always called me Nessa. And he just said my name. And I just walked up to him and I threw my arms around his neck, and I just buried my face into his neck. And I just said, “I just miss you so much and I love you so much.” And we just stood there for a minute and just hugged. And then I could hear Lacie talking to me, trying to call me back into the room. And I just kept thinking to myself, “I am not ready. I do not want to go. I just want to be right here with him.” And he and I just stood there and just hugged.

    And almost as quickly as that came, it started to dissipate. And I was so hesitant to let that go. I did not want to come back. And I started to be aware, very aware that I was back in this room and I lifted up my blindfold and it’s wet and it’s covered in tears. And I just thought, “Oh my God, what just happened?” Because I spent three quarters of that session feeling like I was doing nothing. And at the very end, this amazing, incredible thing has happened. And then, I just wake up and Lacie’s face is just on the screen in front of me. And I’m like, “What? Okay.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    So, do you think that in that experience, and thank you for sharing that with us. I was trying to hold this together. What you needed was to have to be able to see him. What? So, other than missing him and seeing him, I think a lot of people who’ve lost a loved one might say, “Well, I can’t handle that.” I do not want to see, what if they come back in a way that is upsetting or what is it about that experience for you that is useful as opposed to just more longing?

    Vanessa Hurr:

    Lacie helped me get to this point of what I was carrying around for so long, felt so heavy. I thought that setting that down would have been such a betrayal. And it’s hard for me to still articulate that. But being able to say goodbye and express just how much he means to me was anything but a betrayal. Because now, when my mind, if I drive past that shitty motel, or if I smell a smell or if I have a memory that takes me to where I was in that motel room, it is almost instantly replaced with me being in this field, in this golden light with this embrace that was just like my heart is in that image now. And Lacie can tell you some of the things that helped us get to that space.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah. Lacie, tell me a little bit about what was going on your end, what you saw.

    Lacie Hamilton:

    Yeah, I’m probably public enemy number one right now. Maybe the audience is being like, “Why the fuck did she call her back? Let her stay there. Why does she keep on coming in?”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I mean, fair, fair. Trying to get you off the rollercoaster early.

    Lacie Hamilton:

    And as much as I want to give people and all the experience, there is an average duration time of how long an experience lasts and it’s about 45 minutes, give or take. And so, we were coming up against that time. And so, there’s things that I look for as a therapist that they might be coming out of that experience. There are things that I look for as a therapist that lets me know that people are “coming back into the room,” for lack of a better phrase. There’s really no other way to put that. And becoming more aware and the level of dissociation is diminishing greatly. And I was picking up on those things for Vanessa.

    The other thing I want to call too is the time ceased to exist. What the hell is time on ketamine? Especially even without ketamine, I’m like, what is time? But Vanessa felt like she was doing “nothing” for a vast majority of this. There’s really no way for us to tell that that could have been a split second, and then this walk in the meadow was there. But what we do afterwards is meaning making, we’re going to process this. What happened? What was it like? What did it feel like most importantly? And what kind of meaning does Vanessa want to take out of that?

    And so, we talked a lot about this constant walking and how tiresome that is and running that parallel to all of the things she’s been “doing” to honor her brother. And all of these things that just, I need to do these things in order to honor him and his memory subconsciously avoiding the feelings and that it’s okay to feel sadness. Feelings are scary. They are big. They only last actually fairly briefly, but people associate them with this massive shift. And then, sometimes, we get stuck.

    And so, I tell people that the goal is not to never feel sadness again. The goal is to feel sadness when it is appropriate. If I’m constantly carrying around sadness, that’s my baseline. That’s the emotion that I’m associated with. We want to do something about that. We want to feel something about that. And so, we want to lean into those feelings because there is something there that needs to be dealt with. And this goes for pretty much all trauma treatment. And the meaning making that we essentially came out with Vanessa was, “I’m walking, I’m walking, I’m walking. I’m doing, I’m doing, I’m doing, I’m so exhausted.” The idea of putting down or letting go, that one comes up quite a bit in intention setting. And it is big. It’s a hefty one. It’s very scary.

    And Vanessa’s, word of betrayal I think is a great word that comes up often in my other sessions of, “Oh my God. But if I put something down, if I let that go, what is that going to look like for me? What is that going to feel like that? But I know what this feels like to carry this around.” A lot of times, we end up stumbling accidentally on acceptance or “I don’t necessarily have to let something go, but can I put it down right beside me knowing that I could pick this back up if I needed to?” It’s a little brain trick.

    Something in Vanessa’s session allowed her. I don’t think that she necessarily let something go or put something down, but she went through the grief process and she had been not wanting to really lean into the feelings of sadness. Life gets in the way sometimes. “I’ve got two kids, I’ve got a nonprofit, I’ve got a new job. I have to be the one taking care of everybody else right now, and I’m just going to do all these things to do the honoring,” which I think is very lovely. What was she doing for herself? And so, all of these things are done for somebody else, and she is probably getting something out of them that is purposeful and that’s a wonderful thing.

    Me as a, I don’t care. I don’t care about her nonprofit, I don’t care about her nutrition, her kids. I mean, I care about them, but I don’t really want to see them in here. What are you doing for your yourself? What really needed to happen was this feeling. She remembers the motel. She remembers that feeling. She remembers her brother. She remembers the call. None of that went away, but the last memory has changed and it came out of this experience. And so, now, she has essentially something else.

    When I look back on my brother’s life, I don’t have to be immediately transported to this place with so much despair and sadness, I can remember something else. And what does that allow me to do? That allows me to remember all of the other things about him. It wasn’t just this.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Take me through the next couple of sessions, Vanessa, because it sounds like, wow, this is amazing. Why did we stop here? Are we done?

    Vanessa Hurr:

    I came out of that not thinking this was amazing. I came out of that thinking, “I have so many questions. I feel so unsettled.” I was so exhausted and tired and felt more confused than before because I’m one, what the hell just happened? Two, Jesus, we have more sessions to do. And three, I was like, okay, well now I think I’d like to start doing these in my home. I have this little basement office that has a spare bed and everything, so I’m going to do these at home. See how that goes. My husband would check in on me occasionally during these sessions, but I’m like, “Okay.”

    Session two, I’m confused. I’m unsettled. I would use those words. I just kept thinking, I’m not fixed. There’s still a big part of me that feels like something is missing. What is missing? And there’s this phrase that I heard once, which is, I miss you. But in French, I took a lot of French in high school and went to France last year, but it’s to my monk, which more loosely translates into instead of, I miss you, but you are missing from me. And that felt so prominent in this session.

    So, I start my session with Lacie. I take my medication. Now, I’m on my home turf. I’m in my spare bedroom. So, session two, trying to sort out what still feels like it’s missing. What is off here? What is so unsettling? And I’m immediately transported into these images. And again, I’m seeing things from a third-party perspective. And it’s me and all of my siblings doing these family rituals. We are carving pumpkins together. And my dad has the huge VHS recorder. My big brother was five years older than me, my sister’s three years older than me, and then I have a twin brother.

    So, we’re all young. We’re making this huge mess, and we’re just carving pumpkins together. The feeling of joy is there. The words family unit keeps coming to my mind. I’m not feeling unsettled. If anything, everything feels very harmonious in those moments. My brain keeps also shifting from that. And I keep finding myself in my Chicago apartment, which was where I first lived with my now husband, Matt. But I’m there by myself. It’s my wedding weekend. That’s what I’m feeling. And the excitement of that is palpable. So, I’m bouncing back and forth between these two spaces of just feeling this love and excitement and then going back to these childhood memories, which are so vivid and clear.

    I remember coming out of that session just feeling like I slowly start waking up, and I’m trying to articulate to Lacie before, like when you wake up from a dream and you so desperately want to describe, so you don’t lose that feeling. And I’m talking to Lacie and I’m saying, no matter how it is that he died, which is so devastating in so many ways, we were so loved. He was so loved and I was so loved. But most importantly, him. And those moments, we had this family unit doing these very special things that we did every year, these rituals of love and connection. And that’s so beautiful.

    And I kind of quickly remembered. I had jotted down, I was like, carving pumpkins. When my brother had passed in April, we couldn’t hold a memorial service or a celebration of life until June of that year. But my dad had tasked me with getting all of these VHS tapes that he had onto a different form of us being able to share in these video clips. And so, I had taken them somewhere and put them on USB drives and into a Dropbox folder for everyone to be able to watch the files.

    And I never watched them. I just tucked them away, wasn’t ready to go there. But now, we had them for whenever. And I went back and I watched some of these video clips that I had, and it is exactly what is buried deep in my brain of these family activities. And knowing that that’s what lives in the deepest part of my brain is incredible.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Why is going back and remembering that so helpful in this process?

    Vanessa Hurr:

    There were people that were focused on the way that my brother died, as opposed to who I felt and who my family felt who he was. Yes, he died of overdose, but we know my big brother meant to be the most kind, the most generous, smiley, thoughtful, such a hard worker, outdoorsy guy, love to fish. And I think in those moments of just saying he was on his headstones as our beautiful boy, and I think of that and I say, our beautiful boy, he was so loved. What was missing was saying, “Well, yes, yes, this happened. And yes, this is how it went down, but look at this beautiful life and look at these beautiful memories that I know he shared because I have it too.” And this is our connection.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Lacie, are things at this point progressing in a way that’s familiar to you?

    Lacie Hamilton:

    I think so, yeah. Essentially, she accessed some core memories and we all have them good and bad. She came out feeling unsettled, which is also very common. And typically, why these things aren’t one session long and also happens in a lot of different other therapeutic settings, whatever it may be. We’re hashing out trauma. It’s not going to be fun. It’s not going to be done in one session. And more importantly, we’re starting to pull on some threads that are going to start to unravel a little bit. So, she came out feeling very unsettled, questioning a lot of things. “What the hell happened? What was that? What does it mean? Okay, I’ve extracted some meaning. I’m noticing a shift in my feelings. Now I’m going to go into my next session asking questions. What exactly is missing here? I keep on getting this feeling that something’s missing.”

    And she got transported back into a core memory of, “Oh yeah, the thing that is missing is that his incident around the death isn’t the only part of him. It is not the only part of me. It is not the only part of our family.” What’s missing started to lead into her third and fourth sessions as well, is this kind of shift in how she goes about life. The work really comes in afterwards of what is the meaning that Vanessa’s tying to that? What meaning does she want of it? What kind of changes is that going to lead to?

    Vanessa Hurr:

    It was so strange, and I feel like as an adult, and after talking with so many people, I think you’d agree. There are so many people who have these very turbulent, very traumatic childhoods, which is the opposite of what I experienced. But as an adult, I feel like there’s so many of us whose ships take on water later in life. And I feel like this is where this shift began after my second session. So, I’m about to start my third session. We changed my medication. It goes up very slightly. So, I know that things are going to be slightly different. And as I’m settling into my third session, almost an immediate sense of nausea, and it’s much more reminiscent of the psychedelic experience of my youth in that I have this immediate reaction of, “Oh no, this is too much. I am feeling unprepared.”

    It is a full body experience at this point. I know that I’m lying in bed, but I am unsettled in how extreme this experience has started off. “Am I going to be sick? What am I actually doing right now? Am I doing something weird?” But almost as soon as those things start impacting me, that feeling is lifted and I am comfortable. I’m waiting through thoughts. I’m trying to get back to the intention that Lacie and I had set of I’m okay and everything is okay because I’m okay.

    This goes on until again, the tail end of my session where it’s almost like within a split second, I can see myself from a third-party perspective. And I am at the top of my five-year-old’s bunk bed, and I can tell that it is bedtime and his room is cloaked in Christmas lights and it looks like TGI Friday’s in there. It’s just like, but it’s very dark. We’ve got our headlamps on and it’s just he and I in the top of this bunk bed, and we’re going through his flashcards because he’s learning how to read.

    So, we’re practicing our letters, we’re practicing our words, and it’s just he and I there in that moment. And I thought, “My God, it’s not I’m okay. We are okay. Because when mom is okay, everyone is okay.” And coming out of that session of warmth and love and just it’s very clear that we are going to be okay as a family unit. And now, I have my second session to back up. This is really what’s important here, these rituals of connection. And we’re okay because I’m okay was so powerfully impactful in what I take with me on my day today.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    This was the first session where you woke up feeling settled?

    Vanessa Hurr:

    I would say clear. It was so clear to me, also feeling very exhausted, just like my brain and body had gone through a marathon of emotion and progress, but also so clear at the same time of, “My gosh, this is what it is about.” And it’s just this small moment. I mean, we do this every single night, which can be a complete drain as a parent. But then, to be able to step outside of that and see it, I just thought, “My God, this is so beautiful.”

    Lacie Hamilton:

    Go through the motions every day. Vanessa got to experience that in a full body. What does it feel like for something to matter? And hers tied in beautifully with her second session. She had been going through these childhood memories. She went back to their old apartment in Chicago, their first apartment for her and Matt. We extracted some meaning out of that as well, of going back to the basics. The things that we do are so great, these ways that we honor these people that are important to us are magnificent.

    And at the same time, here I am this tiny little apartment, when we first got married, that was nothing spectacular. I couldn’t wait to get out of these childhood memories of carving pumpkins. And then, in present day of reading on a bunk with her son and essentially getting to the heart for her of this is what it’s all about. This is what matters to me for me.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Take us to your next session, Vanessa.

    Vanessa Hurr:

    So, now, my patience level at home where I used to feel like my fuse was so short because I’m clearly very busy doing 10 million stupid things and I just, I’m settling into a new way of life. I’ve discussed with Lacie that I’m like, “I think I just want to do one more session. I think I feel like I have made so much headway. I really love to go into this last one.” And so, her and I are walking through the intentions of really having reciprocity.

    So, we really went into my last session where I went to her and said, “I’d really love to make this my last session.” I’m having some relationships, whether it’s friends or family, personal or professional, where I feel like there’s a lack of reciprocity in terms of give and take. And so, I’d really love to visit that during my session, but it was also a little open-ended. It was a little unclear.

    So, leading up to my last session, in my own personal life, I’m putting together an event for my nonprofit and it is stressing me the fuck out. There are 10 million adults that are orbiting around me that have opinions. There are logistics. There are ideas and thoughts and budgets, and it’s expensive and funding and donors, venue walkthroughs, entertainment, needing the perfect DJ and the perfect this and the perfect that. Because when you’ve worked in live events for a long time, you know what’s the perfect potion for a good event. So, it has to look like this and it really needs this if it’s going to be special. And I want this and I want this and I want this person.

    So, you’re collectively putting together what you feel like is the A team, and that is stressful. And so, I get into my session. I’m about halfway through, and where I hadn’t expected this thing to go, I was like, “No, we’re going to be visiting these conversations around reciprocity and what that could mean to me in terms of my relationship.” And my brain’s like, “No, we’re not doing that. We’re going to talk about and be about what’s really important with what you’re trying to do with this nonprofit.”

    All of a sudden, I’m at this venue that I’ve chosen for my next nonprofit event and it’s just me. And I’m standing there and I have my three-year-old on my hip and my five-year-old is standing next to me. And no words are being exchanged, but it’s a feeling of a proud parent moment. Like, “Look at what’s possible and look at what we did.” And this is really what’s important. We’re bringing awareness to this topic that’s so important to us. We are serving communities outside of just our own and we’re here as a family.

    And up until that moment, I had seen my children on my to-do list as another task. I’m thinking, “This event’s going to be crazy. I’m going to need childcare.” So, they had been a task, another line item on my list of things to work through, when really now, I’m in this experience thinking, “No, they’re part of this. This is the why. We’re doing this together and we’re teaching and we’re showing.” And as I woke up from that experience for the first time, I felt so energized and so light and so settled and so clear on these other adults that can swirl around me.

    And the logistics of putting together such an involved event is empty and meaningless without these little people. And what is so close to my heart and what actually lives in my heart, which is we want to do these big things. And regardless of how it all goes down, this is really what’s important. It felt like the perfect bookend to my first session.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    When I’m hearing that I actually really relate to is this knowing that we have about what’s important, this intellectual understanding that we have about what’s important coming up against this, being able to feel what’s really important. We could tell you why we’re doing the event. We could give you the words to teach people and to educate. And we could write the mission statement. We probably don’t feel it. What we feel is the to-do list, what we feel are the dead deadlines, what we feel are the impending expectations and budgets.

    And I relate to that frankly, with a lot of life and parenthood, which is like, I understand why I’m doing and I understand what the important moments are. I understand that the importance are the memories. And also, I’m feeling the stress of what I have to get done instead of being able to enjoy the moment. And it isn’t that I don’t know I’m supposed to do it. It’s just I can’t access it. And it sounds like what this experience gave you was this opportunity to review, to reshuffle that photo album so that you could remember in the order you want to remember in, and then to access the feelings that go with the reasons.

    Vanessa Hurr:

    Totally. Totally. And I think what I accomplished in those sessions and that small amount of time we’re talking over the course of a few months, I can’t even imagine what that would’ve taken outside of this. The medication, the talk therapy, having made leaps and bounds in this small amount of time in such a profound way that every day is different for me now. It’s almost like I feel like I must have been a stranger to so many other people before that hadn’t known me and almost a stranger to myself in some aspects during that period of time.

    My fuse, in terms of my capacity for the small children kamikazeing around me, it’s different. I feel so much more calm. I feel so much more settled. I feel like I have a very clear understanding again of what’s important. Like you said, it ties so closely of what our to-do list, what it sounds like and what it actually feels like and looks like. And it’s just a very different way of life that I think would’ve taken me a lot longer to get to with other modalities of treatment for PTSD, which is how I would describe that experience with my brother.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Are you still a high functioning, sad person?

    Vanessa Hurr:

    No. No.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    So, that is not how you would define yourself?

    Vanessa Hurr:

    Not even a little bit. Not even a little bit. I wouldn’t even use those words.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    What words would you use now?

    Vanessa Hurr:

    Content. Oh, gosh. There’s such a deep sense of joy and love when I’m able to, those things in those sessions didn’t happen. I’m not crazy. I know that those things didn’t actually happen, but my brain goes there now and it swells my heart because so many of those things, whether it’s standing at this venue with my sons and we’re saying, “Look at this amazing thing that we did.” Or sitting at the top of a bunk bed or standing in a field, the love and joy and lightness that comes with that completely curtails anything that would’ve sent me into a downward spiral five months ago.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Well, this has been amazing, Vanessa. Thank you so much for your vulnerability, for sharing this experience with everyone. It is so helpful for people. I think so many people identify as a high functioning, sad person, and your story and experience are going to help many, many people, which is truly amazing and another piece of the honoring of Matt, your older brother. And Lacie, thank you for being a part of this and helping walk us through from your perspective.

    Lacie Hamilton:

    Thank you so much for having us here. We’re excited to share this with people as an alternative treatment modality and a different option to recovery. So, thank you for having us.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    That episode was so much fun to record.

    Scott Drochelman:

    Yes, I was weeping as we recorded. I could picture that scene with her brother so vividly. And I was by myself in my basement just weeping, just like, “This is the most beautiful thing. Oh, gosh.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I’m like, “Hold it together, Loeb. Hold it together. Hold it together. There’s no fucking crying in baseball. Pull it together.”

    Scott Drochelman:

    You were pinching yourself very hard. I could see it.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    So hard. It was so hard. I was like, “It’s not about you. Do not cry.”

    Scott Drochelman:

    Yeah, the cattle prod was a lot, but it worked. And you did keep the tears out your eyes.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. Listen, listen. You got to do what you got to do. I’m down for the cause.

    Scott Drochelman:

    Which I appreciate. No, I mean, I was with her in every session. I was with her there in the little pictures in my mind I was like, “Yes, yes, that is right, isn’t it? You’ve reached enlightenment, haven’t you? In four sessions?” Because I really resonated with your comment too, of trying to logic your way into healing or whatever.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Everything. Yeah.

    Scott Drochelman:

    I’ve done that a lot of times in my life where I’m like, “Well, I know what the right answer is exactly. I ought to be feeling right now. Well, I should just do what I ought to do and problem solved.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And problem solved. No insurance needed.

    Scott Drochelman:

    That’s all you got to do. You just got to will your way into it.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, it was incredible. And I also spent a lot of time thinking about how I wanted to try to shape people’s belief system about the process and legitimize it and get people to understand that people are using it to do real work. And at a certain point, I was like, look, like in, oh, by the way, this is a single conversation I’m having with myself very quickly, but I told myself that, I mean, I’m like, if you’ve done therapy, you probably understand that this amount of work takes a lot of time and a lot of sessions. If not, it certainly sounds like an amazing outcome to feel contentment and to change the last image of your loved one. So, I was able to let that go.

    But I know that particularly my recovery community, my substance use disorder, recovery community, I mean, I know I really struggled with hearing about ketamine as therapeutic and people using it in therapy. And for me, I had to read the studies coming out of Johns Hopkins to start to wrap my mind around the legitimacy of what people are seeing. And I had to keep reading them because lots are coming out to see what the data was showing before I could really start to listen to the stories with a different ear, like I could put away that. And I was very much wanting to control the listener experience that way.

    Scott Drochelman:

    Yeah. And I think that makes sense because I think we’re trying to walk a careful line. This is not a, I think you heard it in way Ashley explained it. This is not a blanket statement that this is right for everybody or anything like that.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    No.

    Scott Drochelman:

    But I mean, I think with the show, we want to have a big tent. We want to have space for lots of ways for people to get to healing. And there’s just a lot of promising research backed findings about what the potential is for this. And the way that she didn’t describe it this way, but I’ve heard Lacie describe it. I think actually it was in the episode she did in season four where she talked about you’re tapping into neuroplasticity at that point. And that talk therapy was trying to solve a Rubik’s cube with one hand. What it did to the brain’s neuroplasticity was like, suddenly, you’re able to try to solve the puzzle with both hands. You have the ability to manipulate in that way.

    And as you could see in a few short sessions, there was potential for a massive amount of work that would’ve taken probably years. We both sincerely care about people getting better. And so, when there are promising things out there that could present a road to healing for folks, we want to talk about them.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Truly the goal is to recover, not to be the best at recovery.

    Scott Drochelman:

    It is a competition, though.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah. It is, it is. It feels like sometimes you can get into that feeling like a competition or feeling like do you want that door prize. But there are two things to that point. One is, not wanting to lose the amount of days and years I’ve accumulated in a specific program with a specific group of people have kept me from drinking at times because my ego is like, “No, bitch. Uh-huh. You are not going to be, you’ve earned your place in dysfunction junction.” But at the same time, I came to program to recovery, whatever, I came to this whole venture because my life was in shambles.

    And I came here to get well and to be happy and content and experience a full life. I didn’t come here to get the most years and the years have been a byproduct of the other work that I’ve done, but you can get lost in that. So, it’s both a carrot and a stick.

    Scott Drochelman:

    100%. So, this week we are rooting for you, as always. We hope that you have a wonderful week. Ashley, anything you want to leave the people with?

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    If you’re on this recovery journey or you’re new or you’re wondering where to start, don’t worry about starting in the right place. Just start somewhere. Anywhere is a great place to start. And I encourage you to do that this week. Anywhere you want to start, just start. Make a phone call, listen to a podcast, do some journaling, call a friend, watch a movie about the topic, whatever it is, and just start somewhere. All right. We’ll see you next week.

    This podcast is sponsored by Lionrock.life. Lionrock.life is a diverse and supportive recovery community offering weekly over 70 online peer support meetings, useful recovery information and entertaining content. Whether you’re newly sober, have many years in recovery, or you’re recovering from something other than drugs and alcohol, we have space for you. Visit www.lionrock.life today and enter promo code courage for one month of unlimited peer support meetings free. Find the joy in recovery @lionrock.life.

    Scott Drochelman

    Scott Avatar