#28: Inside an IFS Ketamine Retreat with Ted Riskin and Amy Borsky Duffer, A Psychiatrist’s Audio Diary.

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Hello.
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Welcome back, meaning seekers.
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This is a companion audio diary episode.
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A companion to my interview with Ted Riskin.
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It's a little different from my usual episodes.
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It's less organized.
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It's more personal.
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It's recorded stream of consciousness into my iPhone in real time as I go through a five-day internal family systems ketamine group retreat in Asheville, North Carolina.
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So you're going to hear short reflections recorded each day as I move through this experience.
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So if you're curious about psychedelic healing, internal family systems therapy, group processes, how these combine, or if you just want to see what goes on and what doesn't go on in my mind, the mind of a fairly mainstream psychiatrist who decides to attend one of these retreats, this episode might be interesting to you.
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For me, listening back a year later, I do feel like some impactful shifts happened that came from this experience.
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I took things away that were meaningful and impactful, not in a huge dramatic way, but in a quieter, subtler way that I'm still reflecting on and processing.
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So if this sounds interesting to you, come along.
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Let's travel back to the spring of 2025, and please join me as I head down to Asheville, North Carolina for this retreat with Ted and Amy and a really nice group of fellow seekers.
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And he is an expert in running these IFS ketamine retreats.
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The meeting was basically meeting him, meeting eight people who are coming from different places.
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About half of them are from around Asheville, and then the rest are scattered.
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And it seems like a really nice group of people.
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So basically he just introduced what is IFS, very nice, simple introduction with some cute videos.
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And then his assistant, I don't know if that's the right word, gave a little talk on the science of ketamine, how ketamine can boost neuroplasticity.
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And we're going to have one more Zoom meeting tomorrow.
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And pretty excited about it.
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A little bit nervous.
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We'll see.
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And I'm getting ready for this five-day IFS ketamine group experience, my intentions, just more inner balance, inner peace.
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I want to find a way to have more harmony between the parts of me that want creativity and self-expression, and parts that want connection.
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And those aren't easy to put together sometimes.
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I'm off by myself right now and not with my family.
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So I'm not with the people that I care most about, but I am taking care of myself in a way that I feel is really important.
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And so that's where I'm at.
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And I'll keep you posted.
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So it is Monday.
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I've been up for a while.
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It is an absolutely glorious day here in Asheville, up on the roof uh terrace, Airbnb of Ted Riskin, and I just feel really blessed.
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So yesterday was our first group in-person meeting.
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There were a couple Zoom meetings before that.
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And there's a group of eight of us, and then Amy and Ted.
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He has a basement that has a porch looking out into the woods with these clay walls and high ceilings and uh amazing sound system and big windows.
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And so we started with a circle and just getting to know each other and our intentions and um my intention in going into this is sort of an old inner conflict between parts of me that really want to be authentic and pursue interests and parts of me that really want to make sure that I stay connected to the people that I'm closest to.
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And that has been an inner tension ongoing for a while.
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Ted does a lot of work with anger, and there's a big cube that he has that you can whack with a baseball bat.
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I'll probably talk more about that.
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Not today.
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But um after our group, we got our medicine, we figured out our doses, it was oral medicine.
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I did a 300 milligram ketamine dose, and that is kind of medium-high for me.
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And part of my goal in this group experience is one to learn how group healing processes work, and then also to get some more experience myself.
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I don't necessarily, you know, I'm not dying to do more ketamine.
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It's not just like a fun thing, but I want to really become good at helping other people.
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And there right now is just a weird time in our field.
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There are a lot of dogmas, there are a lot of new tools, it's not really clear how to use them.
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So I feel like I just need to do some experiential learning.
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So I did a 300 milligram dose, and that kind of shot me into this euphoric dissolution.
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I it was a lot of green colors.
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There were stories.
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I'm not remembering all the stories, but really just sort of like my body disappearing and me sort of blending into this loving kind awareness of just like, oh wow, conscious, like where, what is consciousness and what and how does yeah.
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So I can't put it into words, but it was the sort of a euphoric dissolution with all kinds of storylines running, and the music and the sound system sort of just kind of kept moving things forward.
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I then, as I was sort of coming out of it, felt like, you know, a lot of my problems just sort of kind of came back.
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It was, I was sort of like beginning a journey with this sort of incredible hopefulness of like, oh, everything is gonna be great now, and then uh things kind of come back, and then we, after the sort of a two-hour journey, we all kind of get up and we had people brought their lunches.
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We had lunch on his terrace, which was nice, and then afterwards we kind of went back, and Amy led sort of a grounding, get into your body, very calm meditation for what seemed to be like an hour, and then we did another hour and a half sort of going around the group and everybody talking about their experiences.
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And yeah, people are coming in with lots of different stuff.
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And I'm not gonna talk about what other people are coming in with, but I feel like it's a nice, really nice group, split about half men, women, half people from Asheville, people from out of town.
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Yeah, and so then we we all said our goodbyes at around 4:30, people left.
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I decided to go on a hike, uh Mountain Gap Wallow or something like that.
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I have ChatGPT, finding all kinds of amazing hikes.
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And so I was driving, probably shouldn't say I was driving, but I was really feeling better again.
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But driving through these rolling hills, just spectacularly beautiful mountain rural landscape with farms and horses and bulls, and uh, and then getting up to this high mountain and going for a hike to this scenic overlook.
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So I've done a couple of nice hikes.
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I'm two for two in terms of hiking.
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And uh today uh we're not meeting, so the schedule is Monday, Wednesday, Monday, Tuesday, I mean Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday.
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Our group meets in person.
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And then today I'm sort of in air quotes working.
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Up on this deck, I have internet and I have a lot of stuff to catch up on.
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I'm gonna go for a hike in the evening.
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I'm gonna meet a friend of mine in Hickory.
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Friend of mine lives in uh in Greensboro, North Carolina.
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We're gonna meet in the middle.
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And uh so I'm looking forward to that.
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And uh that's my update.
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All right, good morning.
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It is Wednesday.
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Yesterday, we had our second group cap session.
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I didn't record anything yesterday morning because on Monday we kind of had a day off.
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So I was hanging out at this beautiful upstairs apartment in the woods, catching up on work and then going for a hike, and then meeting a friend of mine in uh Hickory.
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So today I'll tell you about yesterday, which I had initially thought that I would do a higher dose of the oral medicine, but I decided not to.
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I decided to kind of stick to the same 300 milligram dose.
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We met in the morning.
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The group is forming.
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There's eight of us and Ted and Amy, and we did kind of a reflection on our day after the first journey.
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I'm not gonna talk about other people's experiences, but I feel like people are sensing this sort of warmth and ability to kind of let go, reset, and I feel like there's this theme of like separating from parts and creating a moment to reset, and then working with themes of people want to really take up space and and then also anger and anger at critics, and we all did this uh hitting a big cube with a baseball bat and yelling, which was kind of wild.
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And that was led by Ted, who has kind of an expertise in IFS and working with angry parts.
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And then we all did our journey.
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I didn't go up in dose.
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Most other people did.
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And for me, it was kind of a safer, more pleasant experience.
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The first time it I really felt like I was kind of like shot out of my body, euphoric at the beginning, but then coming back to myself and taking a fresh look at some problems.
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And then yesterday I really realized that I I don't want to make massive changes.
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I want to continue looking for balance, just with presence and taking steps with intention, moving in a direction that I feel like I need to go building probably a clinic.
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So then afterwards we had lunch, and then we spent an hour.
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We can walk from Ted's porch down to this beautiful little stream, and he has this area where we could sit, and we were just sitting out in nature for an hour, and then came back and processed and talked about our journeys, and there was some reading of poetry.
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It's a wild experience to come together in a group of strangers and attempt a personal reset.
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It feels strange.
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It I'm not right now I am I'm awake, it's crisp, it rained overnight, the birds are chirping, I'm gonna be working here from home, catching up on things and reflecting.
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Just the quiet time in nature to reflect and be able to go on hikes and breathe clean air.
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That's kind of been my most memorable positive.
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And the area of Asheville with the rolling hills and the waterfalls and mountains, it's it's pretty beautiful.
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I'm impressed.
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There's a beautiful energy to this area.
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I'd love to come back.
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All right.
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So it's Friday.
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I'm back in the city.
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I left late afternoon.
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Yesterday, we had our third CAP ketamine psychotherapy group experience.
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And uh yeah, it was overall, I'm still soaking it in.
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I feel like this has been pretty amazing, pretty eye-opening.
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What I noticed is the group just became more close, more open.
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People just kept opening and opening up things in a way that felt really healing.
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And, you know, it was pretty amazing.
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People start off skeptical and reserved, and then they really get into some deep stuff.
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And to have a loving, supportive group.
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There's eight group members, really varied backgrounds, and then there's Ted and Amy, and it's in this beautiful space.
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It's this healing energy of the space and the group, and I feel like it's just been really, really helpful for me.
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So a lot of just soaking in the spirit of the trees and of nature and bringing that back with me, much more happy and relaxed and ready to just kind of settle in and do work.
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I am still having a lot of things rumbling around in my mind.
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We did the journey yesterday.
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I did 200 milligrams, which was a lower dose.
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I didn't really want to have a super high dose, and a lot of other people went with higher doses, kind of kept building to higher doses, and I still had just a beautiful journey experience on 200 milligrams.
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It did not feel like less meaningful.
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It felt like I was really able to connect with a lot of love that I'm holding inside me for people I care about, for the planet, and for my parts.
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Parts that are angry, parts that are creative, parts that are we did a lot of work with anger and appreciating angry parts that help set boundaries and protect us.
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And we're trying to remember there was a critic, a sort of appreciating our critics because they bring hope, right?
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That there's sort of this idea that I'm criticizing myself because I have this hope that I can be better.
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And the idea that the intention of hope goes along with critical inner parts is kind of a neat idea.
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So a lot of neat realizations, a lot of beautiful energy, and an overall feeling of hopefulness and optimism that we can make really big changes in ways that are much more impactful and quicker than I had been taught in the past.
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And so yeah, I'm excited and hopeful.
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This was an amazing experience.
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We're gonna have one more Zoom session after a week, which I'm really thankful about because it just feels very abrupt to end a group like this kind of one day to the next.
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And um yeah, I'll probably interview Ted, do a podcast.
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We'll see.
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So thank you for listening.
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Hello to everybody in my group.
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If you are listening to this, I am so curious what happened to everybody else and how this process continued to play out in all of you.
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I feel like I made some shifts, let go of some inner tension, and got to know what's happening inside me in interesting ways.
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I remain really curious about group processes.
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And if you are too, you're really gonna like the next episode where I do another group internal family systems experience in Asheville with the great Chris Burris, who is the creator of the Healing Circles model of internal family systems group therapy.
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And we do a group experience where he teaches a group of ten of us at his house how to run these groups.
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And so next episode we will meet Chris Burris and I'll take you along for another one of these journeys.