Ketamine helped me come out of the cave on my own | Ember Health Patient Stories: Doc

For more than 50 years, Doc Zorthian built his life and identity around a career in theatre, including 25 years with The Lion King. When that chapter of his career came to an end, depression began to take up more and more space in his life. In this installment of our Patient Stories series, Doc shares how IV ketamine treatment, alongside talk therapy, has helped him quiet the “looping,” regain confidence and motivation, and move forward.

You can read Doc's full transcript below.

I’ve always had — I don’t know what to call it. I don’t want to call it depressed. I’ve had those kind of tendencies, because I don’t like the word “depressed.” It sounds like you’ve done something wrong. There shouldn’t be any shame about it, and I think it’s out there more than people realize.

My name is Doc Zorthian. I’m a production supervisor in theatre. I’ve worked for over 50 years in theatre. I’ve worked opera, Broadway, Off-Broadway, regional theatres — all kinds of theatre. For 25 years, I worked on The Lion King. I was part of the original company. My responsibility was to open all the shows and maintain them around the world.

When the curtain goes up and the room is silent, it’s very powerful. It’s rewarding, because that means you did something right.

I was traveling maybe 320 days a year, never home. We’re talking 30, 40 years of this kind of life.

‍I married my job. I divorced the rest of my life.

When the job ended, my depression escalated because I had nothing to fill that void. I basically wasn’t functioning. It was a chore doing dishes. It was a chore shaving. It was a chore doing those things that you take for granted. And the "depression" took over.

On top of all of that, I had long COVID, which just seemed to add to my inability to achieve stuff, my lack of motivation, my constant tiredness. The combination of the two, I believe, affected my confidence and my sense of worth.

I was going to a talk therapist, and he suggested I check out Ember. And it worked for me. I mean, it’s really kind of that simple.

Everybody at Ember is very attentive. I feel totally taken care of. In the treatment, there’s a person with you the whole time. I’ve been having this treatment for now two years, and I had one bad one, and the person was right there with me and helped me out of it.

Christey’s great. I feel like I’m her only patient, you know? She personalizes it. She makes you feel cared for. I feel totally safe. She adjusts what she does to what you bring into the room.

Talk therapy and the ketamine treatment — they do work together. You come up with discoveries when you’re doing the ketamine. It just lets you free-associate your emotions, which is, I think, what mental health is all about.

I had a situation where I had a disagreement with a friend, and it came up one day in treatment. I called her up, and we resolved it. Talk therapy and the ketamine helped me get to that point and took one thing off my list of the things that bring me down.

I mean, the main thing that ketamine has done for me is to take away the looping, and I was a big looper. If someone looked at me cross-eyed, I would have the same reaction, and it would last for days and days, and I would just replay the moment: Was it that person? Is it me?

What this treatment has done is helped me go forward.

It’s lightened those heavy moments. It’s brought light to the darkness. A friend of mine says that when I get dark, it’s like trying to get me out of a cave. What this treatment has done is allowed me to come out of the cave on my own.

My life since Ember has been terrific. The treatment has given me confidence. It’s given me motivation. It just puts your mental health in the right proportion with everything else in your life.