Ketamine helped me live to see my 30th birthday | Ember Health Patient Stories: Dylan

In October of 2025, trans sex educator and Ember Health patient Dylan volunteered to tell their story as a part of a storytelling project run by documentarian Chandler Kauffman. The objective of the project is to raise awareness about how IV ketamine works to treat depression, and who it may help. We are humbled to serve extraordinary people like Dylan and others in our community so that they may experience the relief they deserve, realize their full potential, and make their marks in their communities.

You can read Dylan's full transcript below. If you’re seeking relief from depression and curious to explore care at Ember, we invite you to schedule a consultation call with a clinician from our team to understand whether IV ketamine care may be a fit.

As someone who works in queer and trans education, I know the statistics of how many trans youth do not see 18. And I was just like, I have no interest in contributing to the statistics of trans people who die by suicide before a certain age.

I'm Dr. Dylan Capit. I use they/them pronouns. I am a sex educator, autism researcher. My background is in elementary special ed. I left the classroom to get a PhD and my PhD research is at the intersection of sex ed, autism, and queer and trans issues.

I, as an autistic, queer and trans person, did not get the education, the sex ed in particular, but the education that I wish I did. Being othered and living a life where I hold multiple marginalized identities has helped me connect to the youth I would like to be working with. Getting to pay that forward for the next few generations I think is really healing for me and also makes the difference in the world that I've always wanted to make.

My mental health journey has been hard. I was a very anxious kid. I started an SSRI when I was 7 or 8. I came out like 10, 11, 12. Faced a lot of bullying and discrimination in school. I had been bullied a lot of my life for being different. My 20s were also kind of hard. I was 26 when I started grad school. It was the beginning of the pandemic. It was fall 2020 and my mental health just went downhill from there. I spent the first semester of grad school abusing alcohol. Finally got sober.

I'd been on SSRIs for 21 years and, like nothing was working. I switched meds and then I switched to another medication and then I feel like I'm out of options. And my therapist was like, "Okay, you have treatment resistant depression.” I'm 28 and I would like to live to see 30, but that feels really unachievable right now. And my therapist was like, "Have you considered trying ketamine therapy?" And I was like, "I have not. I've never heard of this. I have a history of substance abuse, so the idea of a substance-assisted treatment really scares me." My psychiatrist was like, "I think actually it would do wonders for you." And I was like, "Okay."

Ember Health was a direct recommendation from my therapist. Coming to Ember Health, I was stressed and they were like, "Okay, let's help you." There's a very different, calm, relaxed vibe in a way that I really needed. I feel like that's a very different approach here at Ember to most doctors who are like, "Let's get you in and out and like here's your prescription or here's your medication, you're on your way." And I feel like here at Ember, they were much more like, "Okay, what do you need?" They ask how you're doing. And they actually want to know, first of all, which I feel like a lot of doctors don't versus, like, coming somewhere and you're like, “I'm really struggling to live” and they're like, “Okay let's talk about it."

Doing it in a location where I am being watched the whole time makes a huge difference for me. I know people who get, like, the nasal spray and they can do that on their own time and I was just like, there's no world in which I should be doing that. I'll be 5 years sober in January. I still do not want to have access to anything that I could abuse. So I think one of the only reasons that I was willing to do it is because I knew that someone would be in the room with me the whole time. It was nice to know, like, no matter where my brain took me some places– sometimes it was very scary– you are being held in that space by someone in the room. It was really grounding for me that there was someone there to listen and to hold space with me while I was going through it.

I started to see an effect pretty quickly and so I was like, I have to keep doing this because this is the most relief I have felt in, you know, years. After treatment I was just, like, great I did it and now I have a will to live. I have since been diagnosed with OCD. I went to get ketamine infusions for depression. I think it also did a lot for helping me work through my anxious spirals that I now know are an OCD symptom. And I think I was just so, like, inside myself and in my head for so many years that I just couldn't see any of that.

I remember during my first infusion and I was like, "Ooh, something I thought I had dealt with in therapy that I think I had not." For me, it was just like a lot of really vivid memories. I think ketamine brought up for me all of the things over the years that had, like, aggregated and landed me at the point that I was at where I needed to start ketamine. And I think some of what it did was like set free those things so that I could be like, "Okay, I do need to work through this." Um, and then could bring those things back to my therapist who was in contact with Ember Health."

I turned 31 a few weeks ago. I don't think I would have turned 30 if I had not done the ketamine. It just pulled me out of a hole that I had been digging for myself for so many years. My family has been like, "I have not seen you laugh like that in many years." My best friend was like, “I have not seen you smile like that in many years."

I would like to be an old trans person. There are not a lot of old trans people. A lot of us don't grow up. Every life is worth living. So, I think that having hope that, you know, there's a better future for all of us, that there's a we're going to make a better world together, that your life will get better if you're willing to seek the treatment that you need. It's important for other LGBTQ+ people to know that Ember Health is an affirming space. When I was growing up, I had no idea that my life would be this good in my 30s. You can't imagine at 18 what being 30 is going to be like. And then you get there and you're like, "Oh my god, I have created this life for myself that I'm so proud of."