Thorny Issues: The Story Behind a Painting About Ketamine Therapy

This is the story behind this image

By Barbara Bose

I keep a dream diary under my pillow. I don’t usually remember all the content of my nightly Netflix, but I generally manage to scribble down something. Even if it’s just a phrase, I find the imagery insightful, symbolic, and often very entertaining.

As an artist (and a big fan of Carl Jung), I find the universal symbolism of dreams remarkably similar to that of art itself—a language in which we are all fluent. I don’t usually have time to illustrate all my dreams, of course, but when the waking world steps in to validate one, I see it as a special message worthy of memorializing.

Here is how the idea for this painting unfolded for me.

One night, I dreamed that I found myself naked in a cornfield. Luckily, there was a hydrangea vendor nearby, so I covered myself with some of his colorful, puffy blossoms. Among the flowers in my bouquet were several thorny sticks. The hydrangea man warned me against the thorns, explaining that “they are only for musicians to clean their instruments with,” so I let them go.

Then he added, “…but natural things are OK.”

The next day, my husband and I flew from Florida to Boston for a tour of New England. My mission was to revisit some of my old haunts. I wanted to walk past every address where I had lived in Boston—and there were many—as well as visit my old college, friends, and family.

Everywhere we went, there were enormous mounds of hydrangeas in full bloom, bursting with color. It was a banner year for them, and their beauty accompanied us throughout our journey across Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.

The dream’s imagery had been so immediately echoed by reality that I couldn’t help feeling there was a message in it for me.

At the time, I had been wrestling with my therapist’s suggestion that I undergo ketamine therapy for PTSD. I have been suffering, and continue to suffer, the tremendous emotional pain of being separated from my young grandsons and daughter after she suddenly declared that she was going “No Contact” with us.

Four years have passed without a word from her.

It was as though a trapdoor had opened beneath me and swallowed me whole.

Over the course of that summer, I had been researching ketamine infusions and interviewing local medical offices that administered them. The proposed treatment involved being hooked up to an infusion machine in a darkened room for an hour at a time, over a series of sessions.

The first office I visited was staffed by people who behaved strangely. They seemed rather over the top, with exaggerated hand gestures and an air of being altogether too impressed with their own genius.

High on their own supply, I wondered? Would taking ketamine make me act like them?

The second office was in a dingy building with a broken elevator. Something about the whole experience felt off.

Although I have always been psychedelic-curious, I had reached an impasse about how to proceed.

Then came the dream of the hydrangeas and the thorns.

The painting depicts me with my eyes closed, in the act of dreaming. I interpret the thorns as dream language for the prick of a needle. After all, if my dream guide came from an era before modern medicine, wouldn’t an injection be represented by a thorn?

The thorns around my feet more or less spell out the chemical structure of ketamine, along with some of the initials of the person who went No Contact.

I do indeed have thorny issues, and I need to watch my step, especially when navigating the darkness of estrangement.

There is a little marijuana leaf tucked into the bouquet—a blessed natural therapy.

The four hydrangea blossoms represent the blessings of my four grandchildren. The red blossom, directly over my heart, represents my grandson Micah, with whom I shared such a close and loving relationship before he disappeared through that trapdoor.

I continue to search for answers to my dilemma. In the meantime, I am grateful to have my artwork and the inner light of my dreams to help me find my way through the darker portions of my journey.