Finding my anchor.

I showed up to my first Spravato® session with a playlist I'd thrown together the night before. Ambient stuff, mostly — Brian Eno, some Sigur Rós, a few tracks I'd found on a 'relaxing music' Spotify playlist. I thought it would be fine.

It wasn't fine. Not because the music was bad, but because I hadn't thought about what music actually does during an esketamine session. I'd treated it like background noise for studying. It isn't that.

About twenty minutes in, a Sigur Rós track came on — one I associate strongly with a particular period of grief in my life. The medicine was at peak effect. I had no defenses. The track pulled me directly into that grief, and I spent the next fifteen minutes somewhere I hadn't planned to go.

It wasn't a bad session, ultimately. But it taught me something I've never forgotten: during Spravato® treatment, music isn't background. It's a guide. And if you don't choose your guide carefully, it will take you somewhere you didn't intend.

An anchor, in the context of esketamine treatment, is something that holds you in the therapeutic space without pulling you toward a specific memory, emotion, or narrative. It's present without being demanding. It gives the medicine something to work with — a structure, a container — without hijacking the session.

Music can be an anchor. But only certain kinds of music, chosen with intention.

The music that works best as an anchor tends to share a few qualities: it's purely instrumental, it moves slowly, it doesn't have a strong rhythmic pulse, and it doesn't carry strong personal associations. It feels like it exists outside of time. You can enter it at any point and it doesn't feel like you've missed something.

The music that fails as an anchor tends to be the opposite: it has lyrics, or a driving beat, or it's tied to a specific memory. It pulls rather than holds.

It took me several sessions to find my anchor. I tried different genres, different tempos, different levels of complexity. I kept notes after each session — not detailed clinical notes, just impressions. 'That track felt too busy.' 'That one was perfect for the first twenty minutes but then it shifted and I lost the thread.' 'That composer understands something about this.'

What I eventually landed on was a combination of slow contemporary classical music and certain kinds of ambient electronic music — specifically the kind that prioritizes texture and atmosphere over melody or rhythm. Composers like Max Richter, Nils Frahm, and Stars of the Lid. Artists like Brian Eno and Harold Budd. Music that feels like weather rather than narrative.

I also learned to pay attention to transitions. A jarring cut between tracks — even between two tracks I loved individually — could break the session's continuity. I started building playlists with crossfade enabled and sequencing tracks so each one flowed naturally into the next.