How Ketamine Helps Rewire the Brain to Manage Chronic Pain
Chronic pain can feel like being trapped in a body that won’t stop sounding the alarm, even when there’s no visible fire left to fight.
For many people, the pain isn’t just in their back, neck, joints, or nerves. It’s in the patterns their brain has learned over time. The nervous system becomes highly sensitized, and pain signals that once made sense can start to fire long after the original injury has healed.
This is where psychedelics like ketamine are starting to shift the conversation. Instead of focusing only on numbing pain, ketamine-assisted therapy explores a different question: What if we could help the brain relearn how to relate to pain?
What Is Chronic Pain?
Chronic pain is pain that lasts for weeks, months, or even years, long after the original injury or condition has healed. Sometimes it continues without a clear cause. Over time, chronic pain affects more than just the body. It impacts mood, sleep, relationships, and overall mental health.
Chronic pain is complex. It involves the nervous system and emotional well-being, which makes it difficult to treat with simple solutions.
For many people, traditional pain medications provide limited relief. They can also come with risks such as dependence, side effects, and withdrawal symptoms. In some cases, withdrawing from opioid medications can actually make pain worse. This happens because the nervous system becomes more sensitive to pain, a condition called opioid-induced hyperalgesia.
A New Approach: Ketamine for Chronic Pain
Ketamine is gaining attention as a new option for managing chronic pain, especially when other treatments have failed. Originally developed as an anesthetic, ketamine is now used in lower doses to help with pain relief. However, it does more than dull pain. Ketamine may help the brain change how it processes and experiences pain.
Chronic pain is not only a physical issue. The brain circuits involved in mood regulation, especially those linked to anxiety and depression, overlap with those that process pain. Ketamine works by targeting these overlapping brain networks.
How Ketamine May Help
Research suggests ketamine may help with chronic pain by:
Interrupting the default mode network, which reduces obsessive thoughts and lessens the tendency to identify closely with pain
Resetting pain signals in the central nervous system, calming overactive nerve pathways
Boosting neuroplasticity, which is the brain’s ability to form new connections and healthier patterns
Creating a Window for Healing
Ketamine is not a quick fix, but it creates a window of opportunity. After treatment, the brain becomes more flexible and open to change for a short period. This makes it easier to release old patterns and develop new ones. Combining ketamine with therapies such as mindfulness or counselling can support this process.
This is a chance to do deeper healing work as the brain is better prepared to support it.
Rethinking Healing
For many people, healing from chronic pain is not about completely removing pain. It is about changing how we relate to pain so it does not control our lives.
Healing might include:
Changing the way you think about pain, rather than always fighting it
Processing emotional trauma that may increase physical symptoms
Practicing relaxation around pain, which can reduce its intensity. Resisting pain often makes it worse, but softening toward it can help
Building healthy relationships and living true to your values for emotional strength and support
A Door to Transformation
Ketamine will not erase chronic pain overnight. However, for people living with chronic pain, trauma, anxiety, depression, or PTSD, it can be the beginning of a new path.
Instead of just numbing symptoms, future chronic pain treatments may focus on changing how the brain responds to pain. When combined with support like counselling, movement, and mindfulness, ketamine can help bring lasting change.
Find out how ketamine-assisted therapy might help you change your relationship with chronic pain.
Meet Mark Haden
Mark is the Clinical Supervisor of Psy-Qi, our Ketamine Assisted Therapy Program. An industry leader in Psychedelic Therapy, Mark served as the Executive Director of MAPS Canada and can be found presenting at various conferences on the topic.
Speak to a member of our team to learn more about this breakthrough treatment.
