This is amazing. It takes weeks to feel the effect of currently-available antidepressants. The only thing that works faster is good old “electroshock therapy” (which might seem kind of primitive, but actually helps a lot of people who don’t respond to medication).
Ketamine is primarily used in veterinary medicine in the US (and recreationally as ‘Special K’), but in other countries it is often the first choice for human anesthesia. So, it has a good track record of safety in humans, but it does cause hallucinations and euphoria incompatible with working, driving, etc. I wonder, though, if one might get a refractory depression after ketamine, such as can happen after MDMA (Ecstasy). It seems ketamine wears off more slowly than MDMA – maybe this averts the “crash” effect…
An anaesthetic can treat depression within hours, a study has suggested.
A US team found ketamine, a medication usually used as an anaesthetic but also taken as a recreational drug, relieved symptoms of depression.
Most existing treatments for depression take weeks or even months to relieve people’s symptoms.
But the team, writing in Archives of General Psychiatry, said ketamine would need to be altered so it lost its existing hallucinatory side-effects.
BBC NEWS | Health | Drug ‘treats depression in hours’
I called most of this chaos years ago. America is still unraveling — and the next chapters are already written.
If you want to understand what’s really coming (and why), read Not My America: A Stranger in a Strange Land. Available on Amazon.
CD Damitio writes at indignified.substack.com — essays on utopias, dystopias, and the spaces between. Free to read. No algorithm, no sponsored content. His books can be found on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/stores/CD-Damitio/author/B001JP7NWA
CD Damitio writes INDIGNIFIED — utopias and dystopias explored. Free to read.
