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Tackling depression with ketamine

Insurance will pay for ketamine infusions for both depression and chronic pain. My husband and one of my good friends have a chronic pain disease called RSD (Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy). My friend had hers done at Cleveland Clinic....Her Medicaid insurance wouldn't pick this up because we are from PA but her parents work insurance that she is also on did. A branch of a well respected NY ketamine clinic opened fairly close to where we live in PA and my husbands Medicaid insurance picked up the whole bill of 7 infusions. After my husbands last infusion we were given a script for ketamine. Regular pharmacies don't carry ketamine. You have to go to a compounding pharmacy to have the script filled. Some insurances will cover a script for ketamine. While Medicaid wouldn't pay for my husbands ketamine script, my friends ketamine script was covered by her parents insurance. It was fairly cheap to fill at $1.00 a pill.

While I was at the clinic those 7 days I got to meet and talk to a handful of people that brought loved ones in for infusions for depression. 2 of them on Medicaid, and 3 on random insurances. All of their infusions where 100% covered as were the scripts for the 3 not on Medicaid.

I got to spend a lot of time with the Dr that runs/owns the clinic here (It's a very small clinic, only 3 patient rooms and I never saw more than 1 other patient there at the same time as my husband) so I got to ask him a lot of questions. He told me that Ketamine treatment is basically a last resort for his patients and its much cheaper for insurance companies to at least let the patient try it because if it does work it's more cost effective. Think about how expensive all those pills from big pharma, your insurance pays for most of it and you have a co-pay. Think of how happy an insurance company would be if they only had to pay a percentage of say $60 for 60 pills as compared to a percentage of $600-$800 for a 30 day script of Zoloft or oxycodone. Which is why a lot of insurances are starting to become more open-minded about ketamine treatments.
 
I would like to add that my friend went in to full remission from RSD for 2 years and recently just had to start having maintenance infusions once a month because she was starting to feel funky again.
But after 2 months of that she is back in remission and hadn't had to take her ketamine booster pills at all for the last 6 months. Sadly my husband's Ketamine infusions did not work for him even with the ketamine boosters. He has now progressed to the beginning stages of stage 3 in his disease. Most people don't make it to stage 4 whether it be from committing suicide (it's called the suicide disease) or because the disease starts moving into the organs and shutting them down. You guys were talking about the psychosis that ketamine induces, the Dr that my husband saw adds a small amount of propofol to his iv bags to combat the hallucinations and psychosis that ketamine brings on. The dose of a ketamine infusion for chronic pain maxes out at 800mg (walking a tight line between still being somewhat with it and coma. Ketamine comas are illegal in the US) Where as the dose for depression is much much smaller. From what I saw at his office the people there for depression weren't as out of it as my husband was when it was over but they were definitely all fucked up. My husband and this woman who was being treated for depression had a whole conversation in gibberish. They understood each other, but her friend and I were just standing there like "The fuck?!?!"
 
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Thank you for the valuable feedback brookelyn33 :)

alpha_centauri said:
Because Ketamine is garbage that's why. A lot of people do not have good reactions to it or while on it, and this includes people have have low amounts of it for anesthesia.

SSRIs have been studied for decades, have no major horrible or even dangerous side effects like Ketamine or the old TCAs do, and are effective at treating depression, anxiety, OCD, and other mental illnesses when used alone or with therapy.

The majority of people who take SSRIs do not have suicidal thoughts or behaviours, do not have any sort of actual 'withdrawals' as you do from benzos, opiates, or alcohol, and SSRIs are not addictive like Ketamine is.
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For many people coming off antidepressants there is a withdrawal syndrome comparable to opioid and gabaergic type substances (in particular like tramadol). The amounts of ketamine given for this kind of therapy (to treat depression) is nothing like what is given for anesthesia, nor should be looked at as comparable to recreational use of the substance. Clearly you do not have any significant experience actually using ketamine yourself.

SSRIs have been studies for decades, shown to be helpful in extreme cases, but of overall very limited value (visit the Mental Health Recovery Support forum to learn more about them). The majority of people who use this protocol do not have suicidal thoughts or behaviors either, nor any withdrawal from the therapy.

Your post is highly misleading.
 
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cj said:
That's sad. More and more I find myself using illegal drugs not because its fun but because getting the legal help I need is too much hassle. I wonder how much of this is big pharma preserving the cash cow that are SSRIs. I mean they seem to be written for everything these days. They tried to give my dad Paxil for back pain :/.
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I agree with this. And why are doctors handing out SSRIs like candy? Now I could be wrong but I tend to think it is to cover their own backsides. To me these nasty little SSRIs are just little placebo's that have bad withdrawls and side affects. I have been on them before. Effexor is prob the worse of them. It shocked me that a Dr tried to write it for pain to your dad. Sheesh..
 
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alpha_centauri said:
Because Ketamine is garbage that's why. A lot of people do not have good reactions to it or while on it, and this includes people have have low amounts of it for anesthesia.

SSRIs have been studied for decades, have no major horrible or even dangerous side effects like Ketamine or the old TCAs do, and are effective at treating depression, anxiety, OCD, and other mental illnesses when used alone or with therapy.

The majority of people who take SSRIs do not have suicidal thoughts or behaviours, do not have any sort of actual 'withdrawals' as you do from benzos, opiates, or alcohol, and SSRIs are not addictive like Ketamine is.
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Um SSRIs have horrid withdrawls. This is a very misinformed statement.
 
toothpastedog said:
Thank you for the valuable feedback brookelyn33 :)
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You are very welcome! I did ALOT of research before my husband and I decided to try this form of treatment for his chronic pain. Its a really odd drug to be knowledgeable about when you aren't using it and don't plan on using it for recreational purposes.

Being that I'm on my phone I can't Quote alpha_centauri but I would like to say that yes, ketamine is garbage......as a street drug. Used in a medical facility under the care of a responsible Dr it can really be a miraculous drug both for chronic pain and depression. As for Ketamine having horrible side effects, it does have 2... psychosis and bladder problems (using medical grade Ketamine under the care of a responsible Dr you don't have to worry about either of those problems) but as for long term side effects it has little to none on your body or your internal organs and while someone can become mentally addictive to it (meaning no real addiction, just mentally thinking they need it, more because they like how it makes them feel) It is not a physically addictive drug. You also don't build a tolerance. (I wish my laptop wasn't broken because I could link you to all my research) SSRI's are so hard on your body and internal organs, you also build tolerances to them leading to upping dosages, changing meds, mixing meds to find the right cocktail. Not to mention the agony a person must go through when the SSRI/s they have been on for years just stops working one day and the Dr has to play around with their meds until they find the right one or combination. Big pharma is bullshit, they are laughing at us while they line their pockets.
 
outsider1017 said:
I agree with this. And why are doctors handing out SSRIs like candy? Now I could be wrong but I tend to think it is to cover their own backsides. To me these nasty little SSRIs are just little placebo's that have bad withdrawls and side affects. I have been on them before. Effexor is prob the worse of them. It shocked me that a Dr tried to write it for pain to your dad. Sheesh..
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I agree it's just a way to shut someone up and get them out if the office with some kind of script. SSRI have nasty ads withdrawal syndrome as well. Been there done that.
 
MyDoorsAreOpen said:
I do not need a lawsuit from a patient who is mentally scarred from an unwanted mystical experience, or attempted to navigate the demands of their day to day world in a dissociated state with disastrous consequences.
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Nor would you need a lawsuit from a patient who, because he succumbed to one of the risks of SSRIs such as homicidal thoughts, went into a rage and assaulted or murdered someone. There can be disastrous consequences for other psychotropic drugs too. I know ketamine does have some nasty side effects if the dose taken is too high, but the risk/benefit ratio isn't that much worse than it is with SSRIs, TCAs and antipsychotics.
 
I'd still argue sertraline has a better safety profile than k. But i get what you're saying, they're in the same league when it comes to safety.
 
Cj1231990 said:
I'm not advocating anything I'm only here but I have seen people who are truly unwell with depression in a hospital setting (they come in stay in bed smoke don't speak to Anyway truly unwell folks ,women not said a word for days, gets given a pregablin tablet wrote up by head doctor and viola . Magic nothing was working but that brought her round. Did it last I don't know .

What I do know is ketamine can be useful in depression but I believe also with bad habits and addiction,

It maybe far more complex but basically i think it can bring round change via what I believe is a near death experience. How long does this last I don't know.

addiction can cause depression it's not what causes it but I think there's a link there about change in the brain.
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What are you even talking about man? Nothing you've said makes any sense.
 
Ketamine Can Rapidly Reduce Suicidal Thoughts

https://psychcentral.com/news/2017/12/17/ketamine-can-rapidly-reduce-suicidal-thoughts/130024.html

A new study has found that ketamine is significantly more effective than a commonly used sedative in reducing suicidal thoughts in depressed patients.

Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) also found that ketamine’s anti-suicidal effects occurred within hours after its administration.

“There is a critical window in which depressed patients who are suicidal need rapid relief to prevent self-harm,” said Michael Grunebaum, M.D., a research psychiatrist at CUMC, who led the study.

“Currently available antidepressants can be effective in reducing suicidal thoughts in patients with depression, but they can take weeks to have an effect. Suicidal, depressed patients need treatments that are rapidly effective in reducing suicidal thoughts when they are at highest risk. Currently, there is no such treatment for rapid relief of suicidal thoughts in depressed patients.”

Most antidepressant trials have excluded patients with suicidal thoughts and behavior, limiting data on the effectiveness of antidepressants in this population, the researchers noted.

However, previous studies have shown that low doses of ketamine, an anesthetic drug, causes a rapid reduction in depression symptoms and may be accompanied by a decrease in suicidal thoughts.

The 80 depressed adults with clinically significant suicidal thoughts who enrolled in the study were randomly assigned to receive an infusion of low-dose ketamine or midazolam, a sedative.

Within 24 hours, the ketamine group had a clinically significant reduction in suicidal thoughts compared to the midazolam group, researchers report.

The improvement in suicidal thoughts and depression in the ketamine group appeared to persist for up to six weeks, researchers add.

Those in the ketamine group also had greater improvement in overall mood, depression, and fatigue compared with the midazolam group, the study found.

Ketamine’s effect on depression accounted for approximately one-third of its effect on suicidal thoughts, suggesting the treatment has a specific anti-suicidal effect, the researchers said.

Side effects, mainly dissociation — feeling spacey — and an increase in blood pressure during the infusion, were mild to moderate and typically resolved within minutes to hours after receiving ketamine, the researchers report.

“This study shows that ketamine offers promise as a rapidly acting treatment for reducing suicidal thoughts in patients with depression,” said Grunebaum. “Additional research to evaluate ketamine’s antidepressant and anti-suicidal effects may pave the way for the development of new antidepressant medications that are faster acting and have the potential to help individuals who do not respond to currently available treatments.”​

The study was published in the American Journal of Psychiatry.
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Excellent news, thanks for sharing this, Cap'n. Very interested in how well ketamine could work for me. Have had such horrible luck with antidepressants as I've said here before, and as the article mentions, waiting weeks just to see if you'll get any sort of effect at all, much less angood one is a huge pain and endlessly frustrating.
 
I felt relief from depression for about 2-3 weeks after one shot/line of ketamine.

I still don't think it's a wonder drug, but I do believe the research is worthwhile and it could be a promising regimen for some.

To be honest I'd prefer a shot of midazolam.
 
It makes sense to me considering the older trials of LSD for depression and alcoholism.
I feel like in America at least and for at least several years, it's the sort of thing that would work best under doctor supervision or inpatient care. I don't think the American public and the general attitude towards drugs is ready for the idea of picking up ketamine at the pharmacy. Not saying it's right, just that this is a country still struggling with medical marijuana.
 
Honestly most drugs can be helpful in some way shape or form. Hell even Pcp was used as an anesthetic for animals
 
I believe so. And meth is extremely rarely prescribed for major adhd here in the US. Called desoxyn
 
Yeah VyVanse isn't literal meth but has a very similar chemical make-up to meth and is prescribed for ADHD ("here" being the U.S.)
The thing is like you said, almost anything can be helpful but almost anything can be abused or become dangerous.
 
Most definitely, I am glad however in recent years that medical value is being recognized. It's the first step
 
I don't think ketamine will be prescribed for depression. It will likely be administered after a psychiatric crisis (i.e. suicide attempt) in ER/psychiatric hospital settings. I think that would be a more approachable protocol.
 
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