Ketamine and depression

[MyDoorsAreOpen]

So where does the jury now stand on the relationship between ketamine use and depression? It seems like only yesterday ketamine was an established helpful option for dealing with chronic pain, including the emotional and cognitive aspects, and showed much promise as a rapid-acting antidepressant. Stories emerged of people who'd gotten ketamine scripts from their doctors, for depression that failed to respond to all else. (I think I smell bullshit there though, because it's always AFOAF, and there is no preparation of ketamine that's within the grounds of medical safety in the developed world for giving a patient to self-administer.

Now I'm reading news reports that link ketamine use (abuse, actually) to increased severity of depression. I'm reading anecdotal reports on BL and Erowid of people saying that treating depression with dissociatives is like paying off one credit card with another.

So which is it? Or maybe the better question is, which patterns (dosing frequency, dose, ROA) and settings, are likelier to produce the effective antidepressant results, and which ones are likelier to produce the pro-depressant results?

 

[Dondante]

The antidepressant effects are powerful, but transient, and have only been demonstrated in a non drug-abusing population. My guess is that the therapeutic effects are easily overcome by consequences of drug abuse (to paraphrase the DSM, failure to fulfill obligations at work, school, or home, or resultant interpersonal/social conflicts, etc.). The line between therapeutic and detrimental use is certainly on the less frequent end of the spectrum, which means that a lot of people on BL (but not everyone) claiming therapeutic use are probably deluding themselves. See the MXE thread for examples.

There's a well established association between drug abuse and depression, but with ketamine in particular, my sense is that frequent/high dose use has its own unique profile of consequences, including derealization, cognitive impairment, avolition, and social isolation.

 

[wayab]

never did i get avolition back in the days when i abused ketamine but ever since its out of my life i feel it and it deepens every day but i wouldnt blame ketamine for it because i was quite unmotivated before i discovered it aswell
i didn't notice cognitive impairment but maybe i was deluding my self
derealization&social isolation - got to love these :D who needs reality it totaly sux ass
but yeah i don't think any medication is a good idea for treating depression
lucid dreaming or therapy are much better options

 

[clubberdude]

Ketamine definitely has non-placebo antidepressant properties, but they don't last long, and higher doses of Ketamine can be quite deleterious in this regard. Low doses (10-20mg with my tolerance which is admittedly low, in other words a sub-psychedelic dose) tend to work better than a balls to the wall K-hole dose.

 

[Thorns Have Roses]

Well, for ketamine's antidepressent properties you ought to check out Jamshyd's thread on the subject, he was taking doses of like 12mg intranasal spaced throughout the day or so, and using recreational levels ruined the beneficial effects. http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/threads/372731-Jamshyd-s-Medicinal-Ketamine-Regimen!-(V-1.5-UPDATED-11-22-10)

Not surprising really, seeking therapeutic effects from drugs with a regular regimen is quite antithetical to taking recreational doses of those drugs in most cases.

I can say that dissociative abuse led to a general deterioration of my mental state during those times I used them frequently.