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  • EADD Moderators: Shambles

Ketamine-like drug alleviates depression without the trip

Just shows how strong a placebo can actually be, good to see David Nutt making a comment even though he wasn't on the actual trial.
Everyone I know that has depression & used MXE with me all said the same as in the way it worked far better than their medicine did, the ex used to swear it was the best thing she had ever come across & thanked me for weeks after her first go on it.
 
I wonder how long it will take before scientists come to understand that the supposedly "unwanted" recreational effects of these drugs are part of the reason for their therapeutic efficacy. They seem hell bent on taking all the fun out of drugs, fun is a good thing you idiots! Not you bodda. Scientists.
 
the "unwanted" recreational effects are probably unwanted for the average depressed housewife or teenager, this test kind of shows that they aren't directly correlated with the therapeutic effect anyway.

If I could take an effective NMDA receptor antagonist that had a rapid onset of antidepressent effect that was completely free of any kind of sensory alteration it would be a godsend, mxe comes close at very very low doses but only after taking it for a few weeks.

the more trial results that come back like this the better the prospects look all the time.

Maybe in 50 years time the pharmaceutical industry will have caught up with what a lot of people know anyway about this class of drugs and their antidepressant value.
 
The site linked seems to be saying that the therapeutic effects of the "boring" NMDA receptor antagonists were woefully slow to make themselves known in comparison to the "fun" antagonists. And you confirm this with your comment about low-dose MXE.

Don't you think that might be because the "fun" aspect is part of the therapeutic process?
 
I meant after taking low doses of mxe for several weeks the 'side effects' like wonkyness and auditory hallucination etc dissapear. It still has a rapid antidepressant effect from day 1 in my experience.

The slow onset of action of this particular drug will be due to pharmalogical differences between it and ketamine, including the ROA which is not IV as used in the ketamine depression trials.

I think for some people yeah a recreational aspect of it can be helpful but however offering a drug which has potential for abuse in escapsim to depressed patients is probably a dangerous thing as they are more likely predisposed to harmful patterns of use/misuse of drugs like alcohol etc.
 
I think for some people yeah a recreational aspect of it can be helpful but however offering a drug which has potential for abuse in escapsim to depressed patients is probably a dangerous thing as they are more likely predisposed to harmful patterns of use/misuse of drugs like alcohol etc.

I agree 100% with this, and I think this is why recreational effects are considered 'undersirable' or 'unwanted', rather than any aversion to 'fun' on the part of researchers.

It's not always a case of The Man wanting to piss on our chips, y'know?
 
Yeah a lot of the time the last thing someone who is acutely depressed needs is to be taken further away from their senses, I suspect sometimes ketamine itself can act as a useful cushion against reality in serious times of down, i.e suicidal etc, but only in those who are used to the drug.

In the IV ketamine trials it was titrated extremely slowly over hours, so not quite the same as a whacking great line up the nose.

Recreational drugs serve as useful exploratory models I think, but actual off the shelf medications need to be a lot more sensible to be useful....

edit> It's all round good news though that these trials are finally being conducted and the results are coming back positive, the glutamate system and NMDA antagonism has been the white elephant in the room when it comes to depression treatment for too long now, and finally some hard evidence is coming out that this is a potential new avenue to treating depression for the 21st century.
 
The hallucinogenic and dissociative properties of ketamine have very little to do with its anti-depressant properties. Ketamine alleviates depression by promoting synaptogensis through NMDA-antagonism.

A drug (NMDA-antagonsit) that's shown effeciecy in treating major depressive disorder as well as neuropathic pain and phantom limb syndrome, without inducing any psychedelic properties already exists. I'm surprised no ones mentioned memantine.
 
I really hope this goes somewhere.

Its like how CBD has shown real promise for controlling seizures, as an epileptic I hope some day CBD is prescribed to control seizures. My meds work really well, but I still have the odd seizure, which as you can guess is a bit shit!

So all the best to this leading somewhere! <3
 
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