Is Ketamine Therapy A New Source of Hope For Depression?

Do you remember ketamine, the popular psychoactive ‘club drug,’ also dubbed the Special K? If yes, scientists have averred that this aesthetic drug can rapidly improve symptoms in people with depression and various chronic pain syndromes. If you are a frequent partygoer, you’d be more likely to know ketamine for its ecstatic effects. But I bet you didn’t know that it also relieves depression in as little as two hours, unlike conventional antidepressants which typically take weeks before they start acting. Yes, you’ve heard right.

Hold on a sec; there’s more. Experts assert that the findings of ketamine have broken the barriers of research in a field that has scuffled to develop new treatments for depression and other disorders. This claim leads us to wonder if the Special K is undoubtedly the ‘Special One.’ Let’s dig deeper, and hopefully, we’ll find out.

The Future of Depression Treatment?

Sad to say, there is no quick fix for severe depression. But by good fortune, ketamine therapy may act as a rapid antidepressant. “It blew the doors off what we thought we knew about depression treatment,” says psychiatrist James Murrough at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City.

In 2013, the Mount Sinai Hospital issued a news release stating that “Patients with treatment-resistant major depression saw dramatic improvement in their illness after treatment with ketamine, an anesthetic, according to the largest ketamine clinical trial to-date led by researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.”

To reiterate, the healing effects of ketamine can be felt quickly – usually within hours. Some patients who have faced incurable depression for decades have had symptoms disappear within hours of taking low doses of the drug. If that’s not something to be joyful about, then I don’t know what is…I seriously don’t.

But all things considered, there seems to be a new source of hope for people suffering from depression, and it’s none other than ketamine, the ‘Depression Super Hero.’

Use for Chronic Pain Treatment

No one likes pain. It has a devastating effect on our quality of life and makes us miserable. Chronic pain is a widespread condition in the general population. People faced with this condition face complex dilemmas which can be life-changing. Thanks to the miracle-working drug ketamine, there’s hope for us all.

The Special K acts as an analgesic in the treatment of various chronic pain syndromes where even opiates such as Oxycontin and Morphine have been unable to help. It is a “dissociative anesthetic” and is closely related to phencyclidine regarding its structure. In subanesthetic doses, ketamine produces potent short-acting analgesia for painful procedures by blocking certain pain-causing receptors.

As foreseen, most of the clinical explorations on the use of ketamine in treating chronic pains have been related to neuropathic, or nerve pain. As you’d learn from paindoctor.com, ketamine has been tested in other chronic pain disorders including:

• Spinal injury
• Facial pain
• Atypical tooth pain
• Temporomandibular joint (TMJ) pain
• Phantom limb pain experienced after amputation
• Pain from decreased blood flow (ischemia) to tissues
• Fibromyalgia, which is a form of widespread musculoskeletal pain, including back pain
• Complex regional pain syndrome, which can affect a limb after injury
• Post-stroke pain

The ‘party drug’ may also act as an analgesic supplement for cancer pains, predominantly of a neuropathic lineage, and may be an excellent choice of treatment for patients who are unable to put up with narcotics or those having issues with opioid responsiveness. Beyond that, the ‘club drug’ can minimize the harshness of opioid side effects, which is a crucial factor in patient compliance.

Ketamine marks a new day in the lives of people suffering from depression and chronic pain syndromes. A bright light at the end of the tunnel, maybe. It is, therefore, safe to say that the club-abused ketamine is the breakthrough we’ve long anticipated.
If you’d like to learn more about the famous ‘party drug,’ contact a Ketamine Therapy center near you.