In AlterNet, Chris Lyford looks at some of the science, politics and money associated with emerging interest in ketamine for treating depression.
The Club Drug Emerging As a Popular Antidepressant (AlterNet, June 10, 2015)
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I think there aree plenty of things to be concerned about with ketamine for depression. Its use is moving too fast, not allowing solid scientific research to keep up. Alan Schatzberg, in âA Word to the Wise About Ketamine,â said: âuntil we know more, clinicians should be wary about embarking on a slippery ketamine slope.â You can read more here as well: “Falling Down the K-Hole” http://faith-seeking-understanding.org/2014/10/08/falling-down-the-k-hole/
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Solid scientific research? What’s that? This is psychiatry we are talking about here. What a silly idea.
Be quiet and take your meds.
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Insanity… Their poisons aren’t working and people start to catch up (plus the patents are running out) so it’s time to get new drugs. And what can be better for “depression” than narcotics.
There are many things that cure “depression” and none of them are psychotropic drugs. -
I’m going to chime in here, although more briefly than regarding a similar post last week–if anyone wants to see more of my thoughts (including the basics of how ketamine actually works) they should be easy to find there. Basically (don’t shoot!), my take is that ketamine has the potential to be very helpful to some people and I want to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater on this one.
I do not trust the pharmaceutical industry one iota. I firmly believe that most psychiatric drugs are harmful to many and perhaps most of the people who take them. I certainly have experienced that harm myself, and am angry as hell about it. I also am very wary of where the ketamine thing may go once a derivative is patented (please note that ketamine itself is not, and not a money-maker for big-pharma)–as someone last week pointed out, that may well open the floodgates wider to the “it’s all chemical” crap.
However. There are people suffering horribly from intense, crippling depression, which of course can be fatal. Many people in that category who have tried ketamine say they have found remarkable relief, and with a substance that is only used periodically for very short intervals, not continuously like current psych drugs, and that, at least in the short run, does not have the nasty side-effects of other drugs. Maybe it really is a bad thing, and if there is specific information pointing in that direction I very much want to know about it. But my feeling is that we should stay open to the possibility that this may not be the same as what we have seen before, and especially to things–anything–that might be helpful to people in great pain.
