"Special K" Eases Depression

HI, I FIND THIS TO BE VERY INTERESTING. I NEVER HEARD OF KETAMINE, BUT, UNDER THE RIGHT CIRCUMSTANCES, I SURE WOULD LIKE TO GIVE IT A TRY. HAVE A NICE DAY....JENNIFER

I would just like to mention something from my own personal experience. I was horrified to read this post. I am very sure that Mr Kennard would never advise anyone to try meds without the supervision of a professional. I do not mean to imply that in any way. I would like to caution anyone who may think of trying this on their own. Please don't. It is very addictive. I know many people who have used this drug for recreation. It seems to have an opiate-like effect & in some cases it has lead people to try drugs that have similar effects. Before anyone knew it my best friend went from Special K to heroin. Now she's dead. I only wish to warn those who might take it upon themselves to try it. It is easily accessable on the street unfortunately & I tremble with fear at the thought of anyone joining the fate of my Gwenna. Peace to you all.

OK, now the down side:  what about people who need to stay away from drugs and alcohol.  Who either are alcoholic  or seem so due to extreme effects when drinking.  Or who have "self medicated" in using marijuana -- common in bipolar depression. 

I have heard of this.  Are any doctors using this...is it the exact same form of ketamine or a chemical that is part of it....I think I've heard something like this before.

Any progress is good progress.....jury sounds like it will be out for years?  Enuf people looking into this and related things.  Like someone said a chemical (one) in marijuana is being researched as helpful for depression or mood regulation.   One chemical part....possible. Likely?  Sounds pretty far fetched.   Love to know!

The last post implied that Ketamine is ONLY a street drug.  Ketamine started, as 99.9%of drugs start, as a regular pharmaceutical, and then became abused as a street drug, just like every other street drug.  In England, heroin is even used medically in some cases.

I have a chronic pain condition, and was having to take too much of an opiate for it.  My pain managent dr. decided to try Ketamine for it, because it was the last class of drug I could try -- none other having either worked, or, as with the opiate, I was having to take too much.  I was afraid to take it precisely of what I had heard about it as a street drug over the years (I'm 46 and don't do any recreational drugs, and had / still have not gotten addicted to the opiates I have taken on and off over the last six years for my pain issue), and the addiction potential.  I asked if it is easier to get addicted to Ketamine than the opiate I had been taking, and my dr. said that there is no evidence that it is.  I asked her about the dosage I would be getting, 10mg oral, and hallucinations, and she said that hallucinations, and the other effects that people want and get at the street drug level don't happen at that dosage.  She then pointed out that, as I mentioned above, that 99.9% of drugs that are commonly used, even pain med drugs like opiates, are very safe if taken as prescribed, and when you think about it, the fact that they become street drugs are kind of a backhanded seal of approval.  DON'T OVERREACT!  She wasn't saying anyone should use these drugs as street drugs, and obviously wasn't saying anyone should take them other than as prescribed.  She was saying that people who use drugs recreationally only pick the ones that do the "job" (whichever one they want) the best, and although I didn't want Ketamine to do the "job" they want, it would potentially do the job I wanted it to do because it is a "good" drug.

Just because a drug is abused doesn't make it a BAD drug.  On the contrary, it is probably very good at what it does, OR THE PEOPLE WHO WANT TO ABUSE DRUGS WOULDN'T CHOOSE THAT ONE!!  GET IT??!!

Ketamine didn't work for my pain, it just made me sleep.  BUT, it does work synergistically with opiates so one doesn't have to take as much of the opiate.  So alone, no I wouldn't take Ketamine.  But together with the opiate I was taking, and starting to have to take too much of, Ketamine took that dose way down.  How is that not a good thing?

Have you ever lived with severe chronic pain that doesn't respond to physical therapy, warm water pool therapy, any kind of therapy you can imagine, mild yoga for pain, etc. etc. etc. and is so persistant that radio frequency ablation, where the nerve connection is actually BURNED (so the pain signal can't reach the brain) has been done as many times as it can be done, and the pain still persists?  Even gentle walking can trigger it.  And bladder and ovarian pain caused by a stupid surgeon and after-care from an appendectomy that was badly done, and non-existent pain managent, and a bladder infection that was mis-managed afterward?  Have you ever been able to feel the inside of your urethrea and have the spinchter muscle that holds in your urine hurt and feel raw?  Every 4-6 weeks?  I live with the chronic body pain, and now the urinary tract and ovary pain.  I have to have pain relief to even get up and go to the bathroom at times, and sometimes going to the bathroom is painful because of the UTIs, not to mention the rectal cramps with bowel movements I now get because of all of the pain and muscle tension in the region.

Don't doubt that some people have chronic pain bad enough to require opiates, and if drugs like Ketamine weren't there, we'd have to take unbelievably high doses of them.  Have you ever experienced the itching opiates can cause?  It's horrible.  Ketamine has brought me down to a dose that 90% of the time doesn't cause the hideous itching.

As for using Ketamine for depression, it's most probably a dosage that isn't as high as the street drug dose, which causes the desired (on the street) hallucinations, etc.  I experienced a hallucination in the hospital after my appendectomy from NOT having any pain meds when they screwed up my after-care so incredibly badly.  I, and I think most people don't want to have one, but there is a small subset of people who do.  They will always abuse anything that is abuse-able.

This article didn't say how many milligrams were used, but I, for one, was extremely excited to see that there is finally something besides the Prozacs / Remerons / Cymbaltas being looked at.  It's a good thing that the medical profession has cooler heads than you, and that people like me, who have treatment-resistant refractory depression might have a treatment to look forward to that might offer some relief.  My anti-depressant works ok, but just ok.  No one wants to live the way I feel for a lifetime, and I won't.  Got it?  I WON'T.  If I don't feel better when my cat dies, I'm done.  I've tried every medicine out there and have been at it since my mid-twenties.  If deep-brain stimulation becomes available before my cat dies and it's paid for, I'll try that, too.

How DARE you have the knee-jerk reaction that a drug is ALL BAD because some people abuse it.  You're probably the same school teacher who punished the whole class when one student did something wrong, too, or you punish all of your kids when one kid does something wrong.

HOW DARE YOU.

Oh, and the opiate I take?  OxyContin.  I don't abuse it, either.  MOST PEOPLE WHO TAKE IT DON'T.  Notice that I didn't balk AT ALL about going down from a very high dose to a very low dose as long as my pain was controlled.  And I don't take it every day, either, just when I hurt, evidenced by the number of pills in my prescription.  Oh, and who found out about the Ketamine working synergistically with opiates?  ME.  Not my doctor, ME.  I found out about it by researching, because I wanted to take less of the opiate and found a way to do it, and it was from a World Health Organization document, not an American document, because there are too many knee-jerk ignorant people like you out there, and so it doesn't even get discussed.  NOT ALL OF US GET ADDICTED TO, NOR WANT TO ABUSE DRUGS THAT ARE THE MOST PUBLICIZED AS ABUSED, THAT MAKE YOU KNEE-JERK REACT TO.  MORE IMPORTANTLY, NOT ALL OF US GET THAT "GOOD" FEELING FROM THOSE DRUGS, SO DON'T "WANT" THEM THE WAY THE APPARENT ABUSERS DO.

And lastly, dextromathorphin, the ingredient in Robitussin, is the only other drug in the same class as Ketamine.  Have you heard how kids abuse it?  They do it ALL OF THE TIME, and it's a hell of a lot easier to get than Ketamine, and a hell of a lot cheaper.  You can bet they're not going to take Robitussin off the market, nor change the ingredient.  The pharmaceutical lobby is too strong for that.  All kids have to do is tie a string to the neck of the bottle, right underneath the cap, and spin it in a circle.  The centrifugal force causes the ingredients to separate, and the dextromathorphan is all separated, all by itself.  They just go from store to store to store and buy as many bottles as they want / need to get the kind of high they like, and do the string trick to separate the dextromathorphin, and they get their Ketamine-like high.

BUT YOU WANT KETAMINE BANNED SO PEOPLE LIKE ME WILL SUFFER.  And no, I can't take dextromathorphin because it doesn't have the same synergistic effect with opiates, and has some really, really bad side-effects -- WORSE than Ketamine at the dose I'd have to take to equal the 10 mgs of Ketamine I take.  Now what's really worse?  The Robatussin, or the Ketamine?  What should you really be screaming about?

Get your story straight about the class of drug that Ketamine is, that dextromathorphin is the only other drug in that class, and how kids abuse that one WAY more than Ketamine and to MUCH more detriment.  You think you're so smart about Ketamine, but would take away a drug that is very useful for patients like me, and in human and animal anesthesia.  SERIOUS medicine.  All the while, you're ignorant about Robitussin.  Just IGNORANT.

Educate yourself, then get kids off of Robitussin.

As for Ketamine leading to heroin, if it hadn't been Ketamine it would have been something else.  To the other person who commented, your friend had problems she wasn't working out by dealing with them, and instead chose to feel "better" by using drugs recreationally.  She might not have been able to work them out any other way.  Maybe she was only able to cope by feeling "better" with the drugs.  Even if you swear she was very happy and her life was great, keep in mind that we never fully know another person, even if we're their identical twin.  You don't know what was going on in her mind and life before she found that Ketamine eased the pain, if it did.

Ketamine and opiates don't give me that "good" feeling that others have described.  I sometimes wish they did, because I have horrible treatment resistant, refractory Major Depression that is only partially helped by anti-depressants and other drugs that augment.  I'm in the best place I've ever been emotionally now because of the anti-depressant and those that augment, but I still don't feel even ok most of the time.  My point is that maybe your friend found a way to feel good, or maybe some peace at some point, even though it was chemically induced.

I'm not advocating that street drugs are good, they're not.  But in a horrible situation as your friend's, it may be one thing that was going on.  People through all human history and pre-history have used substances to alter their mental states, and one reason was to feel better.  My Mom was recently killed so I think I feel your loss.  I wish you peace, and hope that your friend had some peace at some point, too.