With a nudge from AI, ketamine emerges as a potential rare disease treatment • Hacker News Board

Re: With a nudge from AI, ketamine emerges as a potential rare disease treatment

#101

Post by okareaman » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 10:02 PM UTC

raphlinus wrote: post #96

okareaman wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The opioid epidemic was largely caused by the idea of them being non addictive being heavy pushed by the pharmaceuticals industry That's not true. The new idea was that a manageable addiction was preferred to chronic pain. The theory was that addiction to opioids could be managed. That turned out to be not the case. People started selling pills and buying street heroin and it spiraled out of control.

It is true. The claim was that the risk of addiction was extremely small. One of the ways this idea was pushed was cherry-picking a study that showed no addiction among 10k burn victims treated with opioids. Minimizing the risk of addiction was also a major component of the guilty plea and fine. Obviously any reasonable person with a knowledge of opioids could see that these claims were BS, but it's remarkable what m…

> The opioid epidemic was largely caused by the idea of them being non addictive

the parent comment said "non addictive" which I said wasn't true. You said

> The claim was that the risk of addiction was extremely small

which is another way of saying they thought they could manage addiction that did occur. They thought this because they had a time-release pill which made the risk of problematic addiction "extremely small" as you say

Re: With a nudge from AI, ketamine emerges as a potential rare disease treatment

#102

Post by drooogs » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 10:07 PM UTC

LordDragonfang wrote: post #80

drooogs wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

opioids are a large class of drugs with widely varying effects and potential for abuse. for instance, the active ingredient in Imodium is an opioid, but you don't see a lot of recreational Imodium users. kratom is certainly not a miracle herb, but its characteristics do make it a lot less addictive and lethal than its more popular relatives. it's not unreasonable to think it might be used in replacement therapy, simi…

Using Imodium as an example really hurts your case here. Loperamide (Imodium's active ingredient) isn't used recreationally because it's not psychoactive - or more accurately, it doesn't cross the blood-brain barrier. Meanwhile, you'd be hard pressed to find an opioid which does (as kratom obviously does) that lacks recreational users.

that's exactly my point. maybe it wasn't worded well. "X is an opioid" does not imply "X is an extremely dangerous drug with high potential for addiction". not all opioids have psychoactive effects. some (eg, buprenorphine) do have psychoactive effects that are generally considered unpleasant by users. it's a large class of drugs...

Re: With a nudge from AI, ketamine emerges as a potential rare disease treatment

#103

Post by cik2e » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 10:18 PM UTC

drooogs wrote: post #76

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don’t glorify Kratom as some sort of miracle herb without downsides. Kratom is an opioid, full stop. People are under the mistaken impression that it’s less addictive because it’s less potent on a per-gram basis, but addicts simply end up consuming more grams to get similar highs. It’s not a “mood regulator” in any magical sense other than it’s an opioid and opioids temporarily put people in good moods. There…

opioids are a large class of drugs with widely varying effects and potential for abuse. for instance, the active ingredient in Imodium is an opioid, but you don't see a lot of recreational Imodium users. kratom is certainly not a miracle herb, but its characteristics do make it a lot less addictive and lethal than its more popular relatives. it's not unreasonable to think it might be used in replacement therapy, simi…

- kratom is certainly not a miracle herb, but its characteristics do make it a lot less addictive and lethal than its more popular relatives.

Yea, that's what you read online. But after going 2.5 months without sleep (I would doze off for half an hour once a twice per night), 4 months of acute depression, and umm like a year of PAWS, I beg to differ. If you're going off of personal experience, congrats, you didn't abuse it.

Someone already linked the quitting kratom subreddit where you can hear all kinds of horror stories.

Finally, comparing Kratom to traditional opiods isn't all that useful. Kratom has a shitload of other active alkaloids and very little research on their effects. Saying it's less addictive than other opiodis is like saying you'd rather get hit by a car going 60 vs 100.

Personally, I would have been much much better off if Kratom had been illegal, and I am amazed it still is.

Re: With a nudge from AI, ketamine emerges as a potential rare disease treatment

#104

Post by acituan » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 10:25 PM UTC

bserge wrote: post #97

acituan wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I guess if you let people learn personal responsibility they won't need the government as much anymore Addiction is not a mere matter of personal responsibility but a complex bio-psycho-social phenomena. Oversimplified solutions from both sides of the argument does the most harm.

What goes around comes around.

Funny enough this is an area we can exert personal responsibility.

Re: With a nudge from AI, ketamine emerges as a potential rare disease treatment

#105

Post by cratermoon » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 10:55 PM UTC

edejong wrote: post #79

cratermoon wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Granted that emergent behaviors are important. The reason for injecting "just" is to counter the AI hype. Imagine if the headline read "With a nudge from linear algebra, ketamine emerges as a potential rare disease treatment". Dropping the word AI in there, in addition to boosting the articles SEO, will suggest to those with a casual interest that his must be a big deal, because "I've heard so much about how AI is so…

Well, if you dive into data science and ML, you'll see it is much more than just a bit of linear algebra. Some topics (and as a data engineer, I am not an expert): - Distributed computing - Feature selection - Budgeting / accounting of experimental design (these TPU clusters are not cheap) - ML architecture - Involvement of domain experts (multidisciplinary teams) - Storage The whole list is much longer, but just som…

Thanks for the mansplanation.

Re: With a nudge from AI, ketamine emerges as a potential rare disease treatment

#106

Post by drooogs » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 10:56 PM UTC

cik2e wrote: post #103

drooogs wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

opioids are a large class of drugs with widely varying effects and potential for abuse. for instance, the active ingredient in Imodium is an opioid, but you don't see a lot of recreational Imodium users. kratom is certainly not a miracle herb, but its characteristics do make it a lot less addictive and lethal than its more popular relatives. it's not unreasonable to think it might be used in replacement therapy, simi…

- kratom is certainly not a miracle herb, but its characteristics do make it a lot less addictive and lethal than its more popular relatives. Yea, that's what you read online. But after going 2.5 months without sleep (I would doze off for half an hour once a twice per night), 4 months of acute depression, and umm like a year of PAWS, I beg to differ. If you're going off of personal experience, congrats, you didn't ab…

I've only tried kratom a couple times, many years ago. I can see how someone like me could have a severe problem with it, but I didn't find it to be nearly as addictive (to me) as heroin. I knew someone, like you, who had withdrawal symptoms for a very long time after quitting. I've also known a couple of the mythical "chippers", who've used heroin/oxy/etc occasionally over the course of many years without becoming addicted.

humans can become addicted to pretty much anything that's enjoyable. some things are probably much more addictive than others, but you can't really create a strict ordering of addictive substances/activities when every individual responds differently. is kratom less addictive than heroin? I would guess yes. is it more addictive than alcohol? I don't know, probably yes for some, no for others.

Re: With a nudge from AI, ketamine emerges as a potential rare disease treatment

#107

Post by okareaman » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 10:57 PM UTC

monocasa wrote: post #95

okareaman wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The opioid epidemic was largely caused by the idea of them being non addictive being heavy pushed by the pharmaceuticals industry That's not true. The new idea was that a manageable addiction was preferred to chronic pain. The theory was that addiction to opioids could be managed. That turned out to be not the case. People started selling pills and buying street heroin and it spiraled out of control.

No, the messaging to the doctors was that there was essentially no risk of addiction. > This pain population with no abuse history is literally at no risk for addiction > There have been studies suggesting that addiction rarely evolves in the setting of painful conditions https://www.statnews.com/2017/05/31/opioid-epidemic-nejm-let...

A single letter written 40 years ago did not cause the opiod epidemic. It was part of a movement to reassess the use of pain medication to ease chronic pain. By movement I mean it was part of a change in the zeitgeist among doctors and pharmaceutical companies. No doctor read this letter and said to themselves, well I guess narcotics are not addictive anymore and I can prescribe them without concern. I don't know why people want to make reductive arguments.

Re: With a nudge from AI, ketamine emerges as a potential rare disease treatment

#108

Post by monocasa » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 11:12 PM UTC

okareaman wrote: post #107

monocasa wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the messaging to the doctors was that there was essentially no risk of addiction. > This pain population with no abuse history is literally at no risk for addiction > There have been studies suggesting that addiction rarely evolves in the setting of painful conditions https://www.statnews.com/2017/05/31/opioid-epidemic-nejm-let...

A single letter written 40 years ago did not cause the opiod epidemic. It was part of a movement to reassess the use of pain medication to ease chronic pain. By movement I mean it was part of a change in the zeitgeist among doctors and pharmaceutical companies. No doctor read this letter and said to themselves, well I guess narcotics are not addictive anymore and I can prescribe them without concern. I don't know why…

It absolutely did, the article even goes into how new printings of the same journal now come with a public health warning because of the number of times it was cited, how it had subsequently been debunked, and the overall effect it had on the industry.

Re: With a nudge from AI, ketamine emerges as a potential rare disease treatment

#109

Post by Talanes » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 11:18 PM UTC

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #51

chillwaves wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you ever compare the side effects of marijuana to the popular antidepressant, antianxiety and ADHD medications being given to children? > There is a growing mistrust of pharmaceutical companies and mainstream psychiatry that mirrors the rise of things like anti-vaxxers This statement seems to ignore the crisis brought by narcotic drugs. People should be skeptical of pharmaceutical companies. There is a long histo…

There’s a lot of “whataboutism” when it comes to marijuana, but it doesn’t negate the fact that heavy daily marijuana usage is a net negative for mental health and produces worse long-term depression scores than abstaining. And yes, she generally refers people to psychiatric treatment under the guidance of doctors who can monitor and adjust medications over time. Outcomes on mainstream depression and anxiety medicati…

>Marijuana is not an effective depression treatment even though it may temporarily dull feelings and emotions.

That describes how my teenage Lithium prescription felt far better than it does marijuana use. Though perhaps they have better pharmaceuticals now than they did 20 years ago.

Re: With a nudge from AI, ketamine emerges as a potential rare disease treatment

#110

Post by bawolff » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 11:35 PM UTC

acituan wrote: post #93

bawolff wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are often talked about as if they have little or no harmful side effects. Most drugs have side effects, including all the legal pharmaceuticals. E.g. normal antidepressants aren't without risk. Anyways, that's why its important to study them - see where they lie on the risk-benefit trade-off curve. > The opioid epidemic was largely caused by the idea of them being non addictive I don't know which idiots though…

> Most drugs have side effects, including all the legal pharmaceuticals. E.g. normal antidepressants aren't without risk. Risk/no-risk dichotomy is misleading in that those categories do not consist of homogeneously comparable members. Nausea from an SSRI is not the same as triggering a first psychotic episode from psychedelic drug use, or pushing your neuroticism a standard deviation higher from stimulant abuse or g…

SSRI's are also linked to hallucinations and suicide. Of course not all drugs are the same, some are more risky than others, but its not like legality corresponds to the risk.

I'm not saying that popular drugs are risk free. They definitely aren't. That's why its important to study them and understand what the risks are so people can make informed decisions about them (under the supervision of a doctor)