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I Tried Ketamine to Treat My Depression. It Was Terrifying

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Re: I Tried Ketamine to Treat My Depression. It Was Terrifying

#21

Post by cinntaile »

emodendroket wrote: post #14
NotPavlovsDog wrote: post #7

Anecdotes and auto-biographies are the easiest to write, as they require the least research and one is already so familiar with the protagonist. It will be nice to see ketamine and psychedelics as part of a toolbox professionals can use for treatment. Many current antidepressants cause strong suicidal and homicidal urges. Look at the widely prescribed citalopram disclaimer. Here's an anecdote: close person to me was…

I don't think "this is a possible result of this treatment, as observed one time" is an illegitimate subject of inquiry because it's not a table of statistics.

If you check possible side-effects of very common medicine you can probably find some terrifying stuff that happens to 1 out of 10 million people. If it gets reported on in the media, it would seem a lot more common than it is. To be clear I'm not saying that's the case here, I have no idea.

Re: I Tried Ketamine to Treat My Depression. It Was Terrifying

#22

Post by JumpinJack_Cash »

elecush wrote: post #3

Mindset and Setting are so important to have right. If you are not in the right mindset, go do something else. It reads like the dosage was also a bit too high for the first time, and while I appreciate medical purity levels in things the doc can give you, injecting everything is just ew. You can get plenty of that active ingredient ingesting it like a normal savage through your face like God intended. Anyway, ketami…

> > and go to a rave

Does the rave music become any good once you pop MDMA?

I don't like EDM and unless the MDMA also changes musical tastes then I'd rather be listening to classical, acid rock or ProgRock. Or watch a movie or better yet be having sex if the stim dick I keep hearing about doesn't present itself.

Re: I Tried Ketamine to Treat My Depression. It Was Terrifying

#23

Post by mr_00ff00 »

NotPavlovsDog wrote: post #7

Anecdotes and auto-biographies are the easiest to write, as they require the least research and one is already so familiar with the protagonist. It will be nice to see ketamine and psychedelics as part of a toolbox professionals can use for treatment. Many current antidepressants cause strong suicidal and homicidal urges. Look at the widely prescribed citalopram disclaimer. Here's an anecdote: close person to me was…

Does anyone have info on how/why anti-depressants cause suicidal and homicidal thoughts? I know when it comes to the brain, conventional logic fails, but you would think anti-depressants would stop suicidal thoughts.

I googled it and couldn’t find anything.

Re: I Tried Ketamine to Treat My Depression. It Was Terrifying

#24

Post by NoZebra120vClip »

One of the major problems with "standard" psychotropic medications is that there's no standard information out there about what to expect while taking it. And by that I mean, meds such as antidepressants, mood stabilizers, antipsychotics, tranquilizers are intended to place the user into an altered mental state, but nobody will tell us what that AMS will be like, experientally.

They can easily tell us about side effects, especially physiological ones, and we can watch out for those side effects, but what about the primary effects? What about how we are supposed to feel, the advantages, why am I taking these meds in the first place? My doctors, for the past 30 years, have been wholly incapable of communicating these simple facts to me.

So it's interesting to me, when psychiatry branches into formerly-recreational drugs such as ketamine, LSD, peyote, etc, that there is already a large and substantial body of information about what that altered state of consciousness should be like. Artists have written songs, they've painted pictures, they've composed poetry, they've written novels about it.

So I think that's the only real advantage to psychedelics and such, in that there is actually more documentation on their primary effects, and so I wish all the best to clinicians as they grapple with trying to recreate Haight-Ashbury and Golden Gate Park in a sterile, dreary, clinical setting.

Re: I Tried Ketamine to Treat My Depression. It Was Terrifying

#25

Post by jungledeuce »

emodendroket wrote: post #17
electric_mayhem wrote: post #15

Can’t possibly discount the possibility that this is FUD put out by the pharmaceutical industry to counterweight the increased openness to psychedelics, in part from Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind book and Netflix series. My experience has been that with proper set and setting, I got months of relief from a good psychedelic experience. Shrooms. My first mushroom trip I had tears streaming down my face for something…

I'm sure you could find some unhappy trip experiences on erowid if you believe it is literally impossible that anyone could have a negative experience.

I had a single terrible experience with dissociatives, to the point that for many many years I had ongoing panic attacks. It was an absolute nightmare for a long time as I was never sure when one might strike.

Without data it’s hard to say how dangerous these drugs are, but they are dangerous. People will pipe in with how you need the right setting and mindset and on and on, it’s never the drug it’s always the patient. But even if that’s all true, none of that is objectively verifiable, people will still have terrible, life-changing experiences, and we should better understand the rate at which they will before prescribing it broadly.

Re: I Tried Ketamine to Treat My Depression. It Was Terrifying

#26

Post by jkcorrea »

Unfortunate the author 1) wasn't made aware of just how mind altering of an experience it can be and 2) seems to have been misled that this treatment can simply "cure depression" on its own

It's my experience that psychedelics can help open your mind to different perspectives and spot unaddressed issues (I believe they're issues you just aren't "allowing" yourself to see/address), but to just take it in a clinical setting and expect it to work some magic on you.. Idk.

K can be incredibly dissociative in recreational doses & this person was given ~10-20x a recreational dose - with very little warning of the gravity of the effects. I can totally imagine why it was such a terrifying experience!

I agree with another commenter about the importance of mindset and setting. For most people, even getting to the point in their lives where they can & are willing to take psychedelics (non-clinical settings) is a long journey that shouldn't be discounted. Not saying we shouldn't pursue it in more clinical ways, just that the journey & mindset BEFORE taking the drugs is just as, if not MORE, important than the drugs themselves

Re: I Tried Ketamine to Treat My Depression. It Was Terrifying

#27

Post by Overtonwindow »

I went through ketamine therapy and it was the greatest thing I've ever done for myself. In about two days, 20 years of depression lifted. It's not a pleasant experience, and to be clear I used the nasal spray because it's covered by insurance (at no cost!) but it was life changing. I went through 8 weeks of it last year and the positive benefits have continued with no negatives.

One caveat: The clinic I went to required that patients be on medication for depression at the time of the treatment. I've often wondered if someone was not on medication would it be different. I did not see any hallucinations, just felt body-drunk.

It's been 8 months and I can still honestly say it is the best thing I ever did for myself.

Re: I Tried Ketamine to Treat My Depression. It Was Terrifying

#28

Post by tdehnel »

jungledeuce wrote: post #18
voisin wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> one of the many reasons why normal people are disgusted by rave culture I’ve never been to a rave but I’ve also never met anyone in my life who has expressed disgust by rave culture. Is this a thing?

You don’t know enough white suburban conservative Christian seniors. I agree it’s not exactly a huge group, but in my experience in the Midwest that’s where you might find disgust. Everywhere else? I agree, normal people are not in general “disgusted” by kids at parties dancing all night dressed in neon or whatever the kids these days do.

[flagged]

Re: I Tried Ketamine to Treat My Depression. It Was Terrifying

#29

Post by lampshades »

NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #24

One of the major problems with "standard" psychotropic medications is that there's no standard information out there about what to expect while taking it. And by that I mean, meds such as antidepressants, mood stabilizers, antipsychotics, tranquilizers are intended to place the user into an altered mental state, but nobody will tell us what that AMS will be like, experientally. They can easily tell us about side effe…

> I wish all the best to clinicians as they grapple with trying to recreate Haight-Ashbury in a sterile, dreary, clinical setting.

I couldn't imagine using psychedelics without being able to go outside (at night, day tripping isn't for me).

From the article:

> In the days that followed I still didn’t feel like myself. Detached.

I feel like this when I do mushrooms. I've also been in trips that scared the shit out of me (the most terrifying times of my life in fact), but they've all been beneficial in the long run. I wonder if this man's life will change more than he expects it to. I've never done ketamine so I have no idea what it's like.

Re: I Tried Ketamine to Treat My Depression. It Was Terrifying

#30

Post by ClassyJacket »

I accidentally K-holed once (entirely my own careless fault) and it remains one of the scariest and most unpleasant experiences of my life. Despite years of debilitating depression I'm so terrified of feeling even 10% or 20% of the way to that again that I just don't think I could do it.

I'm aware you're not supposed to K-hole from the controlled medical dose, or even from most recreational use, but the feeling of losing my connection to my senses and body was so horrible I just don't think I could bring myself to put any more in me ever again.

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