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Ketamine no better than placebo at alleviating depression, unusual trial finds

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Re: Ketamine no better than placebo at alleviating depression, unusual trial finds

#141

Post by Georgelemental »

replygirl wrote: post #66
passwordoops wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For all practical purposes, peer review is mostly useless today. More often than not, it's either: -a cursory glance by someone who doesn't have time to care -a highly detailed critique from someone who will either be scooped or proven wrong, so they're looking for any reason to reject the paper, good or bad -a grad student who puts in the effort but probably still lacks the experience for a good review And if peer r…

> a highly detailed critique from someone who will either be scooped or proven wrong, so they're looking for any reason to reject sounds like an ideal reviewer, tbh

"Reason" might be "major flaw in your statistical analysis", but it could also be "you should have cited my paper" or "insufficient jargon."

Re: Ketamine no better than placebo at alleviating depression, unusual trial finds

#143

Post by efields »

ativzzz wrote: post #118
vasco wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took LSD twice in my life only and it changed my outlook ever since. It's been almost 10 years. I wasn't depressed and had other benefits from it, but I can see how that experience could've fixed depression, and know of people who say it did for them even though I'm not in any hippy-like community or whatever. I think a possible reason why medical research prefers a pill that works forever for continued use is that…

Or because it's not really medicine and person specific? I've taken LSD several times in varying doses and it's never been anything more than "a really really fun time". Nothing profound, but damn fun times, the same effect as any fun memorable party Perhaps if you are looking for something profound or want a change of mindset, psychedelics might be able to help you reach it - similar to how shamans used psychedelics…

Last time I remember taking LSD I was on a bus going from NYC to Boston and I guess I was either bored or knew we were going to have a longer than usual trip home because of traffic. I wind up talking with the guy behind me for hours who describes something to me he was working on that sounds like modern day Spotify (this was circa 2005ish?). We get into spirituality at some point. We have a 7 hour trip and get home early morning before the subway is running. We walk around the Commons a bit. He had a cane but didn't need it… just used it as a fun prop in life. He had me believing his name Joshua or in Hebrew Yeshua aka Jesus. (edit: copy pasta)

Anyway if you take drugs to party and then go to a party, you'll party. If you take drugs and do therapy you'll do therapy. If you take drugs just to see what happens and you're open to whatever happens, things will happen. Maybe you'll just have an oddly memorable time and you ponder what it means, slowly altering how you think about other things for the rest of your life.

Re: Ketamine no better than placebo at alleviating depression, unusual trial finds

#144

Post by BobbyJo »

vorpalhex wrote: post #116
BobbyJo wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I did drug trials for pain killers this way, would it give any useful data? Depression and pain are subjective. Personally, I think removing the subjectivity from the trial voids the trial. It is a clever design, but it really just proves the benefit is in the experience and not the physical mechanism.

Pain has subjective parts but it is not merely subjective. You can measure how much effect ibuprofen or tylenol has, even with someone knocked out. You can see pain on an mri, even with someone knocked out.

Never heard that before, source?

Also, anesthesia would ruin whatever you hoped to see on an MRI.

Re: Ketamine no better than placebo at alleviating depression, unusual trial finds

#146

Post by operatingthetan »

BobbyJo wrote: post #144
vorpalhex wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pain has subjective parts but it is not merely subjective. You can measure how much effect ibuprofen or tylenol has, even with someone knocked out. You can see pain on an mri, even with someone knocked out.

Never heard that before, source? Also, anesthesia would ruin whatever you hoped to see on an MRI.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding context, but my cat may need an MRI and I've learned it's standard in all veterinary medicine to use anesthesia for scans in order to keep the patients immobile.

Re: Ketamine no better than placebo at alleviating depression, unusual trial finds

#147

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

ativzzz wrote: post #118
vasco wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took LSD twice in my life only and it changed my outlook ever since. It's been almost 10 years. I wasn't depressed and had other benefits from it, but I can see how that experience could've fixed depression, and know of people who say it did for them even though I'm not in any hippy-like community or whatever. I think a possible reason why medical research prefers a pill that works forever for continued use is that…

Or because it's not really medicine and person specific? I've taken LSD several times in varying doses and it's never been anything more than "a really really fun time". Nothing profound, but damn fun times, the same effect as any fun memorable party Perhaps if you are looking for something profound or want a change of mindset, psychedelics might be able to help you reach it - similar to how shamans used psychedelics…

The anecdotes you give don't necessarily suggest this is person-specific. They don't refute that, in the general case, there might a good chance for a person who is depressed to have their symptoms alleviated by an LSD trip. Were you depressed (in the DSM-5 sense) any of the times you took LSD and had "a really really fun time"? A person who is not depressed obviously won't notice the mindset shift which alleviates their depression.

Re: Ketamine no better than placebo at alleviating depression, unusual trial finds

#148

Post by aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA »

kibwen wrote: post #120
cameronh90 wrote: post #3

> They gave volunteers ketamine while they were under general anesthesia, theoretically preventing the participants from going on a trip. Maybe it's the trip that helps.

In which case, the headline would be correct. If ketamine can only treat depression by inducing a trip, then it's the trip that treats the depression, not the ketamine, which suggests future avenues of research into trips themselves, possibly excluding ketamine altogether.

The trip could be necessary but not sufficient.

Re: Ketamine no better than placebo at alleviating depression, unusual trial finds

#149

Post by alex_lav »

kibwen wrote: post #120
cameronh90 wrote: post #3

> They gave volunteers ketamine while they were under general anesthesia, theoretically preventing the participants from going on a trip. Maybe it's the trip that helps.

In which case, the headline would be correct. If ketamine can only treat depression by inducing a trip, then it's the trip that treats the depression, not the ketamine, which suggests future avenues of research into trips themselves, possibly excluding ketamine altogether.

Isn't this true of most drugs? It's not the NSAID that treated the pain, it's the reduction in inflammation...

Re: Ketamine no better than placebo at alleviating depression, unusual trial finds

#150

Post by jimnotgym »

vasco wrote: post #115
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is real, though. Drugs with overt recreational effects very frequently distract the patient from the therapeutic effect in unproductive ways. The recreational effects generally disappear quickly as tolerance develops, which can give patients the false impression that the medication “stopped working”. A common example would be ADHD stimulants, where the early stimulating and mood-boosting effects disappear…

I took LSD twice in my life only and it changed my outlook ever since. It's been almost 10 years. I wasn't depressed and had other benefits from it, but I can see how that experience could've fixed depression, and know of people who say it did for them even though I'm not in any hippy-like community or whatever. I think a possible reason why medical research prefers a pill that works forever for continued use is that…

That seems to be their objection to mushrooms, can't charge a lot for something that grows in your lawn. Turn it into a pill with some chemical tweak and you get a patent.
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