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Psychedelic drugs take on depression

nature.com

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Re: Psychedelic drugs take on depression

#41

Post by FollowingTheDao »

heavyset_go wrote: post #17
FollowingTheDao wrote: post #2

They should not be lumping ketamine in with all the other psychedelics which act on the serotonin 2A receptor. I’m hesitant to say ketamine is a psychedelic at all. Regardless, I find .25 mg of Klonopin can get rid of my depression as well, they’ve known for a long time that depression has a strong linked glutamate excitation in certain parts of the brain.

Chronic benzo administration can cause depression, so that might not work for everyone. I'd argue that the term "psychedelic dissociative" accurately captures what ketamine can be.

I do not take it chronically and no one should. I take it once, as needed. Works for a few days.

And chronic ketamine use can cause depression as well:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5035802/

All these drugs are not the answer. It is much more likely there is a fundamental immune dysfunction causing the depression. IMHO, all mood disorder patents should be seen by rheumatologists, not psychiatrists.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-NMDA_receptor_encephaliti...

FYI: I have Sjogren's Syndrome and Discoid Lupus

Re: Psychedelic drugs take on depression

#42

Post by kirse »

heavyset_go wrote: post #14
kornhole wrote: post #10

Psychedelics are illegal not because they create hallucinations but rather because they help break down the hallucinations we have about the world. In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is a hallucinating idiot.

One of my favorite stories about psychedelic experiences is a friend's coworker dosing acid one weekend, coming back in on Monday, saying "I hate it here" and quitting on the spot. They went on to travel and start their own company, and are doing great for themselves. In my experience, psychedelics really help tear down the justifications we put up for the BS we tolerate in our daily lives and can help you connect wi…

psychedelics really help tear down the justifications we put up for the BS we tolerate in our daily lives

Thing is you can do that with an extended weekend of fasting/meditation and solitude in the woods. Bring a notepad and pencil if you really want to lock in the new perspective. Bonus is that fasting is also widely known to be healthy.

Plus how do you really know the causative agent of change was the drugs, what if there was already the underlying emotional desire to do something and having the experience was more about creating the justification to act?

Surely one of your psychedelic insights had to be how little agency we really have. We easily back-fill reasoning and stories to happenings that were bound to happen anyway. Our brains always want a story for cause and effect, but so much of what happens occurs outside of our control or awareness. It's like riding on a rollercoaster and proudly claiming "yea I decided to make it do a loop"

Re: Psychedelic drugs take on depression

#43

Post by loceng »

I've wondered: what are the chances that big pharma will attempt to suppress these medicines that compete with their patentable products, like seems to be the case with the majority of drugs caught up in "the war on drugs"?

Re: Psychedelic drugs take on depression

#44

Post by krrrh »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #15
ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote: post #3

Ketamine is a magical drug, I've told this story a hundred times on HN but it cured my depression overnight. I was given a large hit of it by a doctor after a horrible accident, I went into a K-hole and had a spiritual experience, but even more profound was the effect it had for 4 to 6 months after. It was like a veil had been lifted from my mind, the simplest pleasures of life made me happy, like smelling fresh coff…

> but even more profound was the effect it had for 4 to 6 months after. It's important to note that this is an atypically long duration. In clinical studies, the duration of effects is more around 1-2 weeks. It's possible that the overall experience (including surviving an accident and getting a "second lease on life") was the trigger for 4-6 months of improvement, not just the medication you were given once. That's…

The shorter duration is also more common with lower dose IV infusions. There is evidence that higher concentrations (usually delivered infra-muscularly or sublingually), and the k-hole experience OP describes delivers more long lasting results. In the Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy space, there is a lot of criticism of the infusion model of a nurse managing simultaneous infusions on several patients at sub-psychedelic doses as a cash treadmill, as opposed to a deeper psychedelic experience which can be more costly to deliver because ideally it demands pre and post integration plus administering to a group can be problematic if someone experiences a “bad trip”. With some preparation and screening a lot of the doses in a series can be managed at home though.

Re: Psychedelic drugs take on depression

#45

Post by FollowingTheDao »

colechristensen wrote: post #26
ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote: post #3

Ketamine is a magical drug, I've told this story a hundred times on HN but it cured my depression overnight. I was given a large hit of it by a doctor after a horrible accident, I went into a K-hole and had a spiritual experience, but even more profound was the effect it had for 4 to 6 months after. It was like a veil had been lifted from my mind, the simplest pleasures of life made me happy, like smelling fresh coff…

Here's a reminder: "Depression" is just a label put on a cluster of symptoms to make diagnoses consistent across medical providers. It is definitely not a singular condition with one cause and a consistent treatment across patients. It is likely a multitude of conditions which will respond differently to many treatments. Some people with a depression diagnosis will be very disappointed with ketamine treatment.

Yes, this. IMHO, there are two type of depression, both immune mediated, and both drive my glutamate/GABA imbalance. One is high glutamate the other is high GABA, either effecting different region of the brain.

This imbalance affects serotonin and norepinephrine release.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8311508/

And this change is mediated by the immune system. Glutamate is now known as an immunomodulator.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2997749/

Re: Psychedelic drugs take on depression

#46

Post by greymalik »

dundercoder wrote: post #6
ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote: post #3

Ketamine is a magical drug, I've told this story a hundred times on HN but it cured my depression overnight. I was given a large hit of it by a doctor after a horrible accident, I went into a K-hole and had a spiritual experience, but even more profound was the effect it had for 4 to 6 months after. It was like a veil had been lifted from my mind, the simplest pleasures of life made me happy, like smelling fresh coff…

Seconded. For me however, its a monthly treatment for an hour in an office run by an anesthesiologist. The difference is night and day compared to any SSRI, SNRI, or TCA I've ever been on. Exempting the 3-4 hours post treatment, no ill side effects either.

> Exempting the 3-4 hours post treatment

What do you experience during that time?

Re: Psychedelic drugs take on depression

#47

Post by FollowingTheDao »

mathgladiator wrote: post #12
ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote: post #3

Ketamine is a magical drug, I've told this story a hundred times on HN but it cured my depression overnight. I was given a large hit of it by a doctor after a horrible accident, I went into a K-hole and had a spiritual experience, but even more profound was the effect it had for 4 to 6 months after. It was like a veil had been lifted from my mind, the simplest pleasures of life made me happy, like smelling fresh coff…

Been there, and I just did a booster. I'm now very happy as I plug along on my project without any negative judgement: https://www.adama-platform.com/2022/07/02/the-path-of-the-mo... I'm doing silly things for silly reasons, and I've never been this happy and at peace. It let me heal from the moral injury of working in big tech for a decade.

I am in no way diagnosing, but I have Bipolar Disorder, so did my mother and my brother. I say things like this which you wrote when I am hypomanic/manic:

"As I reflect on this, I’ve concluded that I exist with the divine purpose of bringing beauty into the world. Beauty and elegance require tremendous suffering because having taste is expensive."

It is kind of typical of the condition.

I know nothing I saw will convince you that the state you are living in is not a balanced state because I have been there as well and no one could tell me otherwise, so I get it.

Re: Psychedelic drugs take on depression

#48

Post by leto_ii »

akuro wrote: post #21
jahnu wrote: post #9

The frequency of these kind of posts followed by anecdotes about how it worked for the commenter (who I believe btw) makes me a little uneasy. Somewhere buried in the discussion eventually is a comment from a relevant professional urging caution in interpreting and reacting to these news reports and anecdotes. Now with something as serious as this I would not at all object to such cautions being placed a bit more pro…

As someone who has taken extremely heavy doses of some very, very potent psychedelics (LSD, DMT, ketamine, mescaline and psilocybin), I am inclined to agree with you. I acknowledge that some people experience great benefits from psychedelics, but the current push to label psychedelics as mental health miracle solution doesn't sit right with me. Make no mistake: these chemicals are not to be trifled with. People with…

> I was becoming soft, more predisposed to magical thinking.

My experience is only with microdosing LSD and psilocybine mushrooms, however this 'softness' does ring true to me.

The good part with microdosing though is that it doesn't last anywhere near a year, while the positive effects I've felt and the deep conclusions I reached about myself and life in general I think will last a lifetime.

LSD has especially helped me get pretty much completely rid of anxiety in a particularly tense moment of my life. It has also 'thawed' some more ingrained thought patterns and ideas I had about things.

Re: Psychedelic drugs take on depression

#49

Post by dundercoder »

greymalik wrote: post #46
dundercoder wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seconded. For me however, its a monthly treatment for an hour in an office run by an anesthesiologist. The difference is night and day compared to any SSRI, SNRI, or TCA I've ever been on. Exempting the 3-4 hours post treatment, no ill side effects either.

> Exempting the 3-4 hours post treatment What do you experience during that time?

Some visual distortions, difficulty focusing, occasional nausea, slow speech, feeling groggy.

Re: Psychedelic drugs take on depression

#50

Post by krrrh »

TaupeRanger wrote: post #35
whiskyagogo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It replaced my lifelong fear (terror?) of death with what I can honestly say is now curiosity. You can experience only so many deaths in your mind before you learn to be comfortable with the idea.

I'm watching the Netflix doc "How to Change Your Mind" about this subject. They use similar language: e.g. that psilocybin causes terminal cancer patients to view death with "curiosity". I find that really interesting, because implicit in this "curiosity" must be the idea of consciousness existing after death...otherwise what would be curious about it? You just die and there's nothing otherwise. So I wonder if, e.g.…

I’m basically an atheist and ketamine assisted psychotherapy did change my background fear of mortality very much in a before and after sort of way. It felt more like a different relationship to time and free will. Like a realization that the universe existed and unfolded like a cellular automata and I was integrated within that. Talking to the very experienced therapist afterwards he summed up my scattered thoughts as, “you resolved your determinacy.”

I still don’t believe in an afterlife other than in the abstract sense that that the brief existence of me as a point of consciousness was impacted by all that came before it and will have had an impact on all that comes after. I would say more calmness and more acceptance are better descriptions than curiosity.

Like a lot of psychedelic experience, there’s an underlying neurological phenomenon and common subjective experience that gets differently interpreted based on your background beliefs. It’s like the DMT experience of entities is very differently interpreted as inter-dimensional elves by those DMT smokers who have read a lot of Terrance McKenna, as plant spirits by Amazonian ayahuasca drinkers, and as channeled spirits or Christian saints by Daimistas.

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