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Ketamine blocks bursting in the lateral habenula to rapidly relieve depression

nature.com

61–70 of 80 posts

Re: Ketamine blocks bursting in the lateral habenula to rapidly relieve depression

#61
post #54
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's on the low end. I've looked into it and seen prices on the order of $1000-1500 per treatment. If you filter those out, many metro areas simply have no provider that charges what would seem to be a justifiable price. Abusive pricing is a big problem for this product it seems. Several advocacy sites that I saw that maintain provider lists make note of this.

Is it abusive pricing or are they covering for potential legal issues, etc? It would be great to hear from a clinician with first-hand experience.

Is it abusive pricing...

Medical clinic in USA? Signs point to "yes".

Re: Ketamine blocks bursting in the lateral habenula to rapidly relieve depression

#62
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get this done at a clinic- what's the effects like? I've heard terms like "K-hole" for heavy off-prescription users getting zonked by the stuff. I'm assuming you're taking a light dose? Can you drive yourself home?

Yes it's at a clinic, and it's not a light dose. It does cause "K-Holes", it'll completely incapacitate you for the day of, and you'll be dizzy and sluggish the day after. So no you can't drive yourself home.

You should not "K-hole" with a clinical dose.

Re: Ketamine blocks bursting in the lateral habenula to rapidly relieve depression

#63

I have been looking into Ketamine as there is a clinic which administers Ketamine therapy in my area. The disappointing thing is that it looks like the effects are short lived, and one may need "booster" treatments every 4 weeks, at $400 a shot, for years and possibly forever. I hope with this understanding, we come up with something more permanent.

$325-$350 - Albuquerque $500-600 - Chicago Area $900 - Seattle $1000 - LA

It's actually cheaper to fly in to the cheapest center. Ketamine as a drug is safe and cheap. Probably somewhere around $5 a vial. But the doctors are taking a risk with their license and you they have to put an IV in you.

Re: Ketamine blocks bursting in the lateral habenula to rapidly relieve depression

#64
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$400/month seems a very cheap price for getting your life back.

I agree that $10/session does sound better. That's what you pay (at most) for LSD, the traditional longer-term anti-depressive and anti-anxiety effect being there as well (3-6 months). But: You have to buy a test kit (an additional $25/kit) and be extremely well informed about what do to and what not to do. And plan everything in detail and very carefully. Don't expect miracles if you're not serious about it.

Who are you agreeing with? This is really dangerous advice.

Re: Ketamine blocks bursting in the lateral habenula to rapidly relieve depression

#65

This really, really works. I experimented for years with it after reading about trials. I'd be happy to answer questions.

Did you administer it with IV or intramuscular? If not, it's completely different from how the studies are conducted.

Re: Ketamine blocks bursting in the lateral habenula to rapidly relieve depression

#66
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are recreational doses significantly higher than prescription doses? Why the difference?

Yes. "Recreational" users rarely suffer from ket bladder - it's people with serious addictions who are ending up in urology clinics. Users are reporting taking anything from 5 to 15 grams per day; even assuming that it's of very low purity, that's still orders of magnitude more than the doses being used to treat depression.

Ketamine is toxic to the bladder at any dose. I haven't found any long term research on this topic.

Re: Ketamine blocks bursting in the lateral habenula to rapidly relieve depression

#67

Isn't regular Ketamine use especially bad for the bladder? I recall reading multiple anecdotes from the Erowid ketamine vaults where people lost their bladders due to recreational Ketamine use.

It is in the way that alcohol use is bad for one's liver- the cases where it results in bladder issues are those of abuse where doses massively larger than the therapeutic psychiatric dose are used on an ongoing basis. "A young adult male taking 1 g of ketamine could expect 85% of the drug to be excreted in the urine within 24 hours, and taking into account the average voiding rate of 6 × 300 mL per day, a urine conc…

Back of the envelope... 175 lb ~= 80 kg, which means a single medical dose of 40 mg, with effects lasting weeks to months, compared to abuse-levels of 1g per day!

Re: Ketamine blocks bursting in the lateral habenula to rapidly relieve depression

#68
post #52
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are recreational doses significantly higher than prescription doses? Why the difference?

The research for depression used much lower doses of ketamine than recreational use. One UK clinic was using about 80 mg as a max dose. https://www.oxfordhealth.nhs.uk/news/first-uk-study-of-ketam... A large recreational dose may be 250 mg. This is partly because the recreational dose is looking for different effects, so they use more. And because people build up a tolerance.

It’s also a result of ketamine typically being used in the context of other drugs, especially stimulants.

Re: Ketamine blocks bursting in the lateral habenula to rapidly relieve depression

#69
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$400/month seems a very cheap price for getting your life back.

I agree that $10/session does sound better. That's what you pay (at most) for LSD, the traditional longer-term anti-depressive and anti-anxiety effect being there as well (3-6 months). But: You have to buy a test kit (an additional $25/kit) and be extremely well informed about what do to and what not to do. And plan everything in detail and very carefully. Don't expect miracles if you're not serious about it.

as much as I love LSD, it's by no means a safe drug for severe clinical depression. bad trips can easily push someone over the edge, especially if they have suicidal ideation.

ketamine, on the other hand, has a MoA that doesn't depend on how well the trip went. it's also a known quantity to doctors and far safer and more predictable.

please do not encourage severely depressed people to try acid.

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