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Ketamine blocks bursting in the lateral habenula to rapidly relieve depression

nature.com

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

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By reputable I mean manufactured in an approved facility to Health Canada standards (or equivalent). It seems unlikely that some dude on darknet would meet these standards. It's like saying that your local drug dealer has a good reputation because he hasn't killed too many people with fentanyl.

Darknet stores are mostly distributors not manufacturers of pharmacological products. They are usually sourced from corrupt legitimate medical world supply chains. The economic reality is that there is almost no margin in wholesaling some of this stuff. Starting a yet another factory to make off-patent generic drugs would cost more than the probable medium term profits, especially given that you can more easily acqui…

> corrupt

Yeah, that's the problem. Are you aware that ketamine is sometimes laced with fentanyl?

https://nowtoronto.com/news/why-is-fentanyl-showing-up-in-st...

Not really something I'd be willing to take the chance on, just to save a few bucks.

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

#72

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.

Intramuscular. I'm not willing to set a cath on myself :)

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

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally leave my clinic about half an hour after my infusion ends, but I'm taking the subway. If I were going to drive I'd probably hang out for 60-90 minutes. The dissociative and psychotomimetic effects wear off pretty quickly. But this depends on dose... my doc used to use higher doses before there was as much research around what works, and back then it would sometimes take a few hours before I felt back to n…

I'm in the opposite boat, the dose I receive is fairly high and I'm unable to even stand for around 20 minutes after it ends. There's no way I can drive the day of. As for the events, the feeling of dissociation takes around a day to fade for me. I also have a high deal of cognitive impairment from it, or detachment in my thoughts?

Is enjoyable?

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

#74
post #27
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

curious: are you based in the US? Would it not be covered by insurance? $400/shot is a lot for Ketamine.

Ketamine is a generic drug and dirt cheap. I just checked and it's under $10 for a vial with enough to use in surgery, not even this setting. The $400 must be the clinic charge. I'm not sure what administration looks like, but a regular doctor's visit is $100-$150 and if the patient needs to stay for a longer period of time until it's safe to release them, $400 doesn't seem that far off of what you'd expect.

Most of the expense is that it's an IV, so you need a trained nurse to administer and oversee you having it in and out; at least, that's what the doctor who ran the practice I did this at said, and given the cost of ketamine, it made sense.

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

#75
Ketamine was both the best and most depressing depression treatment option I've ever tried.

Within a couple of weeks after having had the initial round of six treatments in two weeks, I was the most functional and productive human being I've _ever_ been - things that used to be impossible or utterly agonizing to complete were as trivial as they "should" be, I was enjoying life, it was great.

After a couple of months of periodic booster treatments, over the course of a week, I felt it completely drain out of me, and no variance or repetition of ketamine treatments has been able to reproduce it since. (We spent months varying dosage levels, frequency, and trying a few OTC things that the doctor had seen synergize ketamine response in people before, to no avail.)

It was...possibly the single worst experience of my life, feeling that slip away, and now having recent crystal-clear memories of how much that fog had been complicating my life.

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

#76
Reminder that the FDA seems to fast track the wrong drug:

They gave "breakthrough designation" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_therapy ) to Esketamine under pressure from Johnson & Johnson:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esketamine#Depression

Although Arketamine seems like it has a lot more responsibility for the antidepressant effect of racemic ketamine:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arketamine#Novel_antidepressan...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroxynorketamine

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24316345 (2013)

http://www.cpn.or.kr/journal/view.html?doi=10.9758/cpn.2014.... (2014)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26327690 (2015)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4910398/ (2016)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5487269/#__sec4... (2017)

That isn't to say Esketamine doesn't have an antidepressant effect. In light of the fact that Esketamine makes you Trip Balls(tm) while Arketamine doesn't, I like to think of it this way:

You can likely get an antidepressant effect out of Esketamine in the same way that you can get an antidepressant effect out of psychdelics like LSD-25 & Psilocin. However, like those, it could possibly also make depression worse, and unlike Arketamine doesn't seem to represent anything awfully novel. It however also makes me suspect that like with other racemic drugs like Amphetamine, a shifted ratio preparation might make for a better drug overall than isolating the stereoisomers. For example, Adderall contains 75% dexamphetamine, 25% levoamphetamine, in the form of various amphetamine salts (wheras racemic amphetamine contains 50% of each, typically as a single salt.).

[Semi-related: I still don't comprehend why pharmaceutical companies have yet to create a combination preparation of Lisdexamfetamine with something like Lislevoamfetamine, - which I haven't seen synthesized but I don't see anything speaking against it -, in a ratio akin to the one seen in Adderall. The rational behind that ratio seems sound, albeit I'd perhaps go for an 80/20 split instead of a 75/25 split...]

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

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reputation is the key service of darknet markets. If you would prefer to pay $380 extra every four weeks, that's your call.

Are darknet markets still easy to get into? I used SR when it was around, with events in the interim I'm a bit more hesitant.

No, they're in a state of flux right now.

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

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By reputable I mean manufactured in an approved facility to Health Canada standards (or equivalent). It seems unlikely that some dude on darknet would meet these standards. It's like saying that your local drug dealer has a good reputation because he hasn't killed too many people with fentanyl.

Darknet stores are mostly distributors not manufacturers of pharmacological products. They are usually sourced from corrupt legitimate medical world supply chains. The economic reality is that there is almost no margin in wholesaling some of this stuff. Starting a yet another factory to make off-patent generic drugs would cost more than the probable medium term profits, especially given that you can more easily acqui…

> rest fairly assured

No you cannot: http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-china-33472971/inside-...

mentions illegal manufacturing in China early in the article.

Your advice is dangerous.

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

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reputation is the key service of darknet markets. If you would prefer to pay $380 extra every four weeks, that's your call.

Are darknet markets still easy to get into? I used SR when it was around, with events in the interim I'm a bit more hesitant.

Things aren't as stable as there were in the past but the guides and supporting infrastructure has matured. Read around a bit at reddit.com/r/darknetmarketsnoobs (check out the noob bible especially) if you want to learn more.

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

#80
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Darknet stores are mostly distributors not manufacturers of pharmacological products. They are usually sourced from corrupt legitimate medical world supply chains. The economic reality is that there is almost no margin in wholesaling some of this stuff. Starting a yet another factory to make off-patent generic drugs would cost more than the probable medium term profits, especially given that you can more easily acqui…

> rest fairly assured No you cannot: http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-china-33472971/inside-... mentions illegal manufacturing in China early in the article. Your advice is dangerous.

To be clear, I live in China and have been here for nearly two decades. You read a BBC article reporting translated third party information on the internet.
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