Ketamine Therapy

Ketamine’s History

Professor and chemist Calvin L. Stevens first synthesized ketamine in 1962. After two years of animal testing, the compound was used on prisoners in 1964. Until then, prison employees used PCP to anesthetize prisoners. The prisons started using ketamine instead and the prisons noticed that the ketamine was effective at producing anesthesia and also reduced toxic behavior commonly accompanying PCP administration.

Ketamine was approved by the FDA for medical use in 1970. The medical situation in the Vietnam War may have pushed the FDA to approve ketamine as an anesthetic due to the massive number of soldiers undergoing surgeries. Soon thereafter, however, soldiers and others in the region began abusing ketamine and the abuse continued on to the West Coast of the United States a couple years later. The increased use in war and on the streets spurred academic research on ketamine during the 1970s.

During the 1980s, ketamine spread throughout the United States as a recreational drug. By the 1990s, the drug was so common on the streets it adopted the name “Special K” and was popular in countries around the world including Canada, Mexico, Hong Kong, and more.

The United States government enacted laws in 1999 to make ketamine a controlled substance in an effort to control illicit use. After ketamine was made a controlled substance, morphine and heroin became more popular on the streets and other anesthetics started being used more often in surgical rooms.

At this time, in the early 2000s, clinicians began taking note of studies taking place over the last half-century regarding ketamine’s properties and effects. Particularly, the ability the substance had to rapidly reduce suicidal thoughts and depressive episodes. This lead to clinicians using ketamine as an “off-label” source of depression and suicidial ideation treatment. Subsequently, ketamine clinics began opening which leads us to the present day.

How Does it Work?

To understand the significance of ketamine, you must also understand how other antidepressants work. Hundreds of research articles lead psychiatric professionals to believe believe that serotonin was a major contributor to a person’s mood. To make a long story short, the medication class selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors was formed based on this research. You may recognize a medication in this class by names such as Zoloft, Prozac, Lexapro, and Celexa.

Over time, clinicians took note that serotonin only makes up less than 20% of the neurotransmitters in a person’s brain. This supported the fact that 1 in 3 people who are prescribed an aforementioned selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor do not respond well to the therapy. It turns out that GABA and glutamate actually make up the majority of neurotransmitters in a person’s brain. These neurotransmitters have huge impacts on a person’s mood.

Furthermore, ketamine seems to increase glutamate production in the brain according to a research study carried out at Yale. Increased glutamate productions seems to promote neuroplasticity, or in other words allows the brain to create new pathways.

According to the same Yale studies, about half of the patients who were administered IV ketamine experienced improved depression symptoms. All patients who were included in the study had not experienced improvement from other antidepressant interventions such as medication, therapy, medication, etc.

The Ketamine Regimen

One of the main purposes of Honu Medical is to educate the public regarding psychiatric therapy. Many people want one pill, or one infusion, to fix all of their problems. Such fantasies on nonsense. Humans are much too complex for this to be so.

A ketamine infusion alone will not cure your depression. You will likely experience rapid alleviation from your depressive burdens, but this is not permanent. You will need to continue working with your mental health provider to keep making conscious changes to your life. You may need to continue other medication regimens while going through ketamine infusion treatments.

At Honu, we will continue to help fortify your mind and make you a more resilient person. Ketamine is one of the tools we use, not the only tool.

What to Expect From Ketamine Therapy

You will likely engage in 6 infusions during a roughly three-week time span. These initial infusions will likely make a large impact in your life. However, symptoms may creep back in to your life after some time. To address this fact, we offer booster infusions at a frequency determined by you and your Hone Medical mental health provider.