Ketamine disrupts late sensory information transfer in corticothalamic network
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
I have depression and anxiety, so it wasn't long before something else, less severe this time, set me on another spiral and I decided to address it with ketamine again. I found that the same dose was now less effective at quieting the anxiety. As I continued to experiment with ketamine as a potential anti-depressant and anti-anxiety drug, I found that I was building up a tolerance alarmingly quickly. Doses that would put others in a k-hole would leave me still very much able to feel my panic and anxiety. Realizing that, I decided to stop using it before the ratchet of tolerance turned too far. I still keep some ketamine in the house, but with the personal rule of "only reach for this if you'd otherwise be reaching for a gun."
My personal hypothesis is that whatever chemical difference makes my brain more depressed and anxious than a typical person is also making me more resistant to ketamine, though of course I have no science to back this up. (If you do, please link me!) I'm grateful that I don't have a very addictive personality - I know many people who have made a regular habit of it.
There isn't much point to this post other than to share my personal experiences with ketamine. I'd love to hear the experiences of others with it. I think it has an incredible potential as an acute anti-depressant/anti-anxiety medication, but would love to see more studies on it, particularly on how it affects the neurodivergent.
Ketamine hole is wild. The first time was the most intense and almost impossible to describe. I now understand what an "altered state" is really all about. It's like all of my senses were turned off, but my consciousness was fully present and I could think clearly. Even though I lost my senses, I could hear music more clearly than I ever could, it's like it permeated my whole being.
Later times are less intense, and a bit predictable, since my brain is more used to the altered state. I've gone probably 8 times in 2 years (6 in the first year, twice last year). It's pretty expensive, so unless you're getting real life-changing results I say it's fun to try but not necessary. It's a small reset of sorts. A nice pick me up.
The biggest upside is that it opens up a part of your mind you didn't know was there. Kinda gets the junk out of the way. I found it is a good place to contemplate things and think about bigger picture. The perspective I gained in my inner space I get to carry with me outside.
Every time I go the clinician asks me what is it that has brought me here. I tell them it's like deciding it's time to get a massage. You don't really need it, and will do just fine without it, but it's a nice thing to do for yourself from time to time.
YMMV
Please do your own research before messing around with your head.
I only did it because it was in a controlled clinical environment, and my vitals were monitored the entire time. Early in the experience as my senses faded and I lost touch with my body I thought I might be dying. It's a ride, and it's not for everyone.
At some point, people have to give up "that first dose" effect and take what Ketamine does offer in the long term.
That's why doctors tend to lock the dose at one single point. This is what happens with nearly any drug like this, but Ketamine is certainly severely strong in this aspect.
Let's not have another opioid crisis please.
Yeah, I was quite sad that I could never quite achieve the bliss of that first dose again. If I didn't have things going on in my external life right now to keep me busy, I definitely would have chased that bliss to a dangerous degree.
> That's why doctors tend to lock the dose at one single point. This is what happens with nearly any drug like this, but Ketamine is certainly severely strong in this aspect.
Do you happen to know what that dose is (or could point me at a paper/some other reputable source that states it)? Would love more information on being able to dose myself responsibly.
> Let's not have another opioid crisis please.
For sure - hence why I stopped using it once I became uncomfortable with how my body was responding to it (or rather - not responding to it).
Personally I'm interested in them exploring analogs of Ketamine in depression treatment. Ketamine is not particularly manic especially when compared to some of the others in its family. That may be helpful in some cases, but not others. There is at least one that doesn't seem to have the holing/disconnected effects but does seem to have some of the antidepressant ones at least from what I've seen. The smaller doses of a lot of them (ketamine is much less potent than DCK, or 3meopce).
It is also coming from a throwaway account, so please take "the same dose was less effective" with a grain of salt.
I know many people with depression and anxiety that used ketamine and never experienced this type of response: extremely limited use and immediate reduction in effectiveness.
I don't buy it.
Edit: Initial studies show even microdoses of ketamine can cause immediate and lasting (+2 weeks) reduction in depression and anxiety. One should not be going into a "k hole" which is regarded as somewhat of an overdose even to partiers
My experience is that I dislike the feeling of ketamine high, and I use a small dose fortnightly. If I go longer than that, the depression and suicidal ideation return. I use a small enough dose that I do not feel the immediate effect. It takes a day or three before I experience a reduction in depression and suicidal ideation, but after that, the part of my brain that says "kill yourself" every few minutes goes completely silent.
I also know people who seek out the k-hole and have built up ridiculous (and very expensive) tolerance to the drug. Their stories are very similar to GP. To be avoided.
I believe we agree on most everything else if not our perception of the poster.
Please feel free to investigate and provide educated feedback
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZxNLlkKGiI
Timmy Davis is not an alcoholic. But like many twenty-something students, he's worried he may be drinking too much.
And cutting down isn't easy. The feel-good memory associations that our minds create – between the sight of a cold pint of beer and pleasure, for instance – lead to the cravings that sustain addictive behaviour, and cause us to relapse.
Dr. Ravi Das is a neuropsychopharmacologist at University College London whose research explores whether we can intervene in addiction by weakening those memories. His latest experiment theorises that ketamine – a controlled drug notorious for its recreational use (to attain a state of intense dissociation and incapacitation described as a 'K-hole') – may have the makings of the elusive 'forgetting pill' – a drug that, administered under correct clinical conditions, can weaken specific memories safely.
Timmy has volunteered for Dr. Das' latest experiment, in which 90 volunteers will receive a ketamine infusion in a controlled setting. Timmy is no stranger to psychedelics. But could a drug he has previously encountered recreationally really help him cut down his drinking?
High Society is a VICE documentary series about drugs in the UK.
I don't believe that co-Ketamine therapy modalities have been developed well enough either, I think for certain traditionally treatment-resistant clusters of symptoms (like cPTSD, for example), it could be significantly helpful due to some of the properties it has compared to other treatments. Just that not all of those properties are going to be best utilized by a general population on a disorder taking a prescription alone.
It truly is an exciting frontier. (Among other reasons for commenting, I'm very excited about psycopharmacotherapeutics in general as an autism spectrum disorder special interest <3 :)))) )
But we aren't learning anything from these trials about the nature of depression. They can't tell us anything about the non-responders.
It's like saying "we aren't learning more about fever from acetaminophen" (or ibuprofen, for example). Of course we aren't! It's a symptom of something else. Depression (I personally believe) is never a standalone syndrome. Ever. Not unless something is wacked out crazy physiologically, in which case for those cases at least you should see a near 0% success rate for talk therapy, I believe (barring a few minor exceptions, perhaps).
Depression can often come from a variety of confounding factors, but the nigh-monotropic tendencies of the field to focus on a singular cause is how we end up with a series of medications where four rounds of different adaptive, extremely well funded and supported antidepressant therapies ended up in an extended remission rate of only ~25% or so. 25%.
I do, oddly enough, disagree that they can't tell us about non responders as the overtly psychedelic nature of the compound does leak information about the underlying system (s) at play. But I think with this reductive approach that many of us (almost necessarily have due to resource constraints) use when trying to tackle the issue, we're going to miss the bigger side of the issue.
On the plus side, in some trials, Ketamine is showing an efficacy of ~%69 or so, or so I've heard, which is quite good. One provider that I've heard about seems to note good long-term results in patients who are initially resistant, which could be for a variety of factors, some of those including simply extremely hardened belief systems that are less game-theoretically compatible with a smooth(er/ish) transition to a less tense-with-the-world strategy set.
Is it a nasal spray?
Have you ever K-holed yourself?
I have closed eye visuals rarely now. I did accidentally go too deep once.
I think psilocybin is promising, but doing it when you're depressed can put you in terrifyingly bad places. I think in the long term psilocybin and ketamine will both end up being valuable tools in combating treatment resistant depression. My guess would be that psilocybin will be used more in clinical settings with a guide and ketamine will be something you can do at home and talk about with a therapist later.
Additionally, Ketamine works along different modalities so it can cover avenues that the previous two cannot. I find the pain relief avenue of action in contrast to the two mentioned above to personally be quite fascinating and I believe underutilized within the current field of research.
Honestly, ketamine is really smooth in lozenge form. The come up and down are pretty nice. If more marijuana users knew about this I have a feeling they would switch. But there is an effect on sleep and you feel a little lethargic the next day.
Also! You may find this Twitter very interesting as well.... ;P https://mobile.twitter.com/justsaysinrats?lang=en
(And good point on the K-hole, in completely naive users my understanding is that this would likely induce a K-hole under IV conditions, but also we have to remember there are dose curve spike flattenings that happen depending upon dosing delivery methods due to transporter saturation, for example, etc as well....)
My wife is 5'7" (170cm) and weighs 125 lbs (57kg), and takes 150mg five nights a week. That is about 2.6mg/kg. When she first started taking it the only side effect was on occasion she'd get double vision. Twice in a year she has had a night where it hits hard and she needs me to set with her because the disassociative aspect is unsettling to her. 99% of the time, though, she said it is like being mildly drunk, like after a glass of wine or two, nowhere near k-hole territory.
She has no other experience (recreational or therapeutically) with psychedelics/disassociatives. Perhaps the antidepressant she is taking dampens the effect of the ketamine.
All in all, she is glad to have the antidepressants, but there has been no silver bullet. It is always lurking just below the surface and she is constantly aware/afraid that it will resurface in full force.
Also PSA ket should probably not be taken orally as it will damage your bladder (it always does but I think oral ingestion is worse for this)
Oral has the least bioavailability, but unless one is taking dangerous doses what I've heard is it doesn't likely matter. People will lose so much more in the dosing runaway spiral than from administration method -- you're going to reach a stable point either way if you're holding a certain dose, I believe. I've heard oral is less than ideal for trying to maximize dose response time and efficiency for amount-taken, but IM for example even far outstrips oral or nasal (once again, as implied earlier, I only recommend and advocate for appropriately medically prescribed and dosed Ketamine.
Edit: also a bit of a wtf after the fact but who the heck is taking Ketamine subcutaneously? On first blush, that sounds certainly nightmarish compared to any of the other injection methods.
I'd like some data to support this.
My understanding is you're going to pee it out (or pee out the waste products from it) one way or another. Oral dosage lasts longer, so theoretically the time it spends entering your bladder is longer, but I don't see why it would be that much of a difference.
The main issue with oral usage is that it's much weaker, you need to take much more for similar effects.
But insufflation damages your nose and sense of smell, so oral is my preferred method.
I've never heard of taking it subcutaneously. I'd plug it long before I'd try that
And yes, the deal is you have to take more orally than any other method. More material = more bladder damage.
"In addition, it disrupted information transferability in both the somatosensory thalamus and the related cortex and decreased the sensory-induced thalamocortical connectivity in the broadband gamma range"
Too dumb to understand, but I'm interested in therapeutic effects of ketamine. Is this good or bad?
Which therapeutic effects are you interested in? I'm not a doctor but could point out some potentially helpful information, depending.