Health - Ketamine for depression (personal experimentation)

[arman]

SWIM's girlfriend had clinical depression for a few years, her doctor has been tried several anti-depression drugs which does not seems to be very effective. But now she has been drug-free for a month and SWIM decided to try Ketamine on her to see if it does have any use for treating her depression.

SWIM decided to give her a normal K-Hole IM shot (~95mg) of K, although it seems like they used a lower dose for Ketamine depression trials. Anyway, SWIM had 2 goals: 1.Intorduce her to wonderful world of Ketamine - 2.Try anti-depression value of K. This has been tried yesterday, her experience in K-Hole was a nice one and she loved the experience and to my surprise she is really happy today, she told me that she was never this much happy for a long time. As some may think it is placebo effects, it should be noted that SWIM never told her about the use of K on depression and he is sure that she didn't know anything about K anti-depressant value, so there should be no placebo effect.

From personal experience SWIM can't remember being any happier the next day, although he tried around 50 experiences with K. So it seems like it is good only for those who suffer from clinical depression not everyone.

SWIM will update this thread with more info.

[enquirewithin]

I'm sure ketamine can work for depressed people. Previously I thought that it was a kind of psychedelic therapy-- in other words, it can take people out of their tired world of everyday worries and problems and show them a whole range of possibilities. It can help you put things in perspective. Such was been SWIM's experience when he first experimented with it. If he takes it occasionally, he still gets the same benefits.

There may also be physiological reasons, as some recent research has shown, that very small doses of ketamine can relieve chronic depression.

Too much, too often is not advisable!

[Jatelka]

It's a very interesting topic: Has SWIY seen these articles in the archive SWIArman?

http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/loc...=1323&catid=29

http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/loc...=1510&catid=29

In fact, ketamine is interesting generally. KPT (katamine assisted psychotherapy) has been used in heroin addiction and alcohol addiction. And of course, it's now been used in the treatment of chronic pain.

For those of you who aren't aware of the file archive please check out the Ketamine section here...

http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/loc...s.php?catid=29

[Optimus]

SWIM likes to belive the idea that Ketamine is able to strip away the ego, and release the user to engulf themselves in there own mind entirely realising their true strengths as a person and thus having confidence in ones own thought process. Depression is usually down to a weakness to accept certain things in life, and when SMIN started using K, SWIM realised that a lot of crap that was bothering SWIM at the time just faded away as SWIM realised the true importance of what really makes SWIM happy. SWIM does not suggest that everyone has this, but indeed K has had a phenomanal impact on SWIMS life, and SWIM belives it contributed in to SWIM becoming the person SWIM felt he should be.

To be alone with your mind is an incredible experience, and the thing about K is that when other drugs lie to you and create a certain idea of what you are feeling, K asks you questions, and invariably you can only reply with the truth.

Big up the K indeed.

[arman]

well, the anti-depressant action can be psychedelic therapy, but the study refrenced above by SWIJatelka, Ketamine dosage injected (IV) for that experiment has been 0.5mg/kg and infusions were administered over 40 minutes so there should be no or very little feeling of Ketamine, at least not enough to have psychedelic effect in subjects. So the anti-depressant action of ketamine is not just psychedelic therapy.

SWIMGF is still symptom-free today, she decided to quit smoking and SWIM noticed an overall positive change in her life. She told SWIM that she wants to try K again but will not try again till next week.

[Bajeda]

Originally Posted by arman

SWIMGF is still symptom-free today, she decided to quit smoking and SWIM noticed an overall positive change in her life. She told SWIM that she wants to try K again but will not try again till next week.

Swiy should be careful proceeding with this. Does swiy's GF have much experience with drugs, especially addictive ones? How is her ability to handle substances that are prone to repeated use?

I'm just asking as for swim in particular, K is a very bingeable substance, as I'm sure it is for many people.

[arman]

No she never get addicted to anything, and K is in SWIM's house and she can't do it without telling SWIM, although SWIM is sure she don't want to do it frequently.

[Bajeda]

Ok good.

It would be interesting for swiy to try and give GF much lower doses of IM Ketamine and see how see reacts to those. For instance, non-recreational doses similar to those tested for depression and see if those help as much as full blown K-hole experiences. This would be an experience much less prone to cravings and/or addiction, and it would help you find out whether its the neurochemical anti-depressive effects of the Ketamine that are helping, the therapeutic value of the psychedelic experience from the K itself, or a combination of the two.

Just a thought that may be worth exploring.

[arman]

The problem is that she don't like needles, and she may not allow SWIM to inject her something which doesn't give her a high. But SWIM will try convince her to try low dose.

BTW, the anti-depressant action seems to be much less today, the 4th day after K injection. But still she is much less depressed than before trying K.

[enquirewithin]

She could try sniffing it instead, although that's not very comfortable.

[VitaminK22]

Swim gets bad anxiety but when he takes ketamine, the anxiety goes away for about a week or 2, but then it comes back
swim only sniffs ketamine, he dont think its a good idea to inject anesthetic into urself, besides, the experience can last alot long when sniffing it although its not as intense.

[lulz]

I'm very curious about how ketamine is effective at treating depression.

Modification of glutamergic neurons is the most obvious factor, considering that ketamine is an NMDA antagonist.

Since the effect supposedly starts a few hours after dosage, and ketamine has a half life of just a few hours, I wonder if the positive effects are caused by some kind of rebound effect where glutamate neurons become more reponsive after being temporarily blocked. The fact that the positive effects extend for days after dosage suggests that the activity level of the neurons has been affected one way or the other.

I suspect that glutamate activity is increased rather than decreased, which seems paradoxical because ketamine does the opposite, but it would actually make sense. There is a great deal of research implicating glutamate dysfunction in the pathology of bipolar disorder:

http://www.neurotransmitter.net/bipolarglutamate.html

The site is currently down, but here's a google cache: http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache...&hl=en&strip=1

The research generally suggests that bipolar disorder is related to some combination of malfunctioning of NMDA receptors and a broken down GABA-mediated negative feedback loop. Manic episodes are linked to excessive glutamate activity, as glutamate is a stimulatory neurotransmitter and is also responsible for dopamine induced activation of the pleasure response in the nucleus accumbens (MDMA exploits this feature to induce euphoria).

This would all go to suggest that glutamate activity is too low in some depressed people, and that by some unknown mechanism glutamate activity is temporarily restored to regular levels after exposure to ketamine.

If this is even just one of the main factors behind this effect, it might be useful for people to explore other ways of increasing glutamate activity, if they are interested in trying to treat their depressive symptoms using ketamine. One thing that I would certainly try is large regular doses of the amino acid glutamine, because the body can convert this to glutamate. Another dietary source would be eggs, which contain a lot of the amino acid glutamate itself. I would avoid MSG though, because MSG delivers a lot of glutamate to the brain very quickly, and too much of the stuff is excitotoxic.

[Mr.E.Charlie]

SWIM thought of this previously . Being taken into a calming , different world in a good setting would IMO definatly help with depression .

I read that Pete Doherty ( Most famous present junkie ) used ketamine a lot to aid depression when his friend died ( Similar to that if im wrong lol )

Usually ( and in SWIM's own experiences ) drugs work with the mood of the user at the time of use . SWIM has taken ecstasy to enhance mood at a time when he was feeling low and felt much worse after onset of the ecstasy and ended up writhing in confusion and strange state of mind that can only be described as Weird Thought Soup .

Hope this helps