Posted by psychobot5000 on June 2, 2012, at 0:10:44
In reply to Sick of hearing about ketamine!, posted by Bob on May 30, 2012, at 10:42:08
> I'm getting tired of hearing promising things about ketamine, yet there is still no sign of it being available to people any time soon. Each one of these articles/studies that gets released talks about it like it's the first time the medical community has come up with the idea. Seems like no progress is ever made in coming up with a way for sick people to try it.
>
> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120530100247.htmHi Bob,
I agree that it's annoying that Ketamine keeps being brought up as this breakthrough when the pilot study has been around for, like, ten years, now. That said, I believe they're recruiting patients for a ketamine study now in certain US cities.
For what it's worth, Ketamine is useful as a research tool, but everything I've read indicates that it's too damaging a drug to be taken, long term (or even medium term). Long-term use is also associated with more depression, not less. Ketamine is not the answer to our woes, sadly.
In general, I have the impression that antidepressant drugs that act on NMDA and glutamate are useful in the short term, but that the body generally re-regulates in a negative manner, within weeks--which is to say that, unlike proven antidepressants, they work in the very short term, but ALSO unlike monoamine-based antidepressants, they do NOT work in the medium to long term. :(
poster:psychobot5000
thread:1018907
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20120522/msgs/1019088.html