
Is ketamine the best hope for curing major depression? - NN88
http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-ketamine-depression-treatment/
======
steve-howard
I found this article pretty hard to read from the distracting animations, but
I do like where the research is going on ketamine. Specifically, it's been
found to be a good treatment for anhedonia[1], the loss of pleasure or
interest in things you used to enjoy. Anhedonia makes life feel pretty empty,
and it tends to improve very slowly even with treatment.

Frustratingly for the animators of this article, the view that ketamine is a
club drug that can also fix depression is probably not going to do wonders for
its legitimacy as a serious treatment.

[1]
[http://www.nature.com/tp/journal/v4/n10/full/tp2014105a.html](http://www.nature.com/tp/journal/v4/n10/full/tp2014105a.html)
. Tested patients with bipolar depression also on a mood stabilizer, so
there's lots more research to do.

~~~
Polyphonie
You can always save it to Pocket and view it that way of use the reading
option (where the extraneous graphics are removed) of your browser.

------
chm
I know several people who have tried ketamine, but in powder form. Have any of
you on HN tried? I saw people doing it only once, and they seemed quite
functional, though a bit inebriated. They said it was a very pleasurable high.
I guess they were on low doses.

My main problem with street bought drugs is that you never really know what
you're getting (I'm a chemist, seen my fair share of "white powders" during my
training). I have argued with people countless times against their using
substances of unknown origin. I'm really glad to see this available in a safe
clinical setting. It's very mature.

~~~
Cantremeber
I've tried ket, but at this point it's way too expensive. You normally pay 70
to 90 dollars for 10 to 5 uses depending on your tolerance and other factors.

It does help with depression but only temporarily.

I've also experimented with other drugs in the dissos category. Namely:

MXE - Twice as potent, twice as long ketamine but a bit weirder. Currently one
of the most popular dissosatives for the people who do research chemicals.
I've used this heavily in the past for depression but it's lost it's
effectiveness for me.

DXM - This drug always feels dirty to me, mainly because you have to take a
bunch of cough syrup to get it's effects. You can get the raw powder but isn't
really worth the hassle. Longer duration and unique feeling. Does help with
depression but not worth it to me

MXP- Feels like cleaner DXM. Didn't really enjoy it, didn't really help
depression.

MXM- Brand new, haven't tried it much, but really promising for depression in
my eyes. Shorter then MXE, longer then ket, has a very unique feeling to it.

3-MEO-PCP - In my opinion this is the best for depression. you can't hole on
it, and it ends up very stimulating. Basically mania in powder form. Generally
people see the PCP in there and run scared. I will note PCPs in general are
extremely hard to dose. Cheap scales can't normally do bellow twenty mg, and
anything over 5mg can't fit on blotter. 3-meo-PCP doses between those two.

N2O - does work for depression, sort of. Way too addictive to be worth it, and
honestly leaves you feeling sort of blah.

As for how you know what you're getting, you really don't. You rely on
reputation and the crazy people who test these things.

This whole process started for me when a dose of ketamine basically
transformed me from suicidally depressed to fairly normal and functional in
one use. It's like a light switch flips and given that current depression
drugs take weeks to start working I hope that they figure this out.

~~~
user_0001
Not sure about now, but a few years back the problem with Ketamine in the UK
was it was so cheap. About £5 /$7 for a gram. It was all getting shipped over
from Indian supplies by the litre (err 4 quarts(ish)).

I hear now, after India cracked down, it got scheduled in the UK that prices
are up and quality is down and mostly coming from China. Very little to none
redirected from veterinary supplies for the UK market

~~~
Cantremeber
There's been a lot of crack downs in China. Prices are about 70 bucks a gram
on the darknet, and much higher locally. Local stuff is cut to shit to, and
you'll likely never find liquid.

------
debian69
tbh the long term affects of ketamine make it the drug of the stupid , i spent
a year on the shit partying and after stopping it have had to witness many of
my friends continue to use and develop server health problems. Most of them
carry around there fluids and have to sleep on plastic sheets. Ketamine seems
a fun drug and unlike lsd lasts much less time but I've never heard of LSD
destroying a persons bladder.

~~~
zastavka
To be fair, the dosages most of these doctors are administering are well under
a usual recreational dose, as the article mentions. IIRC you also build
tolerance to ketamine pretty quickly, so I'd imagine the amount of K those
people are doing that's causing bladder damage is a couple orders of magnitude
larger than any of these patients.

~~~
user_0001
You don't get bladder problems using / abusing ketamine just at weekends.

People sniffing it every day / all day and getting through the 5grams+

But hammering that much every day of any drug is not a good idea.

At the above+1 commenter, take LSD at high doses everyday and see what damage
you do to yourself

~~~
scarmig
LSD is as close to as harmless a drug, physiologically, as you can get--no one
has ever died of an overdose on it, and there isn't permanent physiological
damage that happens even with regular heavy use.

Of course, your psyche might be another matter...

~~~
user_0001
Agreed, not physically damaging. But it can destroy you mentally if used often
and in heavy doses.

>but I've never heard of LSD destroying a persons bladder. That was the quote
I was referring to. Bladder in tact, but a shell of a person left with severe
paranoia and mental problems.

Not to hate on LSD, but no drug is safe is abused daily.

~~~
ionised
I'm not sure it's even possible to do decent quantities of LSD daily, at least
in the context of trying to achieve a potent effect.

Plenty of times in my life I've done LSD and I learned pretty early on that it
was pointless to try a dose the day after a previous dose.

It would just have very little to no effect on my mind and I would typically
have to wait a few days at least before doing it again before it worked.

------
pantalaimon
> Patients receive a low dose of the drug: about one-tenth of what
> recreational abusers of ketamine take or about one-fifth of what might be
> used as a general anesthetic.

This strikes me as odd - shouldn't the recreational dose be well below the
anesthetic dose? Even in the K-hole you'd like to retain some conciseness.

The effects the patients describe are pretty much the recreational effects.

~~~
baxter001
Dosages don't always have a linear response, effects at standard doses aren't
simply intensified by larger doses:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradoxical_reaction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradoxical_reaction)

And with ketamine as with other 'fun' sedatives such as ambien or quaaludes
back in the day, one has to resist the urge to nod off for long enough for the
fun to start.

~~~
pantalaimon
I never had the urge to nod off with small doses of ketamine where I already
felt some effects - it'd be a pretty bad anesthetic anyway if you could resist
it by willpower alone.

------
GoodOldNe
“We believe we can double the income of the average family physician or
internist"

This sounds like a setup for badness the first time someone has bronchospasm
or goes apneic when they push the full dose or aspirates their vomit. Probably
not a good idea to go to your local FP or internist-- or anyone else not
prepared to take over your airway for you-- for a ketamine treatment.

~~~
blobwalker
The full dose isn't pushed. It's on a drip IV over half an hour or more. But I
fully agree that you should have a competent, experienced doctor doing it,
preferably an anesthesiologist.

------
blobwalker
Hey, that's my ketamine doctor (Brooks)! Fantastic guy.

~~~
blobwalker
Oh, and for the record, the crazy-ass geometric animations on the article are
not that far off what I get when receiving IV ketamine and I close my eyes--
although the real ones are far more complex and change constantly. However,
the fear-and-loathing melty and color changing stuff is not something ketamine
induces. What the page does not capture at all is horrible effects it has on
sound. The visual stuff is pretty tolerable, but a simple fan ends up sounding
like a helicopter, and most other sounds get very harsh. For me, having music
is absolutely critical to getting through the whole process. I listen to a mix
of various Bach performances, which gives the whole crazy trip some structure
and narrative and keeps it familiar enough that I feel like I still have a
handle on and am still grounded in reality, despite the strong dissociative
side effects.

~~~
beerbajay
Are you taking it for depression? If so, how's that working out for you? How
are the side-effects?

------
hello_there_you
Ok we get it, Bloomberg, you are writing about drugs. Jeez..

~~~
mmastrac
Someone in the creative department got a little too creative on this one. It's
actually quite distracting for a reader.

~~~
cpncrunch
All the javascript crap going on makes it virtually impossible to scroll.

~~~
Everlag
Actually the color inversion is probably a 'filter: invert(100%)' turned on by
js; I tried peeking through the DOM and didn't see it, so I may be wrong.

If filter performance is an issue, they could force gpu rendering by applying
a 3d transform that does nothing.

~~~
tophtucker
You're right, lines 104 & 140 in
[http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-ketamine-
depression-t...](http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-ketamine-depression-
treatment/js/script.js). Considered the gpu thing but was reading mixed advice
([http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10814178/css-
performance-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10814178/css-performance-
relative-to-translatez0)) and ran out of time.

------
mceoin
I recommend this article for the trippy banner image.

~~~
tophtucker
that's no image

~~~
tophtucker
critique me! #showhn [http://bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-ketamine-depression-
treat...](http://bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-ketamine-depression-
treatment/js/script.js)

