I qualified for financial help with one of those places that advertise on social media (Joyous, if you know it), and I've got enough to buy myself the first month of pills.

Curious as to if anyone has had experience with it. On paper it sounds like it would be great for me, but my ma is scared of it cause apparently there are horror stories going around in the news. Way I figure it, if it doesn't help, at least I get drugs.

  • GaveUp [she/her]
    ·
    5 days ago

    I did. Not for actual therapy but to just get ketamine paid for by my employer

    The research for ketamine being therapeutical is good but the actual therapy is really bad

    With a lot of places, the amount of ketamine they give you and the frequency they tell you to take is an absurd amount, it's way too much and way too often. If you took that much ketamine that often, it'll definitely screw with your mind

    Other doctors have talked about this and said the therapeutical threshold for ketamine varies from person to person, and that it generally is way lower than the amount prescribed and in lower frequencies too

    Get the ketamine if you want but if they tell you to take like a 200mg tablet every 3 days, don't so it, that's a scary amount and your brain will be so scattered from that much ket use

    Treat ketamine like you would psychedelics or really strong weed imo to make sure your mind can stay grounded and stable

    • Thallo [she/her]
      ·
      5 days ago

      I second this. Be extra careful. Don't blindly trust dosages that are given to you. I've been prescribed dosage that were WAY too high pretty consistently. Like, so high I think it should be considered medical malpractice.

      • GaveUp [she/her]
        ·
        5 days ago

        Yea I didn't want to call it medical malpractice cause I have no medical qualifications but if my extensive drug usage counts as qualifications then my ketamine therapist should be serving life in jail tbh

        • JustSo [she/her, any]
          ·
          5 days ago

          Yea I didn't want to call it medical malpractice cause I have no medical qualifications

          I don't either but I called it out as sounding like a grift operation to me. I gotta admit I glossed over the vast difference between my testimony and the idea of taking ketamine regularly indefinitely. That's wildly inappropriate. Those aren't doctors they're capitalists with one licensed physician in the organisation rubber-stamping the process.

          We have similar operations in my country for other practically benign substances. Also for weed. But this particular type of operation sounds like bad news.

    • JustSo [she/her, any]
      ·
      5 days ago

      lower frequencies too

      Yeah the most frequent I've heard of is fortnightly. To me even that sounds excessive unless it's part of a planned therapeutic process over a set time-frame with mental health support staff (ie therapists) helping build coping strategies, doing EMDR, learning bilateral stimulation coping techniques / whatever the fuck else might work.

    • corgiwithalaptop [any, love/loves]
      ·
      5 days ago

      Good to know! I think the dose they're giving me is 60mg lozenge a day and ramping up from there, but will be mindful of that.

      • GaveUp [she/her]
        ·
        5 days ago

        Every day is crazy imo, nobody tells others to do psychedelics or molly every day for therapy

        I mean you can experiment but really be careful and mindful of how it's affecting you

          • JustSo [she/her, any]
            ·
            5 days ago

            I would lie, horde that shit, do some research and just take advantage of the subsidised access. Do not follow the dosing protocols being discussed that is bugfuck wild exploitative shit. They tryna hook you fam.

            • corgiwithalaptop [any, love/loves]
              ·
              5 days ago

              I could be misremembering the dosages but yeah it seems like one of those online ez prescription shops. That said, it seems like it does have the potential to do me a lot of good if I'm not getting fucked in some way.

              • JustSo [she/her, any]
                ·
                5 days ago

                You will almost certainly "feel better" temporarily. You won't have a breakthrough experience like I described in my post so that perspective has limited value in your position, my experience is closer to infusion therapy which is expensive and exclusive afaik... unless you opted to save a rainy day stash and wait for your tolerance to go down, then attempt the heroic dose self therapy thing (everybody who loves you would caution you strongly against doing this without a shitload of forethought and research and immediate support on hand if things get sketchy.)

                Sadly I think the period during which you'll feel better doing regular dosing will be quite limited and you would probably become psychologically dependent on the drug to help you cope and just feel normal, once you acclimate to it. Whether you consider that getting fucked is a matter of perspective. I have no doubt it would be safer and more effective than most anti-depressants and better than doing heroin to cope with life, for example. Still, I don't think it touches anything like the full therapeutic potential of the drug as a fairly powerful tool.

                Also I'd be wary of developing false hope, because a lot of these drugs which help in the short term have a tendency to turn around and bite you on the tail end.

                and definitely don't mix them with anti-depressants.

                edit: HAVING SAID THAT

                Sometimes temporary relief is all we need to get our shit together, knock past some mental blockages and start doing the healthy life stuff that promotes better a mental and physical existence. So I'm not gonna shit on the concept entirely.

                • corgiwithalaptop [any, love/loves]
                  ·
                  5 days ago

                  and definitely don't mix them with anti-depressants.

                  See, I told the person there i talked to that im on lexapro, lamotrigine, and atomoxetine, and they said that was all fine. What's up with ketamine and SSRIs? I know lexapro kills a lot of hallucinogenics and can be fatal when mixed with mdma, but what's up with ket?

                  • JustSo [she/her, any]
                    ·
                    4 days ago

                    Collection of papers, summarised on ketamine + Antidepressant (incl. SSRI) interaction (or lack of, I haven't done the reading. Go figure.)

                    https://psychedelics.ucsf.edu/blog/interactions-between-ketamine-and-prescription-antidepressants

                    Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs)

                    No concerning interactions exist - clinical trials have shown ketamine’s safety and efficacy in patient populations concurrently using escitalopram and sertraline[3][4]. Combination treatment may confer synergistic effects, as demonstrated by a clinical trial comparing escitalopram + ketamine v. escitalopram + placebo for major depressive disorder (MDD), in which ketamine was found to augment the therapeutic efficacy of the SSRI with improvement in suicidality[5]. Another trial on sertraline also suggests that ketamine may be used as adjuvant therapy[6]. However, it’s important to note that ketamine is metabolized by the liver enzymes P450 CYP2B6 and CYP3A4 primarily, so any inhibitors and inducers of these enzymes could alter the metabolism of ketamine. Paroxetine, sertraline, fluoxetine, and fluvoxamine are all CYP3A4 inhibitors, so concurrent use of ketamine can possibly elevate the bioavailability of ketamine. However, this slight elevation may not be clinically significant[7][8].

                  • JustSo [she/her, any]
                    ·
                    5 days ago

                    Fark. Please just be careful whatever you do though.

                    I'm with SorosFootSoldier n them as far as not wanting to see you get hurt or go further down a dark path. If we had downvotes I'm sure some of my posts would reflect a broader concern for some of the things I'm posting here.

                    Remember I am a drug addict who has made a lot of poor choices. Repeatedly. A track record of bad decisions.

                    I do stand by the therapeutic potential of these substances, though, there's really no argument as far as the research goes.

                  • JustSo [she/her, any]
                    ·
                    5 days ago

                    Aight I've just hit up my friendly neighbourhood biochemistry dropout, I've been looping them in on the subjects coming up in this thread, since this lozenge / sublingual dose ketamine was news to them.

                    They had just finished reading a paper where the ketamine was trialed in conjunction with Zoloft/sertraline. It seems like things get more complicated with the more exotic compounds like 3-HO and MXE. Definitely check with a prescribing physician and do further research, but my experience might be tainted from a period of time when the market was not a reliable source for pure ketamine and so we had to stay on the safe side.

                    Edit: Sorry, to put that more clearly- proper medical grade ketamine may in fact be safe to use in conjunction with some anti-depressants.

                    Edit #2:

                    yeah it's 3-MeO-PCP (and OG pcp) that has action at the SERT receptor enough that you might not wanna combine it with SSRI's

                    This is (apparently) not the case with ketamine. I may have been too hasty with that warning earlier.

                  • JustSo [she/her, any]
                    ·
                    5 days ago

                    I wish I had a better answer than a web search could provide you. I know that while I was on lexapro my go-to "street pharmacologist" kept me away from ketamine. We may have been operating from an abundance of caution type position though.