Ketamine as a Treatment

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How is Ketamine Used as a Medical Treatment?

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Ketamine as a treatment has been discussed more and more. Current treatment regimens for mental health disorders are much more humane and safer than they were in the last century and earlier. But, modern medicine is still unsure of how mental disorders are triggered, how they progress, and why some people are more likely to be diagnosed with a disorder than others.

Ketamine as a Treatment

Millions of people have found relief from debilitating mental health disorder symptoms from a variety of different treatments, such as talk therapy, medication, and deep brain stimulation techniques. But sometimes, therapy is not enough, and many of the most commonly prescribed medicines come with a range of dangerous side effects. For people with chronic mental health disorders, it’s understandable that patients would want to explore safer, quicker, alternative methods for alleviating their symptoms. Recently, ketamine has come under scrutiny as a way to alleviate conditions like treatment-resistant depression and bipolar depression disorders. But ketamine can also be abused for recreational purposes and comes with a range of side effects, some of which are permanent and irreversible. 

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What is ketamine?

Ketamine is considered a dissociative anesthetic that’s been used in medical settings for more than fifty years. The drug was first used in Vietnam on the battlefield, and it derives from the drug PCP. Today, ketamine is mostly used in the U.S. in veterinary practices but is sometimes used for pain management in both children and adults since it also possesses analgesic effects. 

In developing and lower-middle income countries, ketamine is a popular medicine for some surgical procedures because it does not cause lowered blood pressure and depressed breathing like most anesthetic drugs. Doctors can administer ketamine without having to use expensive and sometimes unavailable monitoring equipment, that can be difficult to find in poorer countries or war-torn areas. Ketamine also has minor pain relieving abilities, which also make it an attractive medicine in lower-middle-income nations. In the U.S., ketamine is classified as a schedule three substance and has many medicinal benefits. Usually, ketamine comes in a powder form and can be dissolved into a liquid and then injected as an anesthetic.

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What are the medicinal uses of ketamine?

In the United States, ketamine is mostly used for pediatric pain control in emergency room settings. Ketamine is a fast-acting drug with analgesic and anti-inflammatory effects that can be useful for treating both chronic and acute pain. Ketamine is also a popular anesthetic in veterinary settings since it is safe for animals undergoing surgical procedures. 

Recently, researchers and clinicians have noticed that ketamine can produce antidepressant effects and may also reduce the risk of suicide in depressed and bipolar depressed patients. Ketamine is very useful for pain treatment since the drug does not come with the same chances of addiction as other popular narcotic and opioid painkillers. However, that doesn’t mean the drug is 100% non-addictive or completely safe. Ketamine can be abused.

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What are the recreational effects of ketamine?

The World Health Organization lists ketamine as an essential medicine and considers ketamine to be one of the safest and most useful modern medications. Few drugs are as versatile as ketamine. It can be used for depression, to sedate animals, to offer children pain relief, and it can also be abused as a club drug. Unfortunately, ketamine can also be used as a date-rape drug since it offers sedative effects. 

Ketamine is a controlled substance, and it’s usually stolen from veterinary offices and then sold as a recreational drug for its psychedelic and dissociative effects. People will either inject the drug intravenously or into the muscles or heat the liquid until it evaporates into a white powder. The white ketamine powder can be snorted or eaten. Sometimes, users will add the white powder to a cigarette or a marijuana joint and then smoke it to get high.

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The onset of a ketamine high depends on how the person has taken the drug. Smoking ketamine allows the substance to go to the lungs and straight into the bloodstream, so effects are felt almost immediately. If someone snorts ketamine, they will feel the impact within ten minutes, while ingesting the drug will produce an effect within 20 minutes. Injecting a drug also allows for immediate effects. A high from ketamine can last anywhere from a half hour to two hours after ingestion. Orally ingesting ketamine allows the drug to be released more slowly into the bloodstream, so a high will last for longer. Since a ketamine high won’t last for very long, users will sometimes binge the drug to make the effects last longer.

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What are the side effects of ketamine?

People will abuse ketamine to have a hallucinogenic experience or to induce vivid, colorful dreams. On the black market, getting high from ketamine is referred to as the “K-hole,” because users are unaware of their environment and may either become unconscious, or severely impaired and unaware of their surroundings. Impaired coordination is a common side effect of ketamine use if someone is not rendered entirely unconscious from the drug. If this happens, the person can become seriously injured. Other side effects from recreational use of ketamine include the following symptoms:

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  • Disorientation and hallucinations
  • Problems thinking
  • Inability to focus
  • Having an out-of-body experience
  • Overproduction of saliva
  • Uncontrollable eye movement
  • Increased urination
  • Increased blood pressure and heart rate
  • Decreased pain
  • Memory issues
  • Slurred or garbled speech

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People can have extremely negative experiences when they abuse ketamine. It’s possible for some people to experience psychosis, dizziness, nausea and vomiting, seizures, paranoia, and chest pain when taking the drug.

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Is ketamine addictive?

It’s possible for people to become dependent on ketamine, although there are few physiological symptoms present in ketamine withdrawal. Mostly, ketamine abusers will experience psychological withdrawal symptoms. The most common psychological withdrawal symptoms include drug cravings and drug flashbacks. 

Repeated abuse of ketamine can damage the digestive and urinary tract, and also the brain. When someone abuses any drug, not just ketamine, they will experience liver damage. Long-term ketamine abuse will cause memory issues and ulcerative cystitis, and binging ketamine also carries these risks. Ulcerative cystitis is a chronic and painful condition characterized by damage to the lower urinary tract. Doctors can treat the symptoms of cystitis, but the damage is permanent. Long-term abuse and bingeing ketamine will damage the brain’s hippocampus, which is the part of the brain that controls spatial reasoning and a person’s ability to store and recall memories.

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What are alternatives to ketamine?

In the U.S., there have been more than 50 clinical trials on ketamine’s effects on depression. The drug acts quickly to produce antidepressant effects, and it has been used with some success for treatment-resistant depression. For patients with active suicidal ideations or a high risk of suicide, ketamine has been found to reduce these ideations within forty minutes of using the drug. For patients with severe depression that won’t respond to usual treatment methods, ketamine can be a literal lifesaver. 

Ketamine is also effective as a chronic pain treatment, especially for issues with neuropathic pain. Ketamine will block the NMDA receptors that are responsible for nerve damage from chronic pain conditions. Unfortunately, chronic pain is incredibly difficult to treat, and the usual line of medications used for treating chronic pain comes with a significant risk of addiction. Many first-line treatments for chronic nerve pain have success rates of only 30 to 40 percent, and they may take several days to weeks to take full effect. Ketamine can act quickly to reduce nerve pain and further nerve damage from some of these conditions.

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The problem is, ketamine does come with many risks and side effects when it is used chronically. In rodent studies, ketamine will cause permanent cognitive decline with continuous use. It is also well-known in human studies that ketamine will lead to liver and possibly kidney and lower urinary tract damage that is often irreversible. While ketamine can be useful for acute pain problems and for sedation, long-term use is risky.

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For patients with depression and chronic pain, safer alternatives might be useful for alleviating their symptoms. In subclinical and clinical trials on CBD, the compound was found to be useful for reducing both chronic pain symptoms and depression symptoms in patients. CBD does not come with the same risk of side effects as ketamine, either. It will not impair a person’s ability to function, and it won’t cause permanent organ damage or issues with cognition and memory. The most common symptoms of using CBD are dry mouth and drowsiness. CBD won’t get a person high either, and it does not come with a risk of dependence and addiction. However, patients with chronic health issues who are using a prescription medication should speak to their doctor before using CBD. CBD can interact with some medicines.

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Today, it’s now easier than ever to obtain high-quality CBD from a reputable dispensary. All Hugs CBD products are tested with an independent lab to ensure quality and efficacy. Shop online at Hugs today and have CBD delivered to your home.

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Last updated September 13 2019

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