If you are interested in learning more about ketamine assisted treatment, you may be interested in Ketamine Consulting to discuss further whether or not ketamine infusion or low-dose sublingual ketamine may be right for you.
Can ketamine infusion therapy help with depression, past trauma, and pain?
Many mental health conditions start with childhood trauma, or trauma later in life. Living with trauma can lead to mood disorders, such as bipolar depression, or other serious types of mental illness, including treatment resistant depression.
Psychiatrists often prescribe antidepressant medication that is either not effective, or has serious side effects. Antidepressants can also increase the risk of suicidal ideation.
Intravenous ketamine can help with problems ranging from obsessive compulsive disorder to post-traumatic stress disorder. In my interview with Dr. Steven Reichbach of the Reichbach Center, we start by discussing the usefulness of IV ketamine infusion therapy in treating complex regional pain syndrome, a condition once known as RSD.
Dr. Reichbach has worked with ketamine for three decades, and he is excited about the success of this proven therapy in treating both chronic pain and depression symptoms, and many other treatment resistant conditions.
He provides ketamine for anxiety, fibromyalgia, nerve pain, PTSD, chronic back pain, and much more. Ketamine infusion is now being used successfully to treat a wide variety of chronic health problems.
Does ketamine infusion for pain management work as well as opioids for pain?
Pain management experts often like to point out that pain is in the brain. Chronic pain is a maladaptive response of the central nervous system to acute physical pain, leading to ongoing chronic pain.
Patients who attend ketamine clinics for ketamine treatment for chronic pain are often able to reduce their reliance on opioid medications over time. Ketamine therapy for chronic pain is safer than opioid treatment, because ketamine is not addictive and does not cause drug dependence.
Dr. Reichbach has seen very promising results, where patients were able to take less opioids, or stop opioids altogether. Interestingly, he also points out that there seems to be a connection between chronic depression and chronic pain.
Many of the conditions for which ketamine IV therapy works well seem to be related in how they affect the brain and spinal cord. With each treatment at a ketamine center, there are improvements in the connections between individual neurons in the brain, as the dendrites strengthen and grow.
Patients with neuropathic pain, clinical depression, depressive disorder, anxiety, and even severe depression may find significant improvements in depressive symptoms, and other related symptoms. Ketamine therapy for PTSD is particularly effective, helping patients to deal with the effects of past traumas.
How does ketamine compare to other psychedelics?
When we discuss psychedelic drugs, most often, we think of drugs such as psilocybin from the magic mushroom, or LSD. In recent years, there has been much excitement about the possibilities for these mind-bending drugs, and the hope that they might dramatically improve a variety of mental health conditions.
Other psychedelics under consideration for research include ibogaine and ayahuasca, two shamanistic plant-based drugs, and DMT, a drug derived from ayahuasca. Plant-derived psychedelics that provide a spiritual, life-changing experience are sometimes called entheogens.
People who go on pilgrimages to visit with a shaman and partake in the use of these ancient drugs often describe the experience as both terrifying and enlightening. They see their lives and their connection with the universe from a new perspective.
Dr. Reichbach explains that ketamine patients should not expect to have this type of experience from a ketamine IV infusion. While the experience of dissociation has some similarities to a psychedelic trip, it is not quite the same.
Additionally, he states that the important outcome of the procedure is not the near-psychedelic experience, but the changes in the brain that occur on a microscopic level. New dendritic connections and other positive changes help patients to overcome difficult mental health conditions and intractable pain.
Can ketamine therapy help to overcome a drug addiction or alcoholism?
Addiction is a difficult life-long challenge to confront. There are no easy solutions to overcoming an addiction.
People with substance abuse issues, and their families, are willing to try anything to help them get back to a normal life. They want to stop harming themselves with drugs or alcohol, but the obsessions and compulsions to continue use are overwhelming.
Many people are hopeful that the power of psychedelic-assisted therapy will work with addiction as well as chronic pain and depression. After all, these conditions are related in how they affect the brain, and they do seem to respond similarly to psychedelics.
We might think of the constellation of conditions helped by psychedelics as trauma-induced conditions. Ketamine therapy is known to work well for some patients in treating post-traumatic stress disorder and other trauma-related problems, including addiction.
As Dr. Reichbach explains in our interview, in many cases the improvement in a patient’s addiction may be related to resolving other underlying problems. For example, a patient who has a history of abusing an illicit substance may simply be self-medicating to treat a pain syndrome or mental health condition.
Can patients also take ketamine at home?
We must remember that Dr. Reichbach is an anesthesiologist, and ketamine is an anesthetic agent. The relatively high doses of ketamine that are delivered during an infusion are not safe for unsupervised home use.
There are potential dangers that may occur if a person takes ketamine and then attempts to go about their daily activities. Driving, working, and other activities may be dangerous while under the influence of ketamine.
In fact, ketamine clinic patients are instructed to have someone drive them home, and they must abstain from most activities for the next 24 hours. Ketamine treatment is a form of anesthesia, so the post-procedure instructions are similar to those that are given after surgery.
Yet, there is a form of ketamine therapy that is considered to be safe for daily home use. Ketamine may be dispensed in a compound form, known as a troche.
A ketamine troche is placed under the tongue to dissolve. The troche is safe for home use because it is a relatively low dose, usually in the range of 5 mg to 20 mg, or less.
While a ketamine IV infusion is not safe for home use, a low dose troche can be used safely. Dr. Riechbach states that there are potential benefits from daily use, so he does sometimes prescribe ketamine troches.
Is ketamine treatment useful in combination with other therapies?
One important takeaway from our interview was that patients should engage in psychotherapy sessions during the time period of getting ketamine treatments. Dr. Reichbach is an anesthesiologist, experienced in the safe administration of IV ketamine, but he is not a psychiatrist or psychologist.
He instructs his patients to seek treatment from a therapist to help resolve psychological issues. If we think of the brain as being like a computer, it is important to address both the hardware and software, in order to improve overall functioning.
For fans of my podcasts, including my benzodiazepine podcast, MAT podcast for opioid dependence discussions, and alcohol podcast, including the new TSM podcast about The Sinclair Method, there may be questions about combining ketamine treatment with other cutting-edge therapies. What about stem cell therapy, for example, where the treatment is also thought to heal the body at the cellular level?
Could a person who benefits from stem cell therapy for the symptoms of protracted withdrawal also be helped by the brain-healing effects of ketamine? This is an interesting question, and it should be addressed by researchers.
For people interested in medication assisted therapy, using drugs such as Suboxone or naltrexone, they may ponder about if ketamine assisted therapy could also be helpful. Addiction treatment doctors, including Suboxone doctors and TSM doctors, will want to learn more about the effects of ketamine infusion therapy to see if it might be helpful for their patients.
While other psychedelic treatments are still in their infancy and not fully understood in how they affect the mind, ketamine therapy is well established and well understood. Additionally, ketamine is a legal drug, administered in clinics under strict guidelines and protocols.
In the future, we may have many options in the area of psychedelic assisted therapy. In the meantime, ketamine infusion treatment is here today, and it is being administered by medical specialists to treat chronic pain, depression, PTSD, headaches, anxiety, OCD, addiction, and many other medical conditions.
