Ketamine For Depression? (Page 36)

It was recommended by the members of a separate thread that one be started that directly relates to ketamine and it's use to treat depression.

If anyone besides myself would like to discuss it's use as a treatment for depression, feel free to post your questions, answers and experiences here.

This thread is an offshoot of a related one that discussed a treatment of Scopolamine for depression.

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caiguise

Nice to hear from you dear!
Haha, desire for intimacy sounds good but not having someone is no fun either. I'm bound by religion so *ahum ahum* I've tried to find a girlfriend, but then I step back thinking about God's wrath on me. I wish I could get married but the depression for the last 6 years has made my life hell.

I took 2 tablets of 100 mg, one in morning and one at night. I've noticed that either sometimes I can't sleep after taking it or I do get up at night. My condition gets worse whenever I take it . It has definitely disrupted my life. I had rTMS treatment last year and didn't notice any improvement so I discontinued it. I had discontinued Ketamine last week after experiencing chest pain as I mentioned to you previously. I started it again yesterday and noticed the insomnia so my mom (who's a doctor but she's a OB/GYN doctor) told me to stop it so I did. I do get occasional headaches and have noticed that I got them after being put on Ketamine. I did have chronic migraine headaches for about 3 years but they stopped after I took butterbur and feverfew. I'm thinking about taking the two herbs again if I notice the headaches being constant.

Hope rest is well at your end.

Take care,
ironshiekh

P.S. Joe, do you mind if I ask you how much it cost for you to get your family member treated from that center? Thanks

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Ironsheikh,

Depression does make is tough to develop a relationship into marriage, or maintain a healthy marriage. I've been lucky in that my husband knew I had bouts of depression before we started dating. I hope you eventually meet someone who knows (maybe has a relative with depression or manic depression) and in full knowledge wants to grow old with you. Of course, I also hope that person is someone with whom you also want to grow old.

Having a mother who is a doctor can be a great benefit. Could you ask her if a half dose of benedryl (diphenhydramine) might help. It is the same substance as the over the counter sleep-aid, but in the allergy section the generic brand is the same substance, same dosage, and less expensive. From what I understand, it is of more use in helping you stay asleep through the night, rather than helping you fall asleep.

The headaches, especially in light of having a history of frequent migraines is interesting. I've had one year with frequent migraines, and I hope never to go through that again. I'm not sure if you have migraine auras? Some people get them, usually 5-30 minutes before the pain. For about 6 years I would get the migraine auras frequently, but the pain part of migraine far less often. In case you haven't experienced them, and therefore might react the same way one of my doctors did (figuring they were hallucinations and should be whacked with anti-psychotics, to no avail), they take very specific forms, an arch in black or yellow with one edge that looks like a corona of fire, sparkling points of light, cellophane worm-like shapes. If you look at paintings by St. Hildagard of Bingen some show these. The relevant point is that what finally fixed the problem was taking a low-dose tricyclic antidepressant. It seemed to be related to my neurotransmitter levels. Tricyclics were standard therapy before the latter 1980s, and still have a better overall efficacy rate. Nortryptaline, desipramine, most of the antidepressants ending in -ine. They are really inexpensive generics, and my understanding is that only a low does if required to get the anti-migraine effect. It might be worth looking into, as an adjunctive therapy. Your mom might have some ideas if hormone levels could be playing a role (if you were female I would suggest looking into hormone fluctuations)

Given that you have suffered from depression for 6 years, I assume you are taking some sort of antidepressant at the same time as trying other treatments. If this is true, maybe take a look at whether that could be causing problems. Lexapro (escitalopram) worked reasonably well for me, but somewhere between 6 and 12 months after I started taking it I developed insomnia to the extent that spending a night hooked up to countless wires in a sleep-study lab did not give them the two sleep cycle minimum for the doctors to assess the problem. It turned out that the Lexapro was subtly messing with my sleep, and it took almost a year before the deficits were sufficient to cause major problems. I'm now on mirtazepine which, I have heard, many people cannot tolerate because of its strong hypnotic (sleep-inducing) properties. Not for me.

I assume you have done the whole, going to bed at the same time, a light free room, waking yourself a bit too early, getting into bright light between 11 and 2, not exercising within a few hours of when you want to sleep, no caffiene or at least very little and not after noon, not using the computer (blue light objects) before bed, and all the other advice a doctor would give you, while sitting behind a desk looking all rested and such.

I'm not sure how long the IV treatments kept your depression at bay, and how soon after treatment the migraines started (and lasted). If the ketamine therapy is working, I hope there is a way to reduce the side-effects enough, and if not, I hope you can find another treatment that gets you back to normal. Because, what people without depression often fail to realize, is that normal is good.

Best Wishes,
Cai

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Is it for bipolar and what is it compared to r equal to

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Namenda also similar category of Ketamine which work on Nmda recepter on brain,I tried it already.It is so much better than Ketamine that I tried it before forn treatment of depression.Namenda never cause the ilussion.Its good but expensive if you dont have any insurance.

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Mematinne(namenda) is great ,medication for depression then OCD I have met ever.I tried Ketamine before but its not good.then Trycycle anti depression medication is better than SSRI.but I recomend you to do some excersise saimalteniaously.

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Cai, please get back to me, it's urgent.

Mary, hope you are doing well. Haven't heard back from you for a while.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you and yours everyone.

Best,
ironshiekh

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Toshi,

I thought the tests showed namenda did not tend to relieve depression, which is not to deny that it worked for you, just that it did not work for enough people in the studies. I strongly suspect that a big part of the issue of which antidepressant-ish medications work for some people and not for others is that depression is still a catch-all diagnosis, based on constellations of symptoms which are the results of many different causes.

I wanted to touch base and let you know what is going on with my depression. At the end of this month I lose access to rTMS therapy. Ketamine and rTMS are the only two things which have worked in the past (26 years of trial and error), but rTMS does not take up a quarter of my working life (I have to take ketamine during the day if I want to sleep, and every 2 days) and actually brings me back to normal, productive, and with a full range of emotions. It appears I will be back on ketamine (plus mirtazipine, buspirone, lamotragine) in January.

Ketamine worked, to the extent of relieving depression, for a year. But something has changed. My depression followed the same pattern for 25 years, then over this last year it has changed, and the part that is different is not responding to treatment. So even though rTMS is working, my scores on their tests make it seem otherwise, which is probably going to lead to losing access. I've tested as hyperparathyroid twice, which would account for the changes (especially waves of apathy), but my endocrinologist wants to wait, and wait, and wait. In January, if the depression returns, I expect the endocrinologist will use it as an excuse not to deal with the parathyroid.

What I want you to know is that you need to keep looking for solutions. I strongly advise keeping track of your symptoms weekly, and keep track of what medications you started, changed doses of, and stopped. I really hope you find a solution quickly, but if not, having that information will improve your odds of doctors identifying a good option to try next.

Best Wishes to you all. I hope the New Year brings us all joy, if not all the time, at least in enough non-depressed gaps to remind us of what we are continuing to fight for.

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Hi this is Mary1016, haven't posted in a while because I had to follow my pain doctor out to Texas for someone to finally hear me and take me off the ketamine. Ketamine saved my life at first but it has now destroyed my bladder and uterus. Please, please, please stay away from it.

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Hi my friend, sorry it's been so long. I had to move out to Texas because no one would take me off the ketamine and replace it. It started to destroy my bladder and uterus. I am off it now and doing much better. Dr. Brooks refused to believe me and stopped talking to me. He said no way ketamine is doing this to you and for me to stop reading things off the internet. I sent him the report from the hospital that said I had ketamine bladder syndrome and never heard back from him. I pray you are doing better and I apologize to anyone and everyone I recommended the ketamine to. It did help me at first but if I could go back in time I would never touch ketamine.

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Mary,

I'm so sorry to hear about your bladder and uterus. I know bladder problems are a side effect, very uncommon but they do happen. I thought when you last posted, you had stopped the ketamine and the problem went away.

I have not had this problem, but if it started I would stop until I knew if it cleared up, or was caused by something else. As far as I know, the rTMS treatment which was working wonderfully I no longer have access to, so it is a choice between continuing ketamine therapy (at least periodically) or accepting 3-6 months depression each year in return for 6-9 months without. Ketamine does wonders for some aspects of my depression, but I am not creatively productive when I've taken it in the last few days (and I promised a group that I would get my current books written so I could work on a project for them starting in 2018, which means I need to get 2 and a half books from outline/draft to a polished document before that time).

I knew there was a small risk of bladder problems, and sometimes they continue after stopping treatment, but I felt out of options and to me it seemed a reasonable risk. I'm so sorry to hear you had this problem; ketamine therapy seemed to be working for you, but such a severe side effect makes it impossible for you to use. Presumably the doctor in Texas is checking to make sure the cause of the bladder and uterine problems is fixed? If ketamine did not cause the uterine problem, you really need to make sure the doctor knows the cause, and that surgery was an appropriate and complete cure. Currently, I am dealing with the issue of depression symptoms which are not caused by depression, so the two treatments which work for me (rTMS and ketamine) are not as effective as they were a few years ago. rTMS is still proving extremely effective (still some waves of apathy, fatigue, and bits of mental fog), but unless something changes I won't have access to this treatment (ironically, OHIP (Ontario Health Insurance Plan) is expected to start covering rTMS this year, but I won't have access). My goal this year is mainly to keep going until the hyperparathyroid issues are fixed, which hopefully should render the other depression treatments more effective (and more completely effective) again.

I hope you find some alternative treatment which helps with the depression. If you've moved to Texas, you probably left your social network behind. When I've lived in the U.S. the local newspaper usually listed a weekly group for people living with mental illness. It is really useful to have a support group, if for no other reasons than that it forces you to get out of the house and meet other people facing similar problems. When I get depressed I want to retreat from the world. During my first major bout of depression I adopted a cat (knowing I couldn't kill myself if it was depending on me). Now I have allergies, so no pets, but am lucky enough to have a loving husband and two kids. I have no way to completely avoid social contact, but I have serious guilt about not taking care of them enough. I made a promise to myself that I would get out and socialize once a week. I hate getting out there, worry about what will happen, and almost always end up feeling better by the end of the evening. So please, Mary, find some group which gets you out and socializing a bit. Check meetup.org, or the newspaper. And keep searching for a treatment which helps.

I am impressed by your strength in keeping going, and when I feel down I will think of you (hoping you've found a treatment that works) and the fact that you took the time to email us here, to tell us about the problem you had with ketamine. I've been taking ketamine, on and off, for two years without bladder problems, but I promise you I will be watchful if any similar symptoms occur, and if they do I will discontinue immediately.

Best Wishes,
Cai

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I would be interested to hear people's experience with Nuedexsta to extend the duration of effect of ketamine infusions? Nuedexsta is a combination of dextromethorphan (cough syrup) and quinidine (old malaria medicine that has cardiac effects). We have a few patients at my clinic (Klarisana) in San Antonio who I think might benefit from this and we are studying it extensively. Thanks for your thoughts!

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Nihil I to have been fighting deppression for 45 yrs.there are alot of times I whish it was over.but before you do ask jesus christ to come in to your life .It doesn't mean all your problems will go away but give it a chance.make sure your eternity is in his arms

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Memantine (namenda) had been one of the most effective also better anti depression medications I have ever taken. However......I feel you all have worth. Try it, if almost all other anti depressants never work. I didn't trust something like that, the diagnostics evaluating how ketamine works for depression... because it is the same method by which SSRI's were evaluated; by the basis of critical trial. Now also oxytocin and vasopressin are focused on by current science. I just I don't trust these results, but at the same time trust it. Anyway, people that suffer from these mental illnesses should try medication, but not forgetting the benefits of exercise and working out.

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Toshi,

It sounds like you are being hard on yourself. Are you ruling out medicines which are FDA approved because they come from scientific trials? I understand that some people distrust clinical trials, often because their personal experience is that the antidepressants they have tried did not work for them. Most people on this board are trying to learn about ketamine for depression because a series of other antidepressants did not work. But a medication not working for you does not mean another person wouldn't be helped by the same medication, and existing meds have had some safety and dosage testing. Personally, I am wary of meds which have not been on the market for 5 years somewhere, but I am more wary of depression.

Ketamine treatment for depression is in a weird position, lacking large scale trials for efficacy, but having been tested for safety in tangential ways. It is used as anesthesia (which gives an idea of the overdose risk), and all those recreational users are field testing what occurs if it is taken too frequently, at a high dose, and over longer periods of time. Between the time my doctor suggested it, and my first trial, I read up on the risks and decided that for me it was good enough to try. What you choose to try as a treatment is between you and your doctor (and if you are concerned by her/his suggestions, between you and your new doctor).

As for exercise and working out. Yes, it is good for you and can help improve mood. It also requires an ability to look up from the ground without pain, willingness to be around others (or a large home), and other little things. If you can manage your depression with exercise, eating well, sleeping well, socializing, bright light between 10-2, CBT, psychotherapy, and so forth, that is wonderful. Even if it only reduces the time or effect of depression, that is great. But some people, including myself, get to a state where it is a trial to get dressed and keep moving enough to get out and grocery shop, or to keep looking up from the sidewalk enough to watch for traffic. As I am sliding into or out of depression are the times when those things help me (actually I find creative work helps most).

Read through the postings to get an idea of what people have learned about ketamine therapy. Understand that most posts are from people who are seeking information. Those who tried it and found it helped might check in afterwards, or might be off enjoying life. Those who tried it and did not find it helped may check in afterwards. If you decide to try this therapy, and your doctor agrees, I really hope it helps. If not, I hope exercise and other lifestyle adjustments work for you, but if it does not, I hope you are open to other options. In any case, hang in there, something will work as long as you keep going long enough to find it.

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I had a transfusion of Ketamine 4 weeks ago and have never felt better in my life!!!!!
I've taken at least 3 dozen anti depressants in trying to treat my depression & this is the only time it worked
I have had only 1 transfusion & would like to know if multiple transfusions work better, the same, or Worse????

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Do you live in Canada? I am finding it difficult to find a doctor who will do this!

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Chad,

I am from Ontario and haven't heard of infusions being used here. Your GP or Psychiatrist can prescribe compounded liquid or tablets. I think the protocol I was put on at Toronto Western is in a comment below. A neuropsychiatrist there convinced me to try it, but now my regular psychiatrist oversees it. It worked for me, not as well as rtms , but I may not have ongoing access to that treatment and, if not, a combination of antidepressants and ketamine seems my best option.

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Has anyone added abilify to their AD meds?

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Please Just try namenda(memantine),if not work ketamine......Low dose of a anafranil and namenda help my brain function.and Yoga and workout.......I also took Concerta as well.I can't say anything that because everyone are different condition and have causes however I recommend you using other medication unlike SSRI.If it no work.

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Hey there, trying to find a doctor in the united states that will prescribe ketamine pills for my depression. I live in Arizona. Where do you live?

my email is {edited for privacy}

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