Researchers from the Oxford Health NHS Foundation believe the illegal party drug Ketamine could be an “exciting” and “dramatic” new treatment for depression sufferers after a small trial on 28 subjects.
Each of the test subjects were given doses of the anaesthetic over 40 minutes on up to 6 occasions with the results displaying positive benefits that can last up to months as published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.
Of the 28 subjects, eight showed improvements in reported levels of depression with four of them improving so vastly that they are now classified as non-sufferers.
Dr Rupert McShane, Lead researcher said: “It really is dramatic for some people, it’s the sort of thing really that makes it worth doing psychiatry, it’s a really wonderful thing to see adding: “[The patients] say ‘ah this is how I used to think’ and the relatives say ‘we’ve got x back’.”
While there were some positive results some did relapse within days, with one subject having troubles of blood supply to the brain – scary. While the research shows that there are other avenues of depression treatment its advised it isn’t a ‘cure’ of sorts and not to self medicate.
The drug, a common anaesthetic used for back surgery was recently re-classified by The Home Office to a B-class meaning it does have medical benefits and joins the progressive studies on drugs being used for positive medical purposes with Cananda recently ok’ing MDMA research with New Zealand looking at the same narcotic as a possible cure for tinnitus.
The USA is even looking at the benefits with the Director of Clinical Research at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) Amy Emerson detailing the drug in a recent Reddit AMA.
At the least we can still all enjoy the trippy close-up’s of a whole host of party drugs by artist Sarah Schönfeld or the countless videos of people drugged up on the stuff on Youtube. Neigh!
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