It may take some time to score the general public used to the idea of treating mental illness with drugs many associate with tough partying,but the medical community is jumping aboard the psychedelics trainNew Jersey psychiatrist Steven Levine first thought of using ketamine in his practice when a patient came in whose depression could not be lifted by any commercially available antidepressants. After talking to Levine for a while, the patient confessed she felt better when she self medicated with cough syrup. When Levine looked up the active ingredient in the cough syrups the patient used, and it was dextromethorphan,which, like ketamine, and can induce a dissociative state or a detachment from reality.
You have to be looking in order to find something,says Levine, who is now one of a few practitioners who administer ketamine for depression, and along with a few research centers. When he started out,dosing his first patient in 2011, he was as far as he knows the first to offer it external a research setting. Levine was tired of the available drugs for depression, or which have a tall side effect profile and are ineffective for some patients.
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Source: theguardian.com