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Yale: 'Magic' Antidepressant May Hold Promise For PTSD
HartfordCourant ^ | June 03, 2012 | LISA CHEDEKEL

Posted on 06/04/2012 11:17:00 PM PDT by Daffynition

Researchers at the Yale School of Medicine have called it "the magic drug," able to halt severe depression and suicidal thoughts in patients within a matter of hours.

Ketamine, used as an anesthetic in human and veterinary medicine, has emerged in the past few years as a promising, rapid-acting antidepressant. When administered intravenously at low doses, it can lift symptoms of deep depression within hours, for seven to 10 days. Typical antidepressants, which act on the neurotransmitter serotonin, take a month or more for full effect.

(Excerpt) Read more at articles.courant.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Health/Medicine; Military/Veterans
KEYWORDS: anesthesia; horsetranquilizers; ketamine; ptsd; specialk
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This looks promising.
1 posted on 06/04/2012 11:17:08 PM PDT by Daffynition
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To: Daffynition
please read this story.....this drug is highly addictive

long term side effects psychosis

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1100543/Why-wealthy-young-elite-switching-cocaine-deadlier-drug-ketamine-horse-tranquillisers-used-injured-soldiers-Vietnam.html

2 posted on 06/04/2012 11:25:16 PM PDT by freedommom
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To: Daffynition
Special K.

THE TRIP: Before reaching the first line, fragmentation will occur the world will begin to spin, but it won't be dizzying. Music will become fragmented. Chaos will ensue. At some point, you will find yourself complete removed from your surroundings and your body.

Descriptions of the post-line experience vary substantially, but most include talk of alternate planes of existence, oneness, past and future revelations, and strange fabrics of all sorts. It will be very difficult to communicate at this point, and you probably will not be able to see or hear others in the room.

Some revelations will be extremely heavy and some scary, but that fear does not seem to come back with you and is therefore difficult to describe as scary. You will probably find yourself coming back across the line again visibly, attempting to put an object in focus or define it.

It is at this point that you will likely want to get in touch with your co-trippers. This is the "Wow" period. It is very important here that you do not try to move for awhile. The trip will continue mildly for an hour or so after this, with more conventional focuses. Read more.


3 posted on 06/04/2012 11:25:23 PM PDT by I see my hands (It's time to.. KICK OUT THE JAMS, MOTHER FREEPERS!)
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To: Daffynition
please read this story.....this drug is highly addictive

long term side effects psychosis

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1100543/Why-wealthy-young-elite-switching-cocaine-deadlier-drug-ketamine-horse-tranquillisers-used-injured-soldiers-Vietnam.html

4 posted on 06/04/2012 11:26:49 PM PDT by freedommom
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To: freedommom

sorry for double post


5 posted on 06/04/2012 11:33:58 PM PDT by freedommom
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To: Daffynition

A friend of mine was given Ketamine for her hip replacement surgery and although she was paralyzed and unable to move or communicate with her surgeons, she remained fully, brutally awake and aware during the entire surgery.

She said the pain was unbelievable.

I don’t allow Ketamine to be used on my dogs.


6 posted on 06/04/2012 11:46:55 PM PDT by Salamander
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To: Daffynition

Ketamine? I think I would go with leeches first.


7 posted on 06/04/2012 11:48:17 PM PDT by sockmonkey
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To: freedommom

Gots’ta write da Med dissertation... Sippin’ coupla brews at Rudy’s... Cruisin’ on down Dixwell... Upta Bethany, See da horses, thinkin’, thinkin’...


8 posted on 06/04/2012 11:53:53 PM PDT by golux
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To: Salamander

This sounds like a total anesthetic fail, for which anesthesiologists typically get sued big time. The patient can easily demonstrate awareness memory by describing details of the surgery which match up with the video the surgeon generally makes. The vitals would probably show blood pressure shooting through the roof, and the anesthesiologist probably ignored it. The paralysis was almost doubtless not from ketamine; it was from paralyzing curare alkaloids, e.g. pancuronium, given along with it (a surgeon doesn’t want muscles moving around that he’s cutting and restitching).


9 posted on 06/04/2012 11:56:39 PM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (Let me ABOs run loose Lou!)
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To: freedommom

The old saw is that the dose makes the poison. If small amounts of the stuff, administered continuously, have a scientifically proven therapeutic use under proper care of physicians, that isn’t the same as shooting or popping a single huge dose of the junk. I don’t imagine this would be used on everybody, but only for acute suicidal cases. It probably beats electroshock all hollow for lack of harmful side effects.


10 posted on 06/05/2012 12:01:00 AM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (Let me ABOs run loose Lou!)
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To: I see my hands

Sounds like some bad “blotter acid” from back in the late-60s...


11 posted on 06/05/2012 2:13:11 AM PDT by Carriage Hill (All libs & most dems think that life is just a sponge bath, with a happy ending.)
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To: freedommom

I’ve heard of *Special K* as a rec drug and never made the connection from this article.

>>I was God, I saw light and warmth. This is Home. Sooo familiar, where we belong. Where we go. Everything is perfect, no words, just basic feeling. Love, Reality, Home. This was about the only words that I could bring back. Really no words there, but strong feelings. I Knew I was God and that I wasn’t a little while before, but didn’t have any idea what I was before. I was completely calm and comfortable, it was Home. Perfect. I wasn’t alone either.<<


12 posted on 06/05/2012 2:34:14 AM PDT by Daffynition (Our forefathers would be shooting by now.)
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To: Salamander

Sounds like being awake during a nightmare! Oi!


13 posted on 06/05/2012 2:43:33 AM PDT by Daffynition (Our forefathers would be shooting by now.)
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To: HiTech RedNeck

Researchers synthesizing the drug...http://www.vice.com/read/interview-with-ketamine-chemist-704-v18n2


14 posted on 06/05/2012 2:52:01 AM PDT by Daffynition (Our forefathers would be shooting by now.)
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To: Daffynition

in the US, we used ketamine to “induce” anesthesia (put someone to sleep quickly so that the gas anesthesia could take over). The advantage was it didn’t stop breathing (especially good if you had an emergency Caesarian section and didn’t have time to do a spinal), was hard to overdose and didn’t cause the blood pressure to tank (go down) if the person was in shock.

We used it a lot in Africa, where our “anesthetist’ was the guy who scrubbed the floor: we gave it until the patient stopped moving, and then told the guy who was running the drip for us to slow it down...when the patient started moving again, we had him increase the drip.

The bad news: It caused some folks nightmares when used alone.

So usually we gave some scopalamine or valium at the end of surgery to cause amnesia.

The nightmare problem was not in everyone, but it could be severe...that is why it is not used much except in emergencies like I noted...but it is known as a “horse tranquillizer” and kids use it to get high.

It doesn’t make you “sleep” as much as puts you in a state of dissociation, where you feel separated from your body, sort of catatonic...

So I can see why it might treat depression in the same way as other hallucinogens: on the other hand, any severe stress can relieve a depression...

However, the nightmare part will probably make folks unwilling to use it...


15 posted on 06/05/2012 2:55:32 AM PDT by LadyDoc
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To: freedommom
Yes, ketamine is now a ‘recreational drug’, and can cause hallucinations. It was used extensively for years to sedate children.
16 posted on 06/05/2012 3:11:41 AM PDT by pieceofthepuzzle
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To: Daffynition

Designer drugs...what would we ever do without them.


17 posted on 06/05/2012 4:36:09 AM PDT by equaviator
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To: Daffynition
I was God, I saw light and warmth. This is Home. Sooo familiar, where we belong. Where we go. Everything is perfect, no words, just basic feeling. Love, Reality, Home. This was about the only words that I could bring back. Really no words there, but strong feelings. I Knew I was God and that I wasn’t a little while before, but didn’t have any idea what I was before. I was completely calm and comfortable, it was Home. Perfect. I wasn’t alone either.

Sounds like one of those near-death experiences. Maybe ketamine is the first thing to go!

18 posted on 06/05/2012 4:36:50 AM PDT by Lady Lucky (God-issued, not govt-issued.)
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To: Daffynition

All this is being brought to you by the same set of fools and idiots who invented lobotomies and electric shock for the brain to erase memories.
Psychologists and psychiatrists and whe sleaze snake oil people of the medical profession.


19 posted on 06/05/2012 4:44:16 AM PDT by BuffaloJack (End the racist, anti-capitalist Obama War On Freedom.)
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To: Daffynition

PTSD is an anxiety disorder. Some depression may occur alongside it, but it primarily causes anxiety which is not close to being the same thing.


20 posted on 06/05/2012 4:53:39 AM PDT by formosa (Formosa)
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