Ketamine tested as a depression treatment
If you're looking for an example of how moronic so-called healthcare industry experts can actually be then boy, have I got one for you: Researchers are actually testing ketamine, AKA, the "club drug," as a treatment for depression.
You may not be familiar with "the club drug." Basically, this is a substance that has few legal uses (limited mostly to anesthesia, treating recovering heroine addicts, and veterinary medicine), and all sorts of illegal ones.
In fact, this is one of the most popular illegal, prescription, psychedelic drugs out there among kids, and it's often used as a substitute for LCD and PCP.
Seems like the researchers are forgetting one very important thing: We're talking about a drug that causes hallucinations, out-of-body experiences. Not to mention the fact that veterinarians use it as a painkiller for horses.
This is an example of just how out-of-hand the antidepressant industry has gotten.
Putting this drug out there as an antidepressant doesn't just put depressed patients at risk. (That's not to say that their risk isn't considerable.
When this kind of drug becomes a popular prescription that only means that more people are going to have the opportunity to get their hands on it, including all those kids who like to use it recreationally.
Another problem is that this is a drug that is, quite often, abused even by patients who have legal prescriptions. And in high doses, it can cause all sorts of health problems, including delirium, amnesia, high blood pressure, breathing problems, and can even make depression worse.
The researchers found that, in low doses, ketamine can relieve depression much more quickly than regular antidepressants. Ketamine, they say, can work in as little as two hours, while regular drugs can take weeks. The researchers tested the drug on 18 depressed adults for whom regular antidepressants had failed.
What, did they run out of elephant tranquilizers to try? I mean, whatever happened to regular old therapy, a few mood-lifting herbs, and a little exercise? Or, at the very worst, with a case of serious depression, maybe a little Wellbutrin until you kick the sadness?
It's like I always say: People are too willing to try a quick fix and too impatient to wait for a tried and true (and safe) cure to work. But the fact is, there are a lot of tried, true, and safe cures out there. Ones that don't cause hallucinations.
