As psychiatrists turn to psychedelics, treatment center in Bakersfield says ketamine offers patients hope
The Bakersfield CalifornianMay 24, 2021
May 23—Deirdra O'Neill had nearly lost hope. The 44-year-old former paramedic had been diagnosed with multiple auto-immune diseases, a degenerative disc disease and suffered from post traumatic stress disorder. She frequently battled intense pain that left her debilitated.
"I had to quit working and was declared permanently disabled," she said in a recent phone interview. "I was living for my kids. That's the only reason I was trying to fight things to be able to live."
But after undergoing a new form of psychiatric therapy, she says she feels like she has a new lease on life. Her pain has subsided, her PTSD has reduced, and she says she is able to stop taking some of the narcotic drugs she had been prescribed.
"The time I finished my first week of treatment, the following day, I was able to get on a motorcycle with my husband, we went to LA, I walked around a Harley shop," she said, an activity she previously would not have been able to do. "Then I turned around and went to a Dodger game and walked through
That treatment, ketamine infusion therapy, arrived in
Ketamine is an anesthetic medicine known for producing hallucinatory effects as well as its use as a horse tranquilizer. Recently, the drug has been turned to for its therapeutic uses. As psychiatry increasingly turns to psychedelic drugs for their therapeutic qualities, ketamine is being seen as a bellwether for the future.
The only psychedelic legally available to patients outside a clinical study, ketamine has been approved by the
In
"While you are disassociated on the ketamine, you are able to process without the depression or without the anxiety or without the obsessive disorder," said
He described the process as brain reboot, like hitting CTRL+ALT+DELETE on a malfunctioning computer.
A relatively new frontier for psychiatry, research into the subject has blossomed recently, but many scientists say that more studies are needed before the therapeutic potential of drugs like LSD and MDMA can be fully known. Experts also caution those with known personality disorders like schizophrenia from pursuing the therapy.
Still, a story in the New York Times earlier this month referred to experts who said it was only a matter of time before the FDA approves more drugs for psychiatric use. The story said MDMA, a psychoactive drug associated with nightclubs, could be approved by 2023 while psilocybin, a psychedelic compound found in fungi, could be approved a year or two later.
"You'll see in a couple of years, a giant psychedelic clinic will be somewhere within driving distance of most large cities because people understand this is a way to get well when they have no other options," Stang said.
For treatment at the center in
For Delic Programming Director
"The big push right now in the world of ketamine is to really show the validity of ketamine so that insurance companies can really start utilizing this as a method," he said. "I think that the data will be out there soon, and hopefully again we'll be able to get this to a lot more people."
While it may seem surprising that the treatment has gained a foothold in
"I tell everyone about ketamine," O'Neill said, noting that she still suffered from her auto-immune diseases and a lower amount of chronic pain. "It's not a cure, but it's an amazing treatment."
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