Pete Davidson uses ketamine to treat depression. How does it work?
News of the World, August 30, 2023
It is a painkiller that for many years was considered an illicit drug.
American comedian Pete Davidson recently confessed that his treatment for depression includes ketamine, a painkiller that for many years was considered an illicit drug, but in 2019 the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) in the United States approved its use in certain treatments for adults with depression.
For years, ketamine has been known as a party drug that sends users into euphoric out-of-body experiences. However, more and more studies are talking about ketamine as a way of relieving the symptoms of depression in the short term and, indeed, in less than an hour, according to the Daily Mail.
When it was approved, thousands of clinics started popping up in the US, where people with a type of depression that is more difficult to treat can undergo intravenous infusions of a refined version of the drug under the supervision of a psychiatrist. This treatment is available in several private clinics in Portugal.
There is also another version of ketamine, approved by the American organization, available as a spray under the name esketamine, but marketed as Spravato.
Many of the treatments used today work in a similar way, i.e. they target the same neurotransmitters, serotonin and neuropinephrine. These drugs are collectively known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs). But even with changes, over the years their effect has stagnated.
Ketamine, on the other hand, combats the symptoms of depression in a different way. Normally, conventional treatments increase levels of natural chemicals such as serotonin, but ketamine increases levels of glutamate, a neurotransmitter crucial for regulating mood, learning, memory and information processing.
In fact, a recent study carried out in Boston suggested that ketamine infusions work just as well in treating severe depression as electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), which is the most widely used.
In addition, researchers at MindPeace Clinics, a ketamine therapy clinic, quoted in the Daily Mail, report that more than 70% of patients who used the drug for a year experienced improvements in their mood, with 40% showing no symptoms of depression after 10 routine infusions of the drug. Of course, even so, some doctors consider it a dangerous option.
