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A ketamine specialist is weighing in on Matthew Perry's cause of death, claiming the actor "did himself in." Matthew Perry had a large amount of the drug ketamine in his system at the time of death -- the same amount that would be used in general anesthesia. Toxicology testing found that ketamine levels in Perry's system were at 3540 ng/ml. For context, the report, obtained by The Blast, reads, “In monitored surgical-anesthesiology care, levels of general anesthesia are typically in the 1000-6000 ng/ml range.” In other words, he had a large amount of the drug in his system, enough to...

The drug ketamine can reduce the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, and symptoms of depression in patients as early as a day after injection. That is the key finding of my team’s new meta-analysis, just published in the journal Annals of Pharmacotherapy. Ketamine is an anesthetic that is sometimes used as a substance of abuse but is increasingly being explored as a treatment for a range of mental health conditions. We analyzed six randomized controlled trials representing 259 patients with moderate to severe PTSD. In all trials, about half were injected with ketamine. The rest received either salt...

WASHINGTON (AP) — As U.S. doctors scale back their use of opioid painkillers, a new option for hard-to-treat pain is taking root: ketamine, the decades-old surgical drug that is now a trendy psychedelic therapy. Prescriptions for ketamine have soared in recent years, driven by for-profit clinics and telehealth services offering the medication as a treatment for pain, depression, anxiety and other conditions. The generic drug can be purchased cheaply and prescribed by most physicians and some nurses, regardless of their training. With limited research on its effectiveness against pain, some experts worry the U.S. may be repeating mistakes that gave...

Scott Anthony Burke is facing a slew of drug and firearms charges after officials allegedly found cocaine, ketamine, guns, and ammunition aboard his yacht. Scott Anthony Burke appeared in Plymouth District Court Thursday for a detention hearing. He is facing several firearms and drug charges after a Sept. 5 incident aboard his yacht off Nantucket. A retired surgeon from Florida was ordered held on $200,000 bail Thursday after Nantucket officials allegedly recovered cocaine, ketamine, guns, and ammunition from his yacht earlier this week. Scott Anthony Burke, 69, appeared in Plymouth District Court for a detention hearing days after Nantucket police...

Seizures of the illicit party drug ketamine have skyrocketed by 349 percent in the United States over the last five years, new research reveals. This significant increase has sparked alarm over the potential dangers tied to the escalating recreational use of this illegal substance, initially designed for use as a horse tranquilizer. The study by a team in New York indicates that the overall weight of ketamine seized in the U.S. escalated from 127 pounds in 2017 to roughly 1,550 pounds in 2022, marking an increase of over 1,100 percent. The hallucinogenic effects of ketamine have enhanced its popularity among...

A programme of therapy involving the drug ketamine will be made available to alcoholics in a research project. The University of Exeter-led trial, with funding of £2.4m, will go ahead at seven NHS sites across the UK. The trial will look into whether a combination of ketamine and therapy could help alcoholics stay sober for longer. Prof Celia Morgan, the academic behind the research, said there was an "urgent need" for new treatments. The research will go ahead after a phase two trial showed ketamine and therapy treatment was safe and tolerable for heavy drinkers. An earlier study found participants...

-Depression is a mood disorder that affects many people and it can impact people’s beliefs and how they respond to information. -K​etamine is a drug that is typically used as an anesthetic that is also used recreationally, however, its use as a treatment for depression is not fully understood. -A​ new study found that the administration of ketamine could help people develop more optimistic beliefs after receiving positive information. -Depression impacts millions of people in the United States alone, but the disorder can be challenging to treat. Some people do not respond well to the typical medications or therapies doctors...

Ketamine, a drug once popular in the club scene, is now psychiatrists' secret weapon against depression. Perhaps you've heard of it, either from celebrities' personal stories — such as former NBA player Lamar Odom — or through the many research studies currently underway to assess its effectiveness. What you may not know is how the drug works to relieve depression, and why it seems to help patients for whom all other treatments have failed. In that, you wouldn't be alone. Dr. Steven Levine, a board-certified psychiatrist who developed the protocol for the clinical use of ketamine in 2011, says scientists...

Austrian police have arrested two Afghan immigrants who allegedly boasted about having sex with a 13-year-old local girl, who was drugged and raped before her body was dumped on the side of the road. Schoolgirl Leonie, 13, from the city of Wiener Neustadt near Austria's capital Vienna, was reported missing by her parents three days before she was found dead on a road verge with her body leaned up against a tree on June 26. Investigations showed the girl had been raped, physically molested and rolled up in a carpet before she was left at the site. Local police arrested...

AURORA, Colo. (KDVR) – The FOX31 Problem Solvers have been working to bring you the most thorough investigations related to the Elijah McClain case since August 2019, when McClain was confronted by three police officers, injected with ketamine and later died. McClain, 23, was wearing a mask when someone called 911 to report that he seemed suspicious. McClain often wore the mask while jogging, according to his family and friends. He was not committing a crime and was unarmed when police approached him. FOX31 was the first to track down the store clerk and the surveillance video from the store...

Armed smugglers allegedly associated with the Gulf Cartel were responsible for the onslaught of automatic fire that endangered the lives a Border Patrol Marine Unit in early August, as it policed the banks for drug smugglers and human traffickers along the Rio Grande Valley River, in Texas. Department of Homeland Security investigators recently uncovered that it was to prevent the Border Patrol boat from trampling or breaking an underwater pulley line devised by the cartel to transport large quantities of cocaine into the United States, according to a For Official Use Only law enforcement sensitive document obtained by SaraACarter.com... The...

Spravato is a nasal spray administered by an approved health care provider in a doctor's office or a medical clinic. It may also be self-administered but only under the supervision of a care provider and cannot be taken home. "Because of [safety] concerns, the drug will only be available through a restricted distribution system and it must be administered in a certified medical office where the health care provider can monitor the patient," Farchione said. Depending on the severity of the patient's depression, it is given either once a week or once every other week. n. The drug is rapidly...

Minneapolis police officers have repeatedly requested over the past three years that Hennepin County medical responders sedate people using the powerful tranquilizer ketamine, at times over the protests of those being drugged, and in some cases when no apparent crime was committed, a city report shows. On multiple occasions, in the presence of police, Hennepin Healthcare EMS workers injected suspects of crimes and others who already appeared to be restrained, according to the report, and the ketamine caused heart or breathing failure, requiring them to be medically revived. Several people given ketamine had to be intubated. These are among the...

Depression takes an effect on a person's health. But there's a type of treatment using ketamine that can put a stop to it. It's called Ketamine Infusion Therapy, a method healthcare professionals are using to not only ease the physical pain but the pain that no one sees. "What we did not realize until fairly recently, probably the past 10 years, that it works on glutamate receptors which are specific receptors to depression, PTSD, anxiety, those mood disorders," said Tammy Vaught, a certified registered nurse anesthetist with the Ketamine Clinic of West Texas. Vaught just opened the first ketamine clinic...

Ketamine, a drug that is used as an anesthetic, may be a way to safely treat pain, PTSD, depression, and ringing ears (tinnitus), a new study suggests. Since the drug is already approved by the Food and Drug Administration, it could potentially be available sooner and cost less. “It’s a lot more economical to repurpose drugs than to take a new drug and make it from scratch,” says David E. Potter, professor and chair of pharmaceutical sciences at Texas A&M University’s Rangel College of Pharmacy. “Not only in terms of dollars, but also in terms of time.” And because a...

In any given year, 7% of adults suffer from major depression, and at least 1 in 10 youth will reckon with the disorder at some point during their teenage years. But about 20% of these cases will not respond to current treatments; for those that do, relief may take weeks to months to come. There is one treatment, however, that works much faster: the anesthetic and “club drug” ketamine. It takes effect within hours. A single dose of ketamine produces relief of depression that has been shown in studies to last for up to 10 days; it also appears to...

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.

Author William Styron called it "Darkness Visible." Another writer labeled it "The Noonday Demon." Successful and beloved people such as William Holden and Ernest Hemingway were never able to shake off the beast called clinical depression. Depression saps the life from you, so thoroughly destroying hope and happiness that you can't even imagine why somebody else might smile or laugh. It wrecks dreams figuratively and literally in that it's often linked with persistent, severe insomnia. It afflicts almost a tenth the adult population each year, is the leading cause of disability for ages 15-44, and frequently involves suicidal fantasies....

The results of two new studies may signal a substantial shift in the way psychiatrists and researchers think about treatment for severely depressed patients. --snip-- In the other, psychiatrists in New York found evidence that antidepressant drugs significantly increased the risk that some children and adolescents would attempt or commit suicide. Doctors have debated this risk for years, but the authors of the study were skeptical of it, and their report may sway others. --snip-- The study of suicide risk, led by Dr. Mark Olfson of Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute, was based on an analysis...

Close window Published online: 7 August 2006; | doi:10.1038/news060807-1 Club drug finds use as antidepressantPsychedelic ketamine hits the blues surprisingly fast.Erika Check Pills popped in a nightclub are potential therapeutics too.© Punchstock The 'club drug' ketamine may be the fastest-acting antidepressant ever tested, researchers report today. A team based at the US National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in Bethesda, Maryland, studied ketamine in 17 people with major depression. All the subjects had failed to respond to treatment with standard antidepressant drugs or more drastic methods, such as electroshock therapy. But 71% felt better the day after taking ketamine,...