Great points. I think with ketamine it has mostly been restricted to treatment resistant depression and I think that is an exceptional case where you need long term treatment but as you point out for most people that won't be necessary.
The problem is even a small risk of bladder damage is going to scare off most people and doctors from using it because when it does occur the consequences can be life changing and make a person's quality of life much worse.
I know in my case psychedelics "cured" me of my depression for a long time..however due to my newfound happiness I found it incredibly hard to integrate back into society due to a number of conflicting reasons. Now I'm at the point where nothing helps anymore.
The 2 things I've found that help most (but they are not a perfect solution) are exercise and meditation. The problem is when you get down you tend to lose the motivation and ability to do them.
Is the bladder damage also there for IM or IV use? Or is that only for nasal and oral usage? Alot of doctors still use Ketamine for operations since its pretty safe overall. And its not like other medications , especially SSRI's don't have their own horrible side effects.
What would be interesting to see is what % actually gets bladder damage from medical use (not recreational).
Your right, when I was on psychedelics they told me that if I wanted to get over my depression meditation and exercise was key and to treat my body like a temple. For a few years I was excellent. I didn't drink any more alcohol, worked out alot, meditated almost everyday and was doing great all around.
I can't believe how much meditation changed me and how it just completely blew away my anxiety. Best of all I actually learned to love myself, something that I never was able to do.
I've been in that mode of being down for a while now and have zero motivation now to meditate or exercise. I wish there were safer meds out there to bring out that stimulation to give you a jump start. Its that weird stage of I don't want to die,but I do nothing being alive.
It's for any type of use as I understand it due to the way it is eliminated.
I think you hit the nail on the head there. You need meds to give a jump start and get people out of the "pit" of depression. There is another alternative that may work TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation) but it is hard to find places that do it. I was looking for ages but it needs to be administered on a weekly basis for best effect which means you need to live nearby.
I was looking at TMS as well! I'm actually a bit surprised that you would want to to do TMS over Ketamine. I don't know much about TMS so I'm still a bit ignorant on this subject but it would seem to me that TMS might have some long term dangers that we may not know of yet and that Ketamine might be safer? But I could be wrong.
Funny thing you mention TMS cause I was looking to do it as well, I found a few places in Connecticut and New York but none of them were under my insurance. I am desperate enough to try anything to hopefully push my depression & anhedonia away even if its just a tiny bit. There was a singer that live streamed his TMS session and went on about how he loved what it did for him but his name keeps slipping my mind.I think he did an AMA about it as well.
Have you looked into nootropics as well? If you know what might be causing your depression there might be a few of them that can help.
Also sorry I haven't been replying in the correct format, I just got on Steemit so I have to learn how to use it correctly.
Depends on what you mean by nootropics. I've looked into pretty much everything - a lot of things have very little or very poor evidence to support them.