The L.A. Times reports today that a notorious club drug, ketamine (also called "special K"), has been shown to effectively treat otherwise medication-resistant depressed people. Dr. Carlos Zarate at the National Institute of Mental health, published the study in the Archives of General Psychiatry:

In a small experiment led by Zarate last year, five of 18 people who received a single intravenous dose of ketamine experienced a dramatic lifting of their depression the first day and were still much better a week later. All patients in the experiment had first tried regular antidepressants but did not improve on them.

The drug affects an entirely different neurotransmitter than most other antidepressant drugs, and this study may lead to more effective antidepressants in the future. There's just one problem:

Ketamine can cause hallucinations and confusion and is sometimes abused as a club drug. In fact, he said, all patients who received the drug in his study reported out-of-body hallucinations.

We suppose whether that's a problem depends on the individual...

(via WOW Report)

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written by Michael Neely on August 27, 2007

no mention of the dreded "K" hole?

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