Ketamine the Legal Psychedelic: Its History And How It Works
This is a transcript of the video which has been edited for readability.
There's a lot of research happening in the psychedelic space regarding psilocybin, LSD, MDMA, ayahuasca, and 5-MeO-DMT. And so what's fascinating is ketamine is the only legal psychedelic that's currently available for use by physicians. While we find ourselves in this unique time of the psychedelic renaissance, most psychedelics are difficult to access due to research guidelines or lack of legality. The result is that ketamine is not just the only legal psychedelic, but also the most readily available due to its rich history of use in medicine.
After years of experimentation, ketamine, derived from the drug phencyclidine, was discovered and is now widely used in the hospital setting.
Getting to Know ketamine: A history
Ketamine originated from the drug phencyclidine (aka PCP aka Angel Dust”), which was used on humans after numerous animal testings. Unfortunately, phencyclidine was found to be an unsuitable anesthetic after more clinic studies. Dr. Calvin Lee Stevens of Wayne State University, hoping to find an alternative, synthesized a sequence of phencyclidine derivatives. One of these compounds became ketamine and was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1970.
This drug was originally used on injured soldiers during the Vietnam War because of its large margin of safety but was soon found to be an effective treatment for certain chronic pain syndromes as well.
Today, not only is ketamine used as a dissociative anesthetic and sedating children for medical procedures, but is widely used to treat people with OCD, PTSD, anxiety, and suicidal ideation as well.
Read our blog on A Brief History of Ketamine to learn more!
Ketamine’s mechanism of working on the glutamate is what makes it different from other psychedelics.
How ketamine is different from the other psychedelics
What makes ketamine different is that it works on a different neurotransmitter, specifically glutamate. Glutamate plays an important role in normal and abnormal physiological processes including its involvement in mood and anxiety disorders.
Ketamine works by blocking activity of the glutamate neurotransmitter on something called the NMDA or N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor. And we believe that by blocking activity of glutamate, it will actually increase something called brain-derived neurotrophic factor or BDNF which helps allow the brain to become more plastic.
To learn more about how ketamine works, read our blog How Ketamine Improves Depressive Symptoms: A Neurotransmitter Perspective.
Ketamine allows for neuroplasticity in the brain, making us more receptive to new, good habits and positive changes in our lives.
Neuroplasticity: A way ketamine changes the brain
If you can think about neuroplasticity, one of the analogies that I think about is that it's like a piece of clay. With clay, in order for it to become malleable and moldable, you need to heat it up. And sometimes we, just like clay, are hard to mold if we get stuck in our own fixed way of thinking. We need to be “warmed” up as well to be more susceptible to changes. One way of doing this is through IV ketamine treatments.
Ketamine literally increases that plasticity or “moldability” so that one can come up with new habits, new thought patterns, and new belief systems. It's really important that you take advantage of that neuroplasticity after the IV ketamine treatments because that’s when your brain is most responsive to changes.
After the infusion, ketamine and its metabolites are still typically found flowing through the circulatory system for 24-72 hours. So this is when it’s the best time to incorporate new, good habits and make positive changes in your life.
What makes ketamine so effective is that it not only affects us physiologically, but on a psychological and spiritual level as well.
Ketamine working beyond biology
Another mechanism of ketamine is that it blocks activity of the Default Mode Network or DMN. The DMN is a portion of the brain that can become overactive with negative thoughts. With ketamine, the DMN becomes less active, detaching the individual from these negative thoughts and feelings.
Not only does ketamine alter our brains, it also allows you to experience your unconscious mind through its dissociative property. You get a clearer view of what goes on inside your head, including all your traumas, emotions, and memories that have been repressed or unprocessed. And by giving yourself a clearer view on what goes on in your unconscious, you are able to gain new perspectives and possibly heal from these negative thoughts.
Believe it or not, ketamine could also work on a spiritual level. Under the effects of ketamine, some patients say that they have experienced a connection to God, the Universe, or the Source all around them. This leaves them with a sense of peace that they have not felt in years. And this feeling of meeting God or spiritual beings cannot be explained by any form of science, but is one of the reasons why ketamine is such an effective treatment.
You can learn more about The 4 Mechanisms Of How Ketamine Works in our blog.
We hope that in the future, there will be more studies comparing different therapies and seeing which ones are the most effective for treating certain disorders and mental conditions.
Hope for future research
To sum everything up, ketamine works on a different neurotransmitter from the other classic psychedelics. It works not just on a physiological level, but on a spiritual and psychological one as well. The fact that it works on so many different levels explains why it is more effective than most traditional treatments.
Something that would be fascinating would be a research study where these various therapies are compared against each other. That may not be happening anytime soon but I anticipate that this could be something in the future. Studies like this would be highly beneficial in scenarios such as figuring out which medicine will be most effective for treating certain mood disorders, pain disorders or other chronic mental conditions.
What makes ketamine so fascinating is that it’s currently the only legal psychedelic available for use by physicians. Why is this so and what makes ketamine different from other psychedelics out there? Read our blog post to learn more.