The 33 year old has struggled to beat back severe depression and post-traumatic stress disorder for much of her life. She’s tried more than 30 psychiatric medications, none of which helped. Her inner pain reached a level so unbearable that she retreated from the world. She stayed in bed. She stopped doing the dishes and taking out the trash, which piled up in her San Francisco apartment. She stopped socializing. She lost the will to live. “I had gotten to a point where I disappeared, mentally and physically,” Morgan said. “My psychiatrist kind of put his hands up in the air and said, ‘There’s nothing else I can do for you.'” But he did suggest something different she could try, albeit not through him: ketamine.
Ketamine Infusions and Depression
The only legally available psychedelic in the U.S., the drug is widely used as an anesthetic in hospitals and medical settings. But it has been found to give people with severe mood disorders, including treatment-resistant depression and suicidal ideation, almost unbelievably fast-acting relief from their symptoms — some with a single dose, though more commonly it takes several treatments. Morgan received her first ketamine infusion in a Palo Alto psychiatry clinic in June. By her second treatment, she took out the trash for the first time in months. After several infusions, friends told her she was talking more than she had in a year.
