ketamine assisted addiction therapy in the USA

[jacky]

apparently, an organization in florida named Eleusis is approved to administer alcoholics ketamine now.
the inpatient treatment center focuses on alcohilics, but states that 90% of alcoholics have some other type of substance abuse issue as well. the ketamine is administered usually on the 8th and 15th day of the program.
contact: info@eleusis.us

the managing Dr has an interesting bio written, and the whole organization seems pretty cutting edge, with some eastern influence as far as philosophy apparent.

the price tag is expensive, but I have seen more expensive. and they can give you ketamine to boot. I wonder if an insurance company would pay for this? ketamine is an approved drug for humans so I would think it may be an insurable treatment. This really seems to good to be true, ketamine therapy, approved mdma therapy for US veterans etc. now they just need to soften up on the ibogaine issue.

[duke_nemmerle]

Wow that really is quite a radical turn for us, hopefully it continues into broader areas for better treatments

[Zoop]

Far out. I read about ketamine being used to treat alcoholism in Russia a long time ago. I wonder if they still do it. They might see improvement over the short term, but the relapse rate remains high, I would think. The treatment far and away that is statistically better than anything else is "moral psychology" a.k.a. 12-step recovery, a.k.a. "AA." NA generally doesn't have the depth that AA has.

BUT (and it's a big butt), what I think, as if anyone cares, is that AA and 12-step in general need to pay more attention to the chemical side of the issue. Specifically, I would like to see AA as a whole get more hip to the idea of how drugs can help the recovery process. Hey, Bill Wilson, co-founder of AA, took LSD a couple of times as part of an experimental psychotherapy back in the 1950's, before acid took on it's counter-culture stigma. It was looked upon back then, in the beginning, as a type of prozac (pretty fucking strong prozac!). Bill Wilson didn't count it as a "slip" when he dropped acid.

I am on zoloft and buprenorphine, as part of my recovery. I consider myself "sober" even though, if you wanna really break it down, I AM on a mood altering drug.

overandout