Drugs and Medications | WELL CALL ME CRAZY

Ketamine, once used frequently as a battlefield anesthetic during wartime and more recently as a club drug, has found new acclaim in its use to treat depression. Scientists and medical professionals have documented Ketamine’s ability to alleviate depressive symptoms in just hours, but didn’t really understand how it worked. Now new research hints at revealing the secret mechanism of action. In the most recent study, mice were injected with a stress hormone and then recorded exhibiting depressive symptoms such as refusing to eat in addition to recording the loss of synaptic connections in their brain. The mice were then given a dose of ketamine as investigators recorded surprising brain changes. The synaptic connections previously recorded, started to repair themselves after only twelve hours. In addition to repaired neuronal connections, the depressive symptoms that the mice had shown disappeared almost instantly. Ketamine therapy holds great promise in being able to quickly treat suicidal thoughts and depression, and this research helps uncover its secrets.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/04/11/712295937/ketamine-may-relieve-depression-by-repairing-damaged-brain-circuits

https://www.wired.com/story/lasers-highlight-ketamines-depression-fighting-secrets/amp

The Truth About Drugs (Photo credit: Thomas Hawk)

First, I apologize for being silent in the blogosphere as of late. I have recently experienced two dramatic life altering events that have sidelined my writing. More on that another time.

Second, I put a disclaimer to this post that I am spitting bullets and mad as hell right now. This is a highly unusual sensation for me. You see, as part of my mental illness i have compartmentalized many negative emotions and assigned them if you will to specific alters. CJ, me, I don’t get angry. At least, I haven’t in a long time. I let one of the alters handle that emotion, so that fact that i am feeling so pissed off right now is actually an encouraging sign in my recovery. Yay team!

So, let me get to the point. I have been on some form of opiate pain medication for a decade now…..not a pretty thing to admit. Specifically, for the last three years I have been taking morphine sulfate daily…..reducing my dosage from 240 mg a day to 15mg if and when needed. Yay team!

Well over the past three years I have saved the medication inserts that come with my rx……I don’t know why I do this, I just do. Today, when picking up my script and reviewing the insert I was struck by a very very big change. You see, for the past 35 months, the inserts have NEVER cautioned against not taking this medication if you were prescribed certain other medications. Of course it warned of the dangers of mixing alcohol with this opiate, and cautioned against taking other pain medicines, but for the first time in three years this insert read completely different. It now states in bold letters NOT to take this medication if you are also taking sodium oxybate or MAOI inhibitors under any circumstances.

What! Really! Are you kidding me! I was pumped full of both of those meds from 2004 up until just 18 short months ago.

Now you tell me it was dangerous! Now you tell me it could result in psychosis! Really! Just two short years ago my children went to my prescribing doctors and BEGGED them to stop giving me these meds, that they were making me worse not better. Sure, my sleep was finally regulated, but at the cost of my own fragile mind shattering even more.

Tsk Tsk! Hush! My children were shooed away like flies, told it was perfectly safe, and absolutely necessary for me to take.

And now this? I pulled out the past 35 months worth of inserts and double checked, just to make sure I was having a hallucination or imaginary thought. Sure enough…..35 months and no such warning.

The irony of it all!