I am generally a fan of the occasional self-prescribed party drug, but if you suffer from severe depressive disorder, you should not do this without proper supervision.
(And no, doing a bump off someone’s mailbox key is not proper supervision. Fun! Not medically wise, though.)
Like everything else in life, upsides have to be weighed with the downsides. For people who can't afford clinical ketamine treatment and are depressed, I don't see anything wrong with just buying some ketamine on the black market.
Opiates on the other hand, that's a different story.
This fear mongering on "freedom to use what every you like" should stop. It serves no purpose but keeping prisons full and street drug in bad quality. Why would we want to pay so much tax for that?
Every politician who claims to be in favor of "freedom", but cannot deal with the freedom to use what ever you like is a fraud.
Granted, but is it more or less risky for a person to remain severely depressed, if regular medications don't work?
If we think ketamine therapy will soon be covered by insurance it may be lower risk to wait.
Anyway, do you have a source for that?
Generally, no. Self-administering a psychotherapeutic drug, while isolated and without training, can have the lowest likelyhood of a positive outcome.
Having an experienced guide or trained therapist present - someone to provide appropriate nudges/direction/counseling or sometimes just for company - this is where we often see experiences with huge, lasting benefits.
Shorthand. You can substitute 'is', if that helps.
> If its just chemical why is counseling necessary?
It isn't just chemical.
Nothing Ive read suggests there is some talk therapy or integration side to this. Like some guides say close your eyes and listen to music. Almost everything I've read talks about its interaction with glutamate other chemicals.
Ketamine can be intense. I would not like to take a clinical dose of K, while in a depressed state, sans supervision.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28749092/
> Ketamine is most commonly administered in the dose of 0.5 mg/kg, but some patients may respond to doses as low as 0.1 mg/kg, and others may require up to 0.75 mg/kg.
This is about 40mg for someone my size. Its not a khole