Prince Harry, Mike Tyson and Elon Musk are just a few of the celebrities who’ve spoken openly about taking ketamine to treat mental health issues, and some people say we are currently in a “psychedelic renaissance”. Funding for research and legalisation efforts on hallucinogenic drugs are ramping up as a new wave of research investigates their use as therapies for psychiatric conditions. Substances like ketamine have gone from a rave drug to a potentially groundbreaking mental health therapy, used to assist talking therapy sessions in a combination called ketamine-assisted psychotherapy. Such therapy is now clinically available, bolstered by impressive clinical trial results, which have shown this approach to be an effective treatment for depression, addiction and post-traumatic stress disorder. For patients like Tristan Greene this came at just the right time as a ‘last resort’ to help tackle his treatment resistant depression. We sat down with Greene, who took part in ketamine-assisted therapy, and his former psychotherapist, Laurie Higbed at Awakn Clinics, the first UK clinic to offer this therapy, to talk about utilising ketamine for mental health treatment and the future of psychedelic therapies.
Read more: Ketamine’s unlikely conversion from rave drug to mental health therapy
Need a listening ear? UK Samaritans: 116123 (samaritans.org); US 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: 988 (988lifeline.org). Visit bit.ly/SuicideHelplines for other countries.
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