10 Minute Explainer: Ketamine, Party Drug or Antidepressant?

This week, the Food and Drug Administration approved a variant of the party drug, ketamine, for the treatment of stubborn depression. Tom Shroder, former editor of The Washington Post Magazine and author of Acid Test: LSD, Ecstasy and the Power to Heal (Blue Rider Press, 2014), explains the history of 'Special K' and the risks and rewards of taking it out of the club and into the doctor’s office.

"Ketamine is a dissociative psychedelic, one of it’s effects is to eliminate the process of ego.... That’s why it was effective as an anesthetic, it was so complete that surgery could be done and people would not feel associated with the surgery," says @tomshroder.

— Brian Lehrer Show (@BrianLehrer) March 8, 2019

"They discovered that patients that were not having any success with any other treatment for severe and life threatening depression would almost instantly improve after experiencing ketamine and that improvement would last for several weeks," says @tomshroder.

— Brian Lehrer Show (@BrianLehrer) March 8, 2019