I grew. Mindfulness meditation and seeing a therapist helped me to stop having panic attacks. I stayed plugged in with my faith community. I focused on living from my values. I worked on diet, exercise, and time outdoors. My wife was on the journey with me, making her own life changes, but her postpartum depression still lingered. Desperate for a treatment, I started ready study after study about the effectiveness of ketamine for mental health. I discovered an entire industry taking a different approach. Frustrated with the lack of options in Lubbock, I decided to open a ketamine clinic.
Ketamine was developed by the researcher, Dr. Edward Domino, in the late 60s. In a July 2021 interview with Hamilton Morris, he recounts the story of the first patient who reported ketamine was the only medicine that helped with her depression. He laments not starting a study for ketamine for depression 30+ years ago (Morris, 2021). Thankfully, researchers later paved the way for ketamine’s use as an anti-depressant. Like other medications, ketamine is used for many things. For example, ketamine is an anesthetic approved for human use in 1970 and an analgesic used by combat medics in theater. Today, ketamine has an enormous body of research supporting its use for mental health (Serfani et al., 2014) with clinicians and patients all over the world endorsing its effects.
It took me a year to open the clinic. My wife was our first patient. During her first ketamine infusion, she cried and hugged me. She said, “Thank you. It feels like it’s lighting up parts of my brain that were asleep.” In the clinic, we continue to see exciting patient results from ketamine and the combination of ketamine with psychotherapy (Dore, 2019). Ketamine is not a magic bullet, and, like other medications, it is not for everyone. But for me, my wife, and many of our patients, it is a significant tool to promote healing and alleviate suffering.