Will ketamine help with your anxiety? What’s the relationship between ketamine and anxiety?

The use of ketamine as a treatment for mental issues is becoming more widespread across the world. Ketamine is becoming widely recognised as a useful, alternative tool for the treatment of anxiety disorders as well as depression but does that mean that it’s actually effective?  

This article will hopefully answer that question and help you figure out whether ketamine is a good idea or not.

Quick Summary

Ketamine has a lot of potential as an effective treatment for anxiety disorders and many patients have reported positive effects from its use. However, more research is needed and for now, the use of ketamine for anxiety disorders is still considered an alternative treatment. 

How do you take ketamine for anxiety?

There are four main ways that you can take ketamine for anxiety. They are:

• Nasal sprays.
• Lozenges.
• Intravenous infusions. 
• Intramuscular injections. 

Each of these methods has different advantages and disadvantages but they’re all usually available in ketamine clinics worldwide.

It’s worth noting that ketamine nasal sprays have been approved by the FDA while ketamine infusions haven’t. This may change in the future but it’s worth noting. 

What’s anxiety?

Anxiety in general manifests as feelings of fear, worry and doubt. It can get so overwhelming that it prevents you from going about your day to day life and becomes severely detrimental to your overall quality of life. 

While anxiety for short amounts of time is natural, when it persists and lingers for long stretches of time for seemingly no reason, it’s more than likely an anxiety disorder. Anxiety disorders are usually categorized into three main groups. 

• Generalized anxiety disorders.
• Panic disorder.
• Phobia-related anxiety disorders.

What are these different types of anxiety disorders?

Generalized anxiety disorder

Those that suffer generalized anxiety disorder feel excessive amounts of uncontrollable fear and worry throughout the day. They fixate and worry about a single topic even if there's no reason to worry about it. This causes them to be restless, nervous and irritable when they're going about their daily lives. It can also affect their physical health by compromising their immunity and preventing them from getting any good sleep.

Panic disorder

Panic disorders involve panic attacks that frequently occur when triggered by specific conditions. Panic attacks are dangerous as they can involve symptoms as serious as heart palpitations, choking as well as loss or shortness of breath. People with panic disorders tend to avoid the outside world or social contact because of the risk of triggering a panic attack.

Phobia-related anxiety disorder

Phobia-related anxiety disorders are related to specific fears of objects or situations. These fears may not seem to make sense to other people but those that suffer from phobia-related anxiety disorders will feel much more fear and distress from the focus of their phobia than otherwise normal. This can cause a lot of problems for them if their phobia is something you commonly encounter in day to day life.

Common fears or phobias are blood, heights, insects, snakes and darkness. There are also rarer, more problematic phobias like optophobia (fear of opening your own eyes), chirophobia (fear of hands) and ablutophobia (fear of baths). No matter how odd a phobia may seem, they can all cause phobia-related anxiety disorders which can make living a normal life incredibly difficult.

Ketamine for treatment of anxiety disorders.

Pros of using ketamine

The current treatments methods for anxiety disorders are antidepressants medications, psychotherapy or a combination of the two. There are quite a few alternate treatment options available besides those. Use of ketamine is one of them.

Here are some of the pros and benefits of using ketamine for anxiety: 

• Taking ketamine is quick and painless.

Aside from using an IV for ketamine infusions, treatments involving the use of ketamine are painless. They're also effective noticeably quickly after being administered. Patients using ketamine nasal sprays have reported immediate relief after using them for the first time. Patients who opted to use IV infusions instead also reported the same thing.

• Ketamine is easily accessible.

Ketamine is already easily accessible but with more and more ketamine clinics opening everywhere, it's only going to get easier to get ketamine based treatments. With so many options available, you can try out and find the ketamine clinics as well as doctors that best suit your needs. There are already ketamine clinics that specialize in treatments for anxiety out there. 

• There’s no down time and very few side effects involved with ketamine.

While you may experience some auditory or sensory distortions while taking ketamine, these effects won't linger for the rest of the day. Once you don't feel the side effects anymore, you're back to normal and can get on with the rest of your day like normal. Certain antidepressants have side effects that drag on for long periods of time which can make it hard to continue with your daily life. Ketamine doesn't have this issue.

Cons of using ketamine

Unfortunately, it’s not all good news. There are quite a few downsides to ketamine use that you should be aware of.

• There’s a lack of research available on the use of ketamine for anxiety treatment.

Research into the benefits of ketamine are ongoing but for now there's a lack of conclusive evidence that ketamine is a good long-term solution for anxiety disorders.

Recent research shows that there is a lot of potential for the use of ketamine in the treatment of anxiety. Many patients have also reported that using ketamine as an alternative treatment for their anxiety has worked well. However, more research and study is needed for it to become a widely recognized treatment option.

• You might become addicted and dependent on ketamine. 

As with any drug, there’s always a risk that you might get addicted to ketamine. Ketamine is a drug and there is potential for users to abuse it and develop a dependency or addiction to it. Dosage levels must be monitored by medical professionals to ensure that they stay at acceptable levels.

• Ketamine isn’t well regulated, at least not yet.

As mentioned earlier, only the ketamine  nasal spray has been approved by the FDA. While the benefits of ketamine for anxiety are potentially immense, there's no regulation for most of the ketamine products available right now. The most concerning issue right now is that there's no universally recognised normal dosage of ketamine for a lot of ketamine based treatments. This leaves a lot of room for different interpretations of correct dosages and a lot of room for errors.

FAQs

• What is ketamine? 

Ketamine what's known as a dissociative anesthetic and is one of the safest anesthetics out there. It's commonly used in many medical procedures and has potential as a treatment for anxiety disorders.

• Is ketamine illegal?  

Yes and no. Ketamine is a regulated substance which is illegal to use recreationally. However, you can get it legally from properly licensed medical professionals as long as they prescribe it to you.

• Where can you get ketamine legally?

You can get it from licensed ketamine clinics or dispensaries nationwide. They must be prescribed to you by a medical professional.

Final Thoughts

There’s still a lack of definitive research available on the use of ketamine for anxiety. However, while there are downsides to its use, the potential for the use of ketamine to treat anxiety can’t be denied.