I don't believe in Ketamine therapy: there is no cure for depression.

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have you asked me anything closet how's it going how does it feel incredible it's dr koh here from reset ketamine and you might be wondering why don't health insurance companies cover iv ketamine treatments for depression they can feel like this very out of body experience where uh it almost feels like it's way more in the background and they have a lot of memories that can come up similar to mdma but not to the same degree it can feel very pathogenic people can feel this deep sense of connection with others dylan bynum is the founder and ceo of mindbloom his company is making ketamine therapy more affordable and available for about half of all americans including those who live in texas we are helping to radically increase access to ketamine therapy by making it more approachable through a friendly consumer brand affordable we've lowered the price by eighty percent from the average academy therapy provider and available through telemedicine some of the main arguments against getting iv ketamine covered by insurance companies is number one it's not fda approved for the use in mood disorders what are the thoughts that are in your mind that we're all connected that we're all together that like we it's just so clear like we are all in this together one out of four adolescents actually experience a major depressive disorder unfortunately ssris which are the standard treatment can take four to eight weeks to kick in and studies have shown that up to 40 percent of teenagers are non-responsive to traditional treatments like ssris this is where ketamine comes in ketaminic is rapidly effective and can work in teams what is this we're all in this together what is this [Applause] [Music] well i mean like our our lives our purpose our soul we're all [Music] it's crazy how we're all together yeah my first experience with psychedelics that was was important that actually shifted my view of human possibility was with mdma what was revelatory about it was that it was it was an experience of absolute sobriety it was not there's no druggy component to it we just became clearer and clearer and clearer in our thinking and feeling and the crucial component of this was a loss of any feeling of self-concern i was considering doing ect i was desperate even though it did not sound incredibly hopeful it was the only thing that i that i had left and fortunately at that point i was connected with sage clinic and um and the ketamine treatment you know it's very hard to explain for somebody you know who's never had a psychedelic experience um it's it's an entire shift of thinking and of you know of being the more it starts to kick in you know you not only not only see um you know objects become more fluid and and there's a light that's like behind everything it's like you can almost see the energy that is that is making up our reality the further it goes um it's like it's stripping away layers of of illusion i can tell that i'm very [Music] um [Music] everyone can feel what it what it is like to feel this connected to everyone i want to highlight a couple of studies there was one study that looked at teenagers who were treatment resistant and after the ketamine infusions they found a rapid reduction in depressive symptoms another study looked at adolescent rats this is a little bit different and they found that the rats who had received intravenous ketamine who were then later exposed to a stressful situation they found that the rats had decreased depression-like behavior on later subsequent tests lastly in a 2018 study 13 adolescents who were not responsive to traditional antidepressants were given intravenous ketamine out of those 13 five of those teenagers had a complete remission of their depression and out of those five three teenagers were completely depression free for up to six weeks also when we use ketamine on teenagers the brain seems to be more plastic at that age and if we can target them earlier rather than later this could significantly change the trajectory of their overall life this is yes this is this is incredible yeah this is this is amazing i wish people could hear what i'm hearing right now you know i just um i feel really i feel really like grounded [Music] if you thought it was hard to talk people that are taking a pill to solve all their problems back in the 1990s it's the 21st century and just you watch because the 21st century is not over yet we are now tangling with drugs that are much much more convincing to people than the crude ssri antidepressants of the 1990s if you were taking prozac back in the 1990s you could barely perceive the supposed benefits you had to talk yourself into it you had to convince yourself by by engaging in a semi-philosophical pseudoscientific discourse that situated you in this theory that you yes you were born special you're born different from other people you have a so-called biochemical imbalance in the brain is there a blood test for that no is there some kind of x-ray some kind of mri scan for you no no if you die and then you have an autopsy of the brain can we then take the brain apart no no there's absolutely no scientific proof that it's ever existed whatsoever don't don't think about it don't worry about it you're special yes you unlike your brother unlike your sister unlike your mother you're not just experiencing sorrow regret anguish disappointment with your life no no no no you were born different from other people you have a biochemical imbalance in your brain and you're so lucky that back in the 1990s we discovered this wonder drug that's perfectly suited to cure what's wrong with you oh yeah that was the hard part the hard part was not that people enjoyed being on the drugs it's that they enjoyed making excuses for them this whole framework of excuses pseudoscientific semi philosophical and that subtle ego trip that they believed they were special and that they had found the cure for what had been wrong with them from the day they were born and would continue to be wrong with them until the day that they died but now that they've found the cure now that they're taking this pill they can turn their life around they can do new and different things see what a powerful placebo effect that could be that's what we were fighting against in the 1990s but fundamentally when people went into the doctor's office to get those drugs in the 1990s the one thing they were not getting is high nobody walked into their doctor's office sad and walked out happy and what you've just seen in this film is people being over the moon overjoyed ecstatic after having their drug trip on ketamine and ketamine is not the only drug to watch out for testosterone use for both genders male and female as never before changes how you feel when you wake up in the morning getting on testosterone more subtle forms of performance enhancing drugs like so-called sarms s-a-r-m-s all right ketamine is not going to be alone in this but when you take that mind-altering psychedelic experience that people used to experience at music festivals at discos at raves at house parties when you take it and you situate it inside a laboratory inside a hospital inside a clinic when you have someone wearing a white lab coat reassuring you that this is the cure for something deep down inside you that's wrong now that's a powerful drug trip and a lot of people are going to make a lot of money from telling desperate anguished souls exactly what it is that they want to hear people find it reassuring to imagine that depression or major depressive disorder or treatment resistant depression is something scientifically real falsifiable verifiable and that's medically wrong with them in their mind in their body and their soul and then once they believe that they can take the next step into believing that there is a pill or there is an injection or there is a psychedelic drug trip that can fix what's wrong with them and what we have to fix instead is that first and most fundamental delusion that we can offer any falsifiable scientifically real criteria that would differentiate so-called depression from what we otherwise just call sorrow anguish sadness misery the vast majority of people are miserable are sad or are depressed for shallow reasons that are nearly self-evident to all of their friends and loved ones who surround them whether or not those friends and loved ones are willing to be honest with them i have known several heterosexual women who got married to gay men they didn't know that those men were gay when they married them the men in question may not have known themselves they may have been in denial about it or what have you that's a pretty reliable formula for an unhappy marriage okay you got an unhappy marriage what now do you want to go down to the clinic and get high on ketamine do you think you've solved your problems do you think you've improved your life through this transcendental hallucinogenic experience when you go home again you've still got an unhappy marriage but now you've got an unhappy marriage the beginnings of a drug habit quite possibly a drug addiction and you've had your first dose of cumulative irreversible brain damage and that brain damage is going to progress each and every time you go back to the clinic to try to feel better about yourself and the reality is you aren't solving the problems in your real life that made you want to go to the clinic in the first place whether that is because you have an unhappy marriage because you hate your job because you hate your parents because you hate your life a lot of people are going to get rich by telling you to get high and i'm not gonna make one dollar by telling you right now get a life [Music] maybe we can we can practice