I am trying to get ketamine therapy because they promise amazing results. I live in Bar Harbor Maine which is conservative regarding meds and am treated like a drug addict. Although I am in so much pain and have suicidal ideation often I get no help.
Has anyone tried ketamine therapy?Does it help?
I take oxycodine, antidepressant, a lot of Tylenol but often can’t get out of bed. I have no quality of life.
Hi Dawnie, and welcome!
I don’t tolerate meds and also prefer the natural route, so I can’t help you with own ketamine experiences.
Generally, I’d try “everything” that seems viable and doesn’t cost too much money or energy etc. to get. There are 100s of treatments that don’t cost either. Like searching for each and every symptom on youtube, e.g. for local pains all the physios explaining better than live physios how to resolve things by self-treatment.
I know you won’t mean it like that, but of course there is absolutely no therapy for fibro that anyone should promise “amazing results” for. Ketamine is coming to the fore a little, but it was only 6 studies with 115 patients that the following review from July 2024 found, saying “Most short-term studies had a good response. Only the study with 8 weeks of follow-up did not observe a good response. Side effects were common; all appeared during the infusion and disappeared after a few minutes of the ketamine injection.”
To me that’d suggest it might help pain a little for a short time with tolerable side effects, but maybe not after that.
Healthrising (one of the best sites online for fibro and similar) sums up “Ketamine can be effective, at least in the short term, in treating several chronic pain states including complex regional pain syndrome and fibromyalgia”.
Helpful it might be for you as it also helps with depression. So if you’re getting that already, you might get a foot in the door with your docs by offering to trade it in for your oxycodine (which really is of course highly addictive) and/or antidepressant, esp. as it sounds as if those aren’t even working much…