--- title: Ketamine May Ease Depression By Acting Like an Opioid, Study Suggests description: Ketamine, which has shown promise as a drug that works against depression, may act like an opioid and raise the risk of addiction. canonical: https://time.com/5381387/ketamine-opioid/ author: Jamie Ducharme article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2018-08-29T14:47:09.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:53:13.232Z article:section: Health og:title: Ketamine May Ease Depression By Acting Like an Opioid, Study Suggests og:description: That could put patients at risk of addiction og:url: https://time.com/5381387/ketamine-opioid/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt22016aed2cf92797/698938f9457a525deed5f3cb/ketamine.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2000 og:image:height: 1125 og:image:alt: Ketamine, notorious club drug, shows promise as a treatment for depression, studies indicate og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Ketamine May Ease Depression By Acting Like an Opioid, Study Suggests twitter:description: That could put patients at risk of addiction twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt22016aed2cf92797/698938f9457a525deed5f3cb/ketamine.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Ketamine May Ease Depression By Acting Like an Opioid, Study Suggests > Sponsored content. 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Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=4f075469-5c03-47fc-bd13-1475ff04c464&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Michael Pollan on the Healing Power of Psychedelics [Watch (HLS stream): Michael Pollan on the Healing Power of Psychedelics](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/Z7yskoOT.m3u8) (4:20)  _Published 2018-05-16. Author Michael Pollan explored the therapeutic properties of psychedelics for his latest book, "How to Change Your Mind." His research includes firsthand experiences with the drugs._  by [Jamie Ducharme](https://time.com/author/jamie-ducharme/)  ## Jamie Ducharme Ducharme is a contributor to TIME. Aug 29, 2018 2:47 PM UTC  A patient has Ketamine administered by way of an IV bag for the treatment of depression at IV Solution in Chicago, Wednesday, March 21, 2018. A patient has Ketamine administered by way of an IV bag for the treatment of depression at IV Solution in Chicago, Wednesday, March 21, 2018. Chicago Tribune—TNS via Getty Images  by [Jamie Ducharme](https://time.com/author/jamie-ducharme/)  ## Jamie Ducharme Ducharme is a contributor to TIME. Aug 29, 2018 2:47 PM UTC [Ketamine](http://time.com/4876098/new-hope-for-depression/), once known primarily as a club drug, has in recent years gained legitimacy among some scientific experts as potential therapy for [hard-to-treat depression](http://time.com/4826620/ketamine-depression-antidepressant/). It works faster than antidepressants but wears off fairly quickly, and the health consequences of taking ketamine over months and years is so far unknown. The drug is FDA-approved as an anesthetic, and several academic centers across the U.S. run ketamine clinics; private ketamine clinics run by doctors have also sprung up. But new research points to what could be a major [drawback of the drug](http://time.com/4696418/the-club-drug-ketamine-may-treat-depression-but-the-risks-could-be-big/). It seems to behave like an opioid in the brain, which experts worry could set patients up for dependence. The small study, published Wednesday in the [_American Journal of Psychiatry_](https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ajp.2018.18020138), suggests that ketamine may work as an antidepressant by activating the body’s natural opioid system, which controls pain and reward responses. The results, the authors write in the study, “provide strong justification for further caution against widespread and repeated use of ketamine.” The study, which was led by researchers at Stanford University, was small and preliminary, and the results need to be replicated in future research. But if ketamine actually does work like an opioid, according to an [accompanying editorial](https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ajp.2018.18070800), patients who take the drug for depression could become addicted to or dependent on it, just as with [other opioids](http://time.com/5170231/the-opioid-diaries/). “We would hate to treat the depression and suicide epidemics by overusing ketamine, which might perhaps unintentionally grow the third head of opioid dependence,” writes Dr. Mark George, a professor of psychiatry, radiology and neuroscience at the Medical University of South Carolina, in the editorial. Previous research has suggested that ketamine eases depression by targeting the brain’s glutamate system, which is involved in memory and learning. But the researchers behind the new study wanted to test the drug’s effects on opioid receptors. To do so, they gave 12 adult patients with treatment-resistant depression a [placebo](http://time.com/5375724/placebo-bill-health-problems/), followed by a ketamine infusion. On another occasion, the same patients took ketamine, but only after first taking an opioid blocker. Seven of the 12 patients saw marked improvements in depression symptoms a day after taking ketamine and the placebo — but none of the patients saw similar-scale reductions in depression after first taking the opioid blocker, suggesting that ketamine may work, at least in part, by activating the opioid system. (Both groups experienced the dissociative, or hallucinogenic, effects of ketamine.) The results were so stark that the researchers — several of whom have financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry, including to companies working to find depression treatments modeled after ketamine’s effects — stopped the trial early, according to the paper. Ketamine isn’t the only [psychedelic drug potentially finding new life as a medical treatment](http://time.com/5278036/michael-pollan-psychedelic-drugs/) for mental health disorders. Studies have suggested that [psilocybin](http://time.com/4586333/psilocybin-cancer-anxiety-depression/) (a compound in psychedelic mushrooms) and [LSD](http://time.com/12428/lsd-therapy-lowers-anxiety-study-finds/) could be used to treat anxiety and depression in some people. ## Transcript I guess the biggest misconception people have about psychedelics is that these are drugs that make you crazy. And we now have evidence that that does happen sometimes, but in many more cases, these are drugs that can make you sane, or more sane. [ MUSIC ] If you ask people about what psychedelics, or LSD, they're gonna think about the Timothy Leary, this flamboyant psychology professor. Studying psilocybin and LSD and then telling everybody they should take it. I'm very glad to be discredited, I don't want credibility. I want incredibility. [ LAUGH ] The drugs kind of escape laboratory and were embraced by the counter culture and proved to be very disruptive to society [ MUSIC ] So you had this full scale moral panic that eventually doomed the research but what people don't know is that that's 60s episode was really one small chapter in a much longer story. Psycho drugs are one kind of another have been used by different societies for thousands of years. If you compare mental health care with any other branch of medicine infectious disease, cardiology, oncology there have been very few achievements. Mental health treatment has not lengthened the human life span. So we need some new thinking, we need some new ideas and psychedelics may well be that new idea. There's a really exciting field of research underway, right now, looking at psychedelics. Especially psilocybin, the ingredient in magic mushrooms, to help people deal with mental illness of various kinds. Addiction, depression, obsession, and the fear and anxiety that surrounds a terminal diagnosis. And the feeling among the scientist is that these chemicals allow us to essentially reboot the brain. All those kind of deep grooves that lock us into patterns of both thought and behavior are dissolved and temporarily suspended in a way that allows us to break those patterns. We're now in a different world. The adults now, many of them have experience of psychedelics, they're not gonna react in such a panicky way, I don't think. Many of the people in charge of our institutions, probably regulators at the FDA, people at the American Psychiatric Association, they have personal experience of psychedelics. And they're, I think, gonna bring a more rational, Attitude toward them. I learned that there is a thriving underground of psychedelic therapists. These are serious professionals but they're doing something illegal. And I was able to find my way into this. Community and after interviewing several of them I found a couple people I felt comfortable enough to entrust my mind to. This isn't doctors giving you a pill and sending you out into the world. You are, for a period of four or five hours, in a room that's decorated like a kind of cozy den or study, you're lying down on a couch, you have eye shades on. And headphones, which are playing a very carefully curated playlist, to make you go inside, to have an internal experience. And you're with two guides at all times. Some people are put in touch with childhood trauma. Some people have encounters with death and I mean, it can be very dark. But with the help of the guides, you use that material and try to understand it. So after the session, you always come back the next day and have what's called a period of integration. Where the guides, who are trained therapists, help you interpret what happened and figure out ways to put it to good use in changing your life. My best journey was this fairly high dose [ INAUDIBLE ] journey. I had with a guide. What was stunning about it was I did have an experience of ego disillusion. I reached a point where myself kind of fell apart into these paper post its. That just got scattered into the wind. I saw myself. And I know that sounds weird. Who's the I that saw myself, but there is this split in consciousness that happens. But I saw myself scattered to the wind, but I was all right with it and I learned a really important lesson in that moment, which is that I'm not identical to my ego. 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