#Guided ketamine trip therapy clinic opening in NYC this month
“#Guided ketamine trip therapy clinic opening in NYC this month”
Psychedelically-enhanced therapy clinic, Field Trip Health, has already begun consulting patients for its new Manhattan location and is set to begin administering medically-supervised ketamine doses as treatment for mental conditions as soon as next week.
“As a starting point we’re going to be working with people who have treatment-resistant mental health conditions,” Field Trip founder and executive chairman Ronan Levy told The Post of the Kips Bay clinic’s patients. This includes anyone who has previously been prescribed antidepressants or gone to cognitive behavioral therapy and found their issues persisted. A psychiatrist referral is also required.
The Canada-based company opened its first clinic in Toronto this March and bills itself as a “the world’s first mental wellness company focused on psychedelics and psychedelic-enhanced psychotherapy.” Later this month, it is opening a third clinic in Los Angeles.
After an initial consultation, patients will attend nine sessions over the course of three to four weeks, which include three sober talk-therapy sessions and six ketamine experiences. The drug, which is either injected into the shoulder or hip intramuscularly or provided as a lozenge, lasts about an hour. Patients attend an “exploratory therapy” session afterward to verbalize their experience.
A course of treatment costs $4,700, with each session coming out to a bit under $300 — a rate, Levy said, comparable to that of a behavioral therapist. Since it’s not covered by insurance, some patients with psychotherapy coverage can be partially reimbursed.
Though the price tag is a relatively unavoidable issue, potential patients should not be deterred by a fear of the psychedelic.
“Ketamine is very safe. There’s virtually no risk of an overdose,” Levy claimed. In a controlled setting, elevated blood pressure and heart rate are the main concerns for ketamine use.
In “extremely rare” instances, the elevated blood pressure can lead to heart issues, but Field Trip has a “full suite of equipment” to handle any such medical emergency. “Sometimes people feel [nauseous] or tired after the fact, but besides that, the side effects are virtually zero,” Levy claimed.
When properly used, studies in recent years have shown that ketamine can be a safe and therapeutic drug. Last year, a Johnson & Johnson affiliate received the FDA’s blessing to sell a President Trump-approved nasal spray version and other institutions, including Columbia Doctors, now offer ketamine-based therapy to depressed individuals.
But not all ketamine programs are formatted so patients will enjoy the drug’s full depression-alleviating potential, Levy critiqued. Many ketamine clinics in the US, he argued, currently treat ketamine like an antidepressant prescription, providing it to patients without mandating they follow up their experience by analyzing it with professionals. “What we’re doing follows a much more psychedelic model,” he said of Field Trip’s built-in talk therapy component.
Indeed, previous investigations have found that the sudden demand for the drug as a miracle cure and its high uninsured cost have led to the creation of profit-focused clinics at a rate faster than science or regulations can keep up with.
“The pace of ketamine treatment in real-world practices has outstripped what researchers are able to do and publish,” psychiatrist Dr. Lori Calabrese, who treats patients with ketamine at her Connecticut clinic, told health news site STAT in 2018.
At some clinics, this has led to patients “getting treatments they may not need or that don’t work, or they’re getting more than they needed,” Columbia University Medical Center psychiatrist-in-chief Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman told STAT. “This is not snake oil. It’s not something that has to be stamped out. It’s something that has to be reined in.”
Beyond a controlled setting, ketamine can be harmful. When used recreationally in extreme doses, ketamine can cause a “k-holing” dissociative effect, muscle stiffness, seizures and death.
“Ketamine is a schedule III drug here in the US, with its main purpose for anesthesia,” Andrew Yockey, co-author of a recent study on LSD trends in the US, told The Post. “Ketamine is also a club drug, with some nasty side effects (e.g., cardiovascular toxicity). These drugs belong in clinics — they do not belong on the streets.”
Yockey’s study found, however, that because of the traumatic state of the world, people are increasingly turning to recreational psychedelic use. In the case of ketamine, Levy said, he can’t say it’s the worst possible response.
“It’s generally not advisable for people to be self-administering ketamine, but there are certainly much more dangerous ways to be trying to deal with depression and anxiety associated with the current times,” Levy said.
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