AAAP newsletter, Addiction Psychiatry Insights

Featuring Eva Altobelli, MD

Brave New Medicine: Ketamine’s Promise and Pitfalls (page 22).

Excerpt: “Ketamine has undeniable therapeutic potential. When delivered within a structured, multidisciplinary framework—including careful preparation, guided administration, and integrative psychotherapy—it can be profoundly transformative. It offers individuals the possibility of loosening rigid patterns of thought, healing trauma, and reconnecting with meaning. However, when ketamine is prescribed or distributed without context—especially in the form of at-home lozenges or mail-order businesses —it risks becoming another agent of sedation rather than liberation: a pharmacologic shortcut that soothes symptoms while bypassing deeper work.”