Washington Post in the Sky with Diamonds

Check out this pharma-neuro story from the Wapo. While the news seems heaven-sent for depression-sufferers, the writer seems a tad Tangerine Dreamy. Sampling a product mixed with Diet Coke and Mentos maybe?

Plumbing the depths of depression

Ketamine, sweet ketamine, answer to our glutamatergic dreams. In the long November night of the soul, in the ever-dark downpour of depression, it turns out that there might be a better umbrella than Prozac and Zoloft and Paxil and their serotonin-loving ilk.

Of course, when it comes to antidepressants, nobody really knows anything, anyway, so why not go with ketamine, a mild hallucinogen known to club freaks as Special K?

Yes, yes, break out the male Wistar rats and the injection needles -- researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health announced a study recently in which 18 chronically depressed patients infused with low dosages of ketamine improved within two hours. Seventy-one percent improved within a day, and nearly 30 percent were depression-free by that time. In 24 hours! These were people who had been dealing with depression from three to 47 years. They had failed to respond to just about every drug on the market.

Most of them stayed depression-free for up to a week.

Chronic depression, one of the most common, debilitating diseases known to mankind, blown away like a flower petal on a passing breeze...

Good stuff comes further including why Glutamate plugs into so many of the Dragon Dens and Dark recesses of our brains and tilts at, rotates and rebalances the Windmills of our Minds. Or something like that.

h/t boing2