Lena Dunham isn’t alone in going overboard on benzos.

​

Many fans felt her pain on Monday when the 32-year-old “Girls” creator revealed on a podcast that she’s newly clean after a harrowing period of misusing the prescription sedatives, which are commonly prescribed to treat panic disorders and insomnia.

Pierre Blier discusses his research into using a well-known anaesthetic to help people with severe depression.

Celebrities seem to have it all. Yet, there’s often a dark hole in that charmed life that nothing is able to fill.

Ketamine may represent an effective adjunct therapy in the treatment of suicidal ideation in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD), according to the results of a randomized clinical trial published in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

A doctor said she was astonished by how well ketamine helps patients suffering from depression.

​

New research brings ketamine further away from its notoriety as “Special K” the club drug. 

Existing treatments for PTSD are only moderately effective. Researchers hope ketamine will offer longer-term relief.

When you hear about ketamine, you may associate it with being an illegal party drug that causes vivid hallucinations. But it's also a powerful anaesthetic, listed on the World Health Organisation's list of essential medicines.

Researchers have long been intrigued by the antidepressant qualities of the club drug ketamine. Known on the street as "Special K," the drug is taken by partiers for its brief dissociative hallucinogenic effect, but it is also used medically as an anesthetic. It can banish severe depression for weeks at a time, but designer drugs that can mimic ketamine's effects on depression—without its hallucinogenic side effects—have proved difficult to develop.

Antidepressants are among the most commonly prescribed drugs throughout the western world. In fact, they are prescribed more than any other drug for Americans aged 18 to 44, and they are now taken four to five times more frequently than in the early 90s.