What decreases ketamine’s effectiveness?

What Decreases Ketamine's Effectiveness?

Some medications, behaviors, and life circumstances may decrease the effectiveness of ketamine treatment.

Medications & Substances

The following medications and substances likely decrease the effectiveness of ketamine treatment:

  • Benzodiazepines – Xanax, Valium, Ativan or Lorazepam, Klonopin and others
  • Alcohol
  • Some psychiatric medications like Lamictal or Lamotrigine – sometimes decrease the effectiveness of ketamine. We typically ask that patients hold them until after their infusion.

With benzodiazepines and alcohol, we don’t ask patients to stop cold turkey and we don’t typically ask you to hold these before your ketamine infusions. You may wish to wean off of them gradually, safely and slowly over time. When weaning off a prescription medication we recommend that you do so in consultation with your prescribing physician. When weaning off alcohol you may need help and we recommend seeking it out.

Ketamine is a very safe medication when administered appropriately, and it works well with most other medications.

Lifestyle

Some behaviors and life circumstances may decrease the effectiveness of ketamine treatment, including:

  • Addictions
  • The abuse of any substance
  • An unsupportive family
  • Persistent stressors

Addictions, including but not limited to large amounts of video games, appear to decrease your ability to utilize the resilience and flexibility of ketamine to make lifestyle changes that may be helpful for decreasing your depression symptoms. The same is true for the abuse of any substance, including cocaine, methamphetamine, or any drug of abuse.

Similarly, an unsupportive family or going through family strife or other persistent stressors in your life will may decrease your ability to have flexibility and resilience and use ketamine to make good changes in your life.

What now?

While these medications, behaviors and circumstances may decrease the effectiveness of ketamine treatments, ketamine treatments can still be effective. In fact, some people see us specifically for help with complications directly or tangentially related to the impact of these things on their lives.

To compensate, we may see you for slightly more treatments to get the similar results – including additional treatments in the initial series of infusions to start, or more closely-spaced maintenance treatments for a while. We may increase dosing for effect and toward the best possible results if a medication blunts your response. And we may work with you to pause and restart treatments around lifestyle or medication changes.

Ketamine works well with most other treatments and medications — and in cases where the treatments are impacted, we can likely still help you make substantial improvements to symptoms… but it might take a bit more work than it otherwise would.

We go into greater detail on this subject in the post: Medications and Substances that Interfere with Ketamine Treatment

About Us

Wells Medicine is a Houston-based practice designed to provide meaningful care for mental health. Providing targeted interventional treatments for Depression, Anxiety, OCD, PTSD and other conditions, with Ketamine Treatments, Stellate Ganglion Blocks, TMS, and Nitrous-Oxide Treatments. Focused on comprehensive care and integration with Psychiatry, Psychology, and Support Services. We are evidence-based, patient-focused and mission-driven.

The content here is for informational purposes and should not be relied upon for medical decisions. For the details of your specific medical conditions and treatments consult your doctors or other qualified healthcare professionals.

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