SMALL D SES Mental Health
The Ketamine Diaries For eight years, a metro Detroit clinic has been treating patients with a variety of issues. Here’s one man’s tale. BY JACK THOMAS
ANTHONY REEVES* moved from his home state of New York to metro Detroit in December 2021. The change felt drastic, as though he were leaving everything behind, and he began to feel depressed. He was able to function day-to-day, but “not well,” as he puts it. His mother, who had depression for much of her life, recommended he try ketamine, a pharmaceutical that has gained much intrigue in recent years for its potential to treat depression and other mental disorders. “I was interested in just how psychedelics and ketamine are sort of coming into the mainstream,” Reeves says. “I was a little suspicious of some of the claims. But I had read that you get some immediate relief from depression.” He was also encouraged by research that was being done and treatment centers that existed at places like Columbia University and the University of Michigan. Ketamine is an anesthetic and a dissociative that also produces some hallucinogenic/psychedelic effects. It was first synthesized in 1962 by Parke-Davis & Co., a Detroit-based pharmaceutical company, and U-M researchers conducted the first human trials of ketamine. It was used by Vietnam medics as an anesthetic for soldiers undergoing treatment, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
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approved it for that purpose in 1970. However, concerns over its use as a party drug in the ’80s led to it being classified by the Drug Enforcement Administration as a Schedule III drug, which the agency defines as having “moderate to low potential for physical and psychological dependence.” Today, the drug is used in hospitals and emergency medical vehicles as an anesthetic, deemed safe when used appropriately. In fact, it’s frequently used to treat children. In 2019, the FDA approved the use of Spravato (esketamine), a ketaminederivative nasal spray, for patients with treatment-resistant depression, after studies showed both short-term decreases in depression and successful remission among patients 16 weeks after taking it. As of March 2024, the FDA had not approved the use of ketamine itself for treating psychiatric disorders. However, for years, physicians have been using ketamine “off-label” (which means using an FDA-approved drug for a purpose it’s not approved for) to treat anxiety, depression, and other disorders. One of those physicians is Dr. Megan Oxley, owner of Michigan Progressive Health and a
founding member of the American Society of Ketamine Physicians, Psychotherapists, and Practitioners. Oxley worked for 10 years as an emergency medicine physician before founding Michigan Progressive Health, a Royal Oak ketamine clinic, in 2016. She added an Ann Arbor location in 2020. Michigan Progressive Health offers intravenous ketamine infusions for patients looking to treat a variety of issues, including depression, anxiety, substance use disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and migraines. “I want to be careful that I don’t sound like that die-hard fanatic where it’s like, everyone can get ketamine — the movement is like, ‘Ketamine is for everyone.’ And that isn’t necessarily the case,” Oxley says. Services at Michigan Progressive Health’s clinics include ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, integrative psychology,
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