Gerald Gaines, CEO of Depression Recovery Centers
Special Care
The party drug of the ’90s is alive in North Scottsdale—this time as a fast-acting, and potentially life-saving, treatment for depression
“T
By Jimmy Magahern • Photography by Adam Moreno
he first thing to know is that ketamine is not a horse tranquilizer,” says Gerald Gaines, kicking off a press conference announcing the opening of North Scottsdale’s Depression Recovery Centers, hailed as Arizona’s first clinic using the controversial drug to treat chronic depression. “That’s a line from a movie,” he adds, with a sly smile. Gaines, a former telecommunications CEO turned millionaire alternative medicine entrepreneur, whose last venture was the attempted launch of a 5,000-square-foot medical marijuana cultivation co-op near 7th Avenue and Loop 101, could be talking about any number of films that have painted the compound, commonly used in
human and veterinary medicine for general anesthesia, as a risky recreational drug. In 2008’s “In Bruges,” the Irish hitman played by Colin Farrell is shocked to hear his drug-dealing girlfriend is selling ketamine to a 4-foot-tall addict. “You can’t sell horse tranquilizers to a midget!” he exclaims. Or maybe he’s referring to 2003’s notorious “Party Monster,” where a snuffy-nosed Seth Green introduces Macaulay Culkin to the rave party drug at the Disco Donuts. “It’s gotta be hydrochloride, a.k.a. ‘Special K,’” Green says, after taking a quick sniff of the compound, boiled down to a powdered salt. “It’s mainly used by vets as an animal tranquilizer.” And who could forget that scene from “Old School,” where Will Farrell accidentally—and awesomely—takes an
actual animal tranquilizer dart in the jugular and crashes a kiddie birthday party like a lumbering bear? Ketamine has a party rep harder to shake than Arizona State’s. It became all the rage in the ’90s, when clubbers in London and Berlin proclaimed the pale yellow substance named for the breakfast cereal “the new Ecstasy.” But even as far back as the late ’60s when it was rather erroneously nicknamed “rock mescaline,” ketamine often popped up in underground comics like “Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers,” where the comic’s hippie anti-heroes once mistook the drug for cocaine and went on a three-day bender in their VW bus chased by mythical beasts. Gaines, who recently suspended his efforts on the medical marijuana front to August 2013 Scottsdale Airpark News | 27