It takes a thief to catch a thief! (November 2019)

According to the Times (27/11/2019), a one off shot of Ketamine, an anaesthetic and also an illegal party drug, could help heavy drinkers cut their alcohol consumption, a study suggests.

An injection of Ketamine was intended to ‘rewrite’ the positive memories associated with the impulse to drink, which is what the EMDR Feeling State Addiction Protocol also seeks to do.

The study involved some 90 heavy drinkers who had not previously sought help.  On average they each consumed roughly 30 pints of beer a week. The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, went as follows:

On day one of the study, each drinker was presented with a glass of beer and told they could drink it after completing a task.  They were then shown images of beer and asked how much they expected to enjoy the waiting glass.  This was designed to activate the positive ‘reward’ memories of drinking.

On day two, after they had been primed to expect a drink, the beer was removed.  One group were then given an injection of Ketamine and a second group were given a placebo.  The result was that in the first group, the Ketamine seemed to weaken/prevent the restoration of positive drink-related memories so that the impulse to drink was weakened. Members halved their weekly average alcohol consumption over the nine months over which they were followed.  Consumption did not fall in the second ‘placebo’ group.

One question arises: could the use of Ketamine lead to addiction in those who received the injection?  Ravi Das of University College London, a co-author, said the dose of Ketamine was enough to make the subjects feel sedated and was roughly equivalent to a ‘high recreational dose’.  The chance of becoming addicted after on shot were minuscule, he said.

Dr Rupert McShane, of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said: ‘If the findings are replicated, it could be very important.  At its broadest, it could imply that habits of thinking could be provoked and then usefully disrupted by a single dose of Ketamine infusion.’