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Watch: How Mental Illness Derailed a Promising Young Skateboarder
On the practical side, Nicolson says at the centre they give all of their ketamine infusions intravenously, but that there's a debate raging in the US over the best way for ketamine to be medically administered. Psychiatrists who aren't trained in IV infusion therapy often give the drug as an intramuscular injection or snorted in powder form, but Nicolson believes the intravenous method would better help to prevent misuse if it was legalized in the UK."In the ideal situation there would be the availability of treatment centers," he says, "so that patients could get the appropriate dose at the appropriate time, reducing any kind of real kind of public concern in regards to abuse and overuse. Of course, ketamine can be found on the street, but comparatively the doses we use are dramatically low."McShane and Taylor both believe that the difficulties with administering ketamine will play a part in its approval. While Nicolson doesn't seem too enthusiastic about the whole snorting thing, it seems likely that it is in this form that it will first reach UK shores. This involves a web of generic versions, because ketamine is long out of patent."There is one way round this," Taylor says, "through patenting the form. Johnson & Johnson has made a ketamine nasal spray. The patent is attached to it, and can't be easily copied." The spray uses an isomer of ketamine, also known as a "mirror image" drug, called esketamine, and is currently being fast-tracked by US regulators the Food and Drug Administration. You could see it available as soon as 2019."Given the evidence that I've seen you would think with the backing of Johnson & Johnson it would be approved in the UK, just as it's being fast-tracked in America," adds Taylor. "But with a drug like ketamine you just never know."Follow Charlie on Twitter.