Is Ketamine the Next Miracle Treatment, or the Next Crisis?

OG Article

Alex Olshonsky

04-18-2025

Just two years after turning to ketamine in hopes of quelling his depression, Felix Hill — an esteemed AI researcher at DeepMind — died by suicide. In early 2023, he was widely admired for teaching computers how to parse human language, known especially for his meticulous logic and inventive thinking. Then, in what felt like an instant, the man who helped machines make sense of the world lost his grip on reality.

“Please,” Hill wrote shortly before his death, “if you have any voice, try and warn the public that drugs like Ketamine… can end a promising life pretty much overnight.”

In that final, gut-wrenching letter, he attributed his rapid downfall to a single drug. He even noted the rumor that it was Elon Musk’s substance of choice, which only fueled his hope that ketamine would soothe his long-standing despair — just as so many headlines, clinics, and start-up ads promised. Instead, his off-label use of the dissociative anesthetic catapulted him into a psychiatric crisis, followed by a hellish depression. By late 2024, the unraveling was complete. He was gone. 

While Hill fought to survive in London, a “ketamine wave” was cresting across the Atlantic. Clinics multiplied in nearly every major U.S. city, telehealth outfits shipped lozenges after perfunctory consults, and at wellness festivals, nasal sprays passed from hand to hand as casually as breath mints. According to a 2023 survey, the number of ketamine clinics in the U.S. has tripled since 2019. There are now over seven hundred nationwide.

The surge shows no sign of slowing. Research estimates the global ketamine therapy market could reach nearly $2.5 billion by 2030 — fueling concerns that the hype is outpacing critical safeguards. At the same time, the drug’s popularity now extends far beyond clinics or festivals. In late 2023, after actor Matthew Perry’s untimely death, rumors swirled that he obtained large amounts of ketamine, some of which was legally prescribed. The media frenzy surrounding his death alone showed how deeply ketamine had permeated mainstream culture. 

Even so, the wave of public curiosity still may overshadow the drug’s risks. Though often touted for its near-instant relief of severe depression, ketamine’s opioid-receptor activity and pronounced dissociative effects can unravel a vulnerable mind, especially when aggressive marketing and patchy oversight make it too easy to obtain. Many in the mental health field are drawing parallels to the early days of the opioid crisis, when a new “miracle painkiller” with minimal guardrails quietly evolved into a national catastrophe.  

“It feels a lot like the run-up to OxyContin,” says Dr. Kenneth Roy, a veteran addiction psychiatrist at Tulane University who has worked in the field for over three decades. “There’s a rush to prescribe and a willingness to believe ketamine has no limit if you say you’re depressed. That’s how the opioid epidemic got out of hand, and I see the same hazard signs here.”

Such warnings might sound hyperbolic — until you meet someone who’s come face-to-face with ketamine’s darker side. Ford Smith knows those perils well. Tall and charismatic, raised in Texas oil country, he quit alcohol at 17 years old and became a passionate believer in plant-based medicines. Eventually, he became a well-known, influential investor in cannabis and psychedelics. Underneath the entrepreneurial zeal, his marrow-deep depression persisted.

“I was put on Adderall at age 11 and Lexapro at 15,” he told me. “Any time I tried quitting SSRIs, I’d spiral into suicidal ideation.” One Christmas, his grandmother asked what he wanted. “I told her, ‘I want not to be depressed,’” Ford said. “She paid for six ketamine infusions at a reputable clinic in Texas. After the third session, my depression lifted like a fog. I felt like I had my life back.”

That abrupt brightness can feel miraculous to anyone ground down by years of despair. For Ford, it sparked a surge of clarity and entrepreneurial flow — almost a taste of spiritual truth. He traveled often for business and scheduled booster infusions whenever he could, each session tamping down his chronic anxiety and depression. But the logistics soon became unmanageable.

“I’d miss the window for my booster, slip into depression again, then scramble to find a clinic,” he said. Eventually, rather than chase appointments, he decided to purchase powdered ketamine himself. “Just to stay afloat between treatments,” he assured himself.

At first, he used it only during self-administered “healing sessions.” But soon, “that three-week gap turned into every three days, which turned into every few hours.” He ended up doing a gram a day, telling himself that if a little ketamine erased his depression and fueled his professional drive, more would maintain or even enhance his newly-won normal.

“It felt unbelievably good — energy boost, creativity boost, zero depression,” he said. “But I was lying to myself about how fast it was taking over.”

His fiancée grew alarmed as the pattern deepened, and every time she confronted him, he vowed to cut back. But he couldn’t let go of ketamine’s near-mystical and ever-fleeting euphoria. In 2022, determined to keep that high without spiraling, he brought his stash to Burning Man, with the plan of using responsibly.

But the ketamine finally broke him.

“I blacked out in a psychotic mania and thought everything was on fire,” he said. “I smashed my face into a mirror in our van, sliced it open. The folks at Zendo Camp helped calm me down, but I was bleeding and totally out of my head.” Terrified he had ruined his reputation, he was surprised when influential figures in the psychedelic community — including Rick Doblin and David Bronner — rallied to support him the following day.

Shaken, his fiancée called his parents, who insisted he go to rehab for ketamine addiction or they’d cut ties with him. “I flew from Burning Man straight to rehab,” he said. Though sober ever since, he resists demonizing the drug. “It saved my life… initially. But it nearly ended me, too. That’s what no one warns you about — the razor-thin line between help and harm.”