Dr. Ben Yudkoff, Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer at Lumin Health, hosted a Reddit AMA on the Spravato community on November 21, 2025. The below blog post is a recap of one of the questions presented on that AMA, syndicated to the Lumin Health blog in the event that it answers any questions about ketamine therapy, Spravato treatment, or general concerns you may have about treatment.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Spravato/comments/1p2ar6v/ama_im_dr_ben_yudkoff_psychiatrist_cofounder/
Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us if you’re interested in learning more about ketamine for depression at Lumin Health. Thank you once again to the moderators and community members for facilitating such an engaging discussion.
cjorgensen asks
I want to try ketamine for treatment, but I'm afraid that I'll actually like the drug too much. I wouldn't want to crave it.
Answer:
That's an amazingly sensitive question, and it's one that comes up a lot. Not everybody experiences the subjective feelings that the medication causes as pleasant. Most people experience it as weird. But there are some people who experience it as pleasant. And for people who are inclined towards driving after something that helps them feel better than good, it can be tricky. Now when esketamine is provided in a medical practice, there are very strong parameters under which the medicine can be given. And so there are some strong stop gaps that can prevent overuse. But if a person has concerns that taking this medication could lead to finding external ketamine, meaning from the street, then it might be something to avoid. If a person makes that decision, there are many many many other treatments that can be helpful with regard to depression.
There can be other medications like lithium and other interventional practices like transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)or electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). Lifestyle changes that have been shown to have dramatic results using a light box in the wintertime for example or again as I've responded to other people's questions cardiovascular exercise even dietary things and so if a person decides I just don't want to walk this path because irrespective of if the medicine will help me I might relate to it in a way which could present some downstream risk a person shouldn't feel crust fallen or hopeless there are many many other things that a person can try that either singly or in aggregate can return some of the same predictable efficacy. Now if you go deep into the literature there are some people who explore the use of medications like certain antipsychotic medications like ailify — which is ariprazol — or anti-epileptic mood stabilizing medicine medicines like lamotrogene, and so sometimes these medicines can blunt some of the psychedelic effect and that may be one way to split the difference taking a medication like ailify prior compared to an esketamine dose may decrease how pleasant the medicine feels.
There's a medicine currently under exploration called r-ketamine which has been written of as decreasing the likelihood of having some of the pleasing effects of ketamine. And so there may be new things coming on the market over the next few years that might also thread the needle between the treatment you want versus the treatment you're concerned of getting. But I think the big picture here is there are many things that a person can try, and if a person feels like they might relate to an experience in a way which could hurt them irrespective of the potential benefit, best to stay on the safe side of things.
