What is ketamine? Understanding the drug after Matthew Perry's death

The hallucinogen has grown in popularity in recent years as an off-label treatment for depression, but experts say it can be addictive and must be used in a controlled setting.

In the days and weeks leading up to Matthew Perry’s death, the actor used large amounts of ketamine — the drug responsible for his death — supplied by a web of doctors, his personal assistant, an acquaintance and a drug dealer, federal prosecutors said Thursday.

Here’s what to know about ketamine.

Ketamine is a hallucinogen that was approved by the Food and Drug Administration as an anesthetic for surgery decades ago, but it’s also used illegally as a party drug. 

Over the last few years, growing research has found that ketamine also works for treatment-resistant depression in some people, leading to a rise in what’s known as off-label use, the legal practice of doctors prescribing an approved drug for a condition that it wasn’t approved for.

Dr. Brandon Hamm, a psychiatrist who runs the ketamine infusion clinic at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago, said that the drug’s value lies, in part, in how fast it works. 

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/matthew-perry-ketamine-drug-what-used-for-rcna166904

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