Online Ketamine Clinics Face Tougher Times After Covid-Era Boom
Covid regulations made therapeutic ketamine available via telehealth, but concerns about abuse could mean trouble for the startups selling it.
A ketamine pill pack in Brooklyn, New York.
Photographer: Ed Jones/AFP/Getty ImagesA controversial depression treatment that boomed during the pandemic could become far less accessible by next year — potentially leaving patients high and dry and the internet upstarts that supply them looking for a contingency plan.
Covid-era measures that allowed doctors to remotely prescribe ketamine, an often-abused drug increasingly popular for treatment-resistant depression, could unwind this spring. That could spell trouble for companies such as Mindbloom and Nue Life that will be forced to rethink their businesses amid concerns that at-home access has increased abuse of the drugs.
“I tell these folks, ‘There’s going to be a reckoning coming, and when that reckoning comes, you probably will lose everything,’” said Anthony Coulson, a retired DEA regional head who now consults for startups about controlled substances.