LISTEN: KUOW’s “Ask a Doctor” Episode About Ketamine Features ADAI’s Nathan Sackett, MD, MS
05/29/2026
Nathan Sackett, MD, MS, Director of the Center for Novel Therapeutics in Addiction Psychiatry at ADAI, was interviewed this week by KUOW for their “Ask a Doctor” series.
Dr. Sackett’s work focuses on the intersection between substance use and psychiatric disorders and the therapeutic use of psychedelics for addiction.
In the interview, he talks to Libby Denkmann at KUOW about ketamine, which was FDA-approved in the 1970s as an anesthetic. Over the last couple of decades, there’s been interest in using it at lower doses to treat disorders like depression, PTSD, or substance use. As a result, ketamine clinics have been popping up around the country.
Dr. Sackett mentions he’s been seeing an increase of patients who started out using ketamine for therapeutic purposes and have developed “a pattern of use that’s led to some harms,” a trend also noted by recent research. However, he says it has also demonstrated real benefits for some folks. One of the problems with the use of ketamine as a therapeutic, Dr. Sackett explains, is that “we don’t have a really good sense of the best dosing paradigm for” it. More research is needed before we know who the best candidates for ketamine treatment are, what the best format is, whether it needs to be paired with psychotherapy or not, etc.
Dr. Sackett also talks in the interview about the pros and cons of using ketamine to treat depression, how people are accessing it, his experience of what type of depressive symptoms seem to respond best to ketamine, and his hope that future research will help psychiatrists better understand mood disorders, particularly as symptoms of other disorders, and lead to better care for those struggling with them.
Listen to the KUOW interview here! (approx. 15 minutes)
