'I have a life back': How ketamine therapy is helping these Nova Scotians find relief from depression

For decades, Sherri Topple's world was overshadowed by the crushing weight of depression that no medication or therapy seemed to fix.

It wasn't until she tried ketamine therapy that she finally felt a sense of relief. 

At her worst, the Nova Scotia woman says she could barely muster up the energy to take a shower. 

"You look at the shampoo bottle and think, 'It's just too far. I can't reach,'" said Topple. "So you stand there with the water running and cry and think, 'What the heck is wrong with me?'" 

But after completing a clinical trial through Dalhousie University and receiving five doses of ketamine back in January, she said everything changed.

"I have a life back. I have a better life back than what I've ever had," said Topple, who now enjoys painting, gardening and writing — hobbies she wasn't capable of while she was severely depressed. 

Ketamine is a fast-acting anesthetic used in medical or veterinary surgery. Selling, possessing or producing it in Canada is illegal unless it's authorized for medical or scientific purposes. In more recent years, it's become a tool used to treat severe depression that's been otherwise untreatable. 

Approximately 20 patients in the province have received ketamine therapy since March 2023, according to Nova Scotia's health authority. 

Psychiatrist Dr. Abraham Nunes runs the program through the mood disorders clinic at the QEII Health Sciences Centre, but can only administer the infusions on a compassionate basis due to limited resources and funding. 

Nunes has witnessed first-hand how ketamine therapy has improved the lives of patients like Topple.

"It's quite remarkable how it can work, even for people who've been depressed for so long. But it helps them feel so much better that it actually provides them with hope that there is something that can be done," said Nunes. 

But some might think of ketamine as a club drug that's often used and abused for its hallucinogenic effects. 

"If you are buying ketamine off the street, using it in an uncontrolled fashion, or if I were to just give people vials of ketamine to take, that would of course be, yeah, a horror story," he said.

A medical examiner ruled that ketamine was the primary cause of actor Matthew Perry's death. Perry was using the drug legally through his regular doctor, but he began seeking more ketamine than his doctor would give him and buying it illegally, eventually suffering a fatal overdose in 2023.