Welcome to Back from the Abyss, where we bring you stories of hope and healing, recovery and redemption.

I'm Dr. Craig Hickok, your host and resident psychiatrist.

Before we start today's mini episode on marijuana, I'd like to say a couple things about the

ketamine seven questions episode. My wife just recently listened to it and she pointed out that

there should have been eight questions. She said you left out a very important question. And so I'm going to address this missing question eight right

now. And that question is, how often do you need to do ketamine? I think we could break down

ketamine responders into three groups. Number one, there are people who respond positively to two or three or four

ketamine treatments and don't need it again. There's a second group of people who are usually in the

bipolar spectrum, bipolar disorder, who do well with two, three, four treatments, say, in the fall winter transition

or in the spring, but the rest of the year don't need ketamine.

And finally, there's a group of people with chronic, severe treatment-resistant depression

who seem to do best doing ketamine, say, every four or five weeks,

medium to high dose IV or IM. So there you go, Elizabeth. There's your question eight,

and I hope that was helpful for everyone else.

So today's mini episode is medical marijuana, a psychiatric perspective.

Imagine a new type of liquor store, one with two front entrances.

Medical vodka says one door.

Recreational vodka declares the other.

If you have a medical vodka card, say for

chronic pain, anxiety, or PTSD, you can enter the first door and there find specially priced

vodka to treat your illness. No card, and you have to buy the much more heavily taxed recreational

vodka behind door number two. As strange as this might sound, a very similar scenario is now playing out in Colorado,

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