Emily Ryan’s life changed quite literally overnight when she was a freshman in college.
She was studying for final exams and returned from the library around 10 p.m. She crept quietly to bed because her roommate was already asleep.
Around 3 a.m., she woke up with intense pain radiating across her back. “I could not feel my legs anymore,” Ryan said. She also smelled urine. The sheets underneath her were soaked. “And as a 19-year-old person, you know, I didn’t pee the bed and so it was very surprising.”
That terrifying episode launched what would become a 10-year odyssey to find relief from unrelenting pain. Ryan says she finally found it in what some experts think is an unexpected and controversial place — the psychedelic drug ketamine, which she gets through intravenous infusions every 90 days......more
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