Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
July 21, 2026
Michael Alvear
Music is often treated as an atmospheric accessory in psychedelic and ketamine therapy: useful, pleasant, optional, or merely calming. Across a curated evidence base of 41 studies, reviews, mechanistic papers, clinical reports, playlist-design papers, ketamine-specific studies, ceremonial-music papers, and counterarguments, music repeatedly appears as an active session-shaping variable. The...
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
July 21, 2026
Michael Alvear
Music is often treated as an atmospheric accessory in psychedelic and ketamine therapy: useful, pleasant, optional, or merely calming. That framing is too weak. Across a curated evidence base of 41 studies, reviews, mechanistic papers, clinical reports, playlist-design papers, ketamine-specific studies, ceremonial-music papers, and counterarguments, music repeatedly appears as an active...
SSRN Electronic Journal
Michael Alvear
This white paper reports a stratified evidence synthesis of 31 peer-reviewed studies (2016–2026) examining ketamine and esketamine as rapid-acting treatments for suicidal ideation. Studies were classified by administration route — intravenous racemic ketamine (14 primary studies, N=1,258), intranasal esketamine/Spravato (6 primary studies, N=844), and injection routes combining intramuscular...
Michael Alvear
preprint
This report summarizes more than 25 systematic reviews and meta-analyses published between 2020 and 2025 on ketamine-based therapies for depression. It provides a comparative analysis of intravenous (IV) ketamine, esketamine nasal spray (Spravato), and oral ketamine, highlighting differences in response rates, remission rates, speed of symptom relief, and durability of results.It also examines...
SSRN Electronic Journal
Michael Alvear
Background: Oral and sublingual ketamine for depression is being prescribed to tens of thousands of patients through telehealth services with no FDA-approved dosing protocol, no clinical guideline covering this route of administration, and no publicly available synthesis of what clinical researchers have actually tested. A prior surveillance study of patient-reported experiences documented a...
Michael Alvear
Patients undergoing ketamine-or psychedelic-assisted therapy for cancer-related distress, treatment-resistant depression, or end-of-life existential fear frequently report experiences resembling death or near-death: a sense of leaving the body, encountering something transcendent, or having died and returned. This synthesis reviews peer-reviewed evidence on how often this occurs, why it may...
Michael Alvear
preprint
This white paper analyzes aggregate coding results from a six-month review of Reddit discussions concerning oral and sublingual ketamine therapy. The analysis identifies recurring patient-reported themes, including dosing uncertainty, gastrointestinal side effects, bladder and urinary concerns, provider responsiveness, pharmacy variability, cost concerns, treatment tolerance, and integration...
Michael Alvear
preprint
Ketamine has emerged as a plausible rapid-acting treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but the clinical literature is unusually easy to overstate because a small number of randomized trials are repeatedly represented across reviews, several publications reuse the same cohorts, and treatment studies are sometimes mixed with PTSD-prevention studies conducted around acute trauma....