8 Celebrities Who Opened Up About Their Experiences with Ketamine

“For me, it allowed me to process really difficult thoughts and feelings in a way where I felt really safe.”

When it comes to alternative treatments for physical ailments and mental health struggles, celebrities are often the first to get on board. As of late, there have been quite a few stars who have sought out non-traditional options when dealing with depression and anxiety -- with some of those celebs trying out the recently popularized ketamine infusion therapy.

While the treatment has been around for quite some time, using the “dissociative anesthetic hallucinogen” as a way of treating mental health conditions has only become mainstream in the past several years. Under a doctor’s supervision, patients are given low doses of the drug through IV infusion or intranasal spray. According to Columbia University’s Irving Medical Center, this targets neurotransmitters in the brain which can have “rapid-acting antidepressant and anti-anxiety effects.”

While ketamine can have therapeutic effects, it’s not right for everyone and can become addictive. When not used under a doctor’s care, it can have dire consequences -- which several celebrities unfortunately learned.

Find out what these stars had to say about ketamine…

Chrissy Teigen

Chrissy Teigen says she’s become a fan of ketamine therapy. On her 38th birthday in 2023, the model shared that she had undergone a therapy session during which she saw a vision of her late son, Jack -- which seemed to be a healing experience for her.

​​“I had a really nice birthday, went to see my friends @flamingo_estate, had a beautiful lunch with friends, then did ketamine therapy and saw space and time and baby jack and some weird penguins and cried and cried and cried,” she wrote via Instagram. “Then laid with my babies, then hot pot, then hung with my best friend.”

Halsey

Halsey once shared that she used ketamine therapy to help her cope with PTSD and postpartum depression. She explained that after giving birth, going through a breakup and battling health issues, she knew she needed to help her body. Even though her lupus was in remission and she had overcome other health conditions, she still still felt tired and depressed. That’s when another doctor recommended ketamine therapy to help her process some of the recent trauma she had experienced.

“It changed my life,” Halsey said on the She MD podcast. “For me, it allowed me to process really difficult thoughts and feelings in a way where I felt really safe…A lot of people have a different experience. They cry, they laugh, they relive old trauma. For me, I started going back to before I was sick to old, old trauma in my first session, and it was almost like my brain was talking to me, like, ‘You don’t need to do that, you’re over that.’ I was like, ‘Oh, okay.’ Then I started traveling to the newer stuff.”

While she acknowledged that it’s not right for everyone, she shared that the whole thing gave her closure about some traumatic experiences -- and left her feeling happy.

Matthew Perry

Before Matthew Perry’s untimely death, he used ketamine therapy -- but it is what ultimately led to his passing. In his memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, Matthew recalled his experience trying the therapeutic treatment in a medical setting and later realizing that even though he enjoyed it, it was not for him.

“Ketamine felt like a giant exhale. They’d bring me into a room, sit me down, put headphones on me so I would listen to music, blindfold me, and put an IV in…And I often thought that I was dying during that hour. ‘Oh,’ I thought, ‘this is what happens when you die.’ Yet I would continually sign up for this s--t because it was something different, and anything different is good,” he wrote.

Matthew says he eventually realized the therapy was like “being hit in the head with a giant happy shovel” with a hangover that was “rough and outweighed the shovel.” Despite the negative effects, Matthew continued to take the drug outside of a medical setting. After acquiring the drug illegally and taking it for several months, he died in October 2023.

Pete Davidson

Pete Davidson also found himself struggling with a ketamine addiction, admitting that there was a point in his life where he took it every day for four years. While under the influence, he says he had wild visions liked The Wiggles meshed Schindler’s List -- and even attended Aretha Franklin’s 2018 funeral while high. While he says using ketamine was “magical,” he eventually realized it was time to get clean.

“You can’t do drugs in your 30s,” he said during a standup set, adding that “it’s not cute anymore” and “you’re just a drug addict” when you do drugs at that age.

Amber Rose

Amber Rose says that ketamine therapy saved her life. After struggling with depression and suicidal thoughts for over three years, she got the courage to turn her life around. After “doing research and therapy,” she realized that the pandemic had taken a huge toll on her mental health in addition to a public breakup and her hormones being “out of whack” following the birth of her son in 2019. In the end, ketamine helped her overcome her depression.

“I had to microdose on ketamine. That’s the only thing that saved my life,” she said on The Jason Lee Podcast. “Ketamine has helped me a lot… I get mine from a doctor, which I suggest everyone else do the same if they want to try that for PTSD or depression or anxiety. Over time it kind of helps you regulate the chemicals in your body so you feel less depressed, less suicidal.”

Lamar Odom

Following Lamar Odom’s near-fatal overdose in 2015, he sought treatment to overcome his addiction struggles. In addition to checking into rehab, Lamar says he tried ketamine therapy -- and it made a big difference for him.

“I went to rehab and did some other things, but ketamine came into my life at the right time,” Lamar said on Good Morning America in 2021. “I’m feeling amazing. I’m alive. I’m sober. I’m happy.”

Sharon Osbourne

Sharon Osbourne says she went through a tough time personally after being fired from The Talk in 2021 and turned to alternative treatments to help her mental health. Looking back, she explained the public backlash and accusations against her caused her to become anxious and depressed. It was her friend and former co-host Sara Gilbert who recommended Sharon see a doctor who did ketamine treatments.

“I definitely went through a difficult patch at the beginning. I found it embarrassing. The humiliation that people would think that I might be a racist. They were going to kill the family. They were going to come at night with knives, cut all our throats and the animals. So I had all of that, all the threats, and we had to have 24 hour guards,” she told Daily Mail.

She continued, “I went through three months of therapy. I had ketamine treatment and I got it all out. All the tears and everything that I felt, you know. All of that, it’s gone.”

Elon Musk

Elon Musk has opened up about using ketamine as a treatment to help himself when he’s going through depressive periods. He explained that he has a prescription for the drug from “an actual, real doctor” and uses “a small amount once every other week or something like that.”

“There are times when I have sort of a…negative chemical state in my brain, like depression I guess, or depression that’s not linked to any negative news, and ketamine is helpful for getting one out of the negative frame of mind,” Elon shared with CNN, noting that he is sure not to overuse the drug.

He continued, “If you use too much ketamine, you can’t really get work done. I have a lot of work, I’m typically putting in 16-hour days … so I don’t really have a situation where I can be not mentally acute for an extended period of time.”