THE WHITE ROOM, Trancentral, Thursday (NTNME) — The illegal party drug ketamine is an “exciting” and “dramatic” new treatment for depression, say doctors who waited about two decades too long before conducting the first trials in the UK.

The single small study has attracted due caution from evidence-based medicine experts, since 80% of single studies turn out to be in error. However, middle-aged doctors and researchers who feel they didn’t get out enough in their youth are clamouring to do multiple large-scale replications of the study, probably this weekend.

The findings open up whole new avenues of research. “It’s the sort of thing really that makes it worth doing psychiatry,” said lead researcher Dr Rupert McShane, or, as he now calls himself, DJ Rupie McK-Hole. “Can we get back into trials on LSD yet? I understand there’s also considerable clinical possibilities for the therapeutic qualities of sequences of repetitive beats, MDMA and the possibility of shagging cute raver chicks like the ones I remember.”

The duration of the effect is still a problem. “We’ll have to make sure we repeat the trials next weekend and the weekend after as well. For science and verifiability.”