‘I’m terrified’: Patients scramble for treatment after 13 ketamine clinics shut down
Around 4:30 p.m. last Friday, Ketamine Wellness Centers CEO Kevin Nicholson sent an email: In 30 minutes, the company would no longer be in business, he said. The message went out to some patients and to all of the employees of his company’s clinics across nine states — what had, up until moments before, been one of the largest ketamine clinic chains in the country.
It was an abrupt end to what Nicholson depicted just months earlier as a booming business with plans for new clinics and treatments. To patients, the news came as a complete shock. Things had seemed normal even days earlier, as clients went in for routine ketamine infusions, which are used to treat severe depression, PTSD, and other psychiatric and pain conditions.
