Shanna Angel

Shanna Angel is a board-certified registered nurse anaesthetist who runs the Sun Valley Ketamine Clinic in Ketchum, Idaho, which offers IV ketamine infusions and nothing else. No other clinic in the Wood River Valley offers IV ketamine, and patients come from across the United States.

Approach

She trained in anaesthesia at UCLA, graduating in 1989, worked 11 years at Kaiser Permanente in Los Angeles, then practised alone for 20 years at a critical access facility near Mount Rainier, where she founded Washington State’s first hospital-based IV ketamine programme. Since 2016 she has given thousands of ketamine infusions. The clinic pairs clinical care, with vital-sign monitoring, medication for nausea or blood pressure, and oxygen, suction and a defibrillator to hand, with what it calls a transcendent model of higher doses that values ketamine’s psychedelic effects.

Who it is for

The clinic treats adults and adolescents with depression, anxiety, PTSD, OCD, alcohol use disorder, eating disorders, chronic pain, prolonged grief, existential distress and end-of-life fear, and people in suicidal crisis. A diagnosis from a health or mental health provider is preferred; the clinic employs no therapists but can suggest one.

Practical details

An infusion costs $650, and a first course is six infusions over two to three weeks, each lasting 40 minutes or more, or about two hours with recovery; boosters can follow. The clinic gives superbills but does not bill insurers. Patients avoid solid food for four hours beforehand and need a designated driver, as they may not drive until the next day.

Care and safety

Heart rate, blood pressure and breathing are watched throughout. Conditions that rule treatment out include psychosis, pregnancy, glaucoma, severe liver disease, a brain tumour or acute brain injury, untreated hyperthyroidism, unstable heart disease and uncontrolled hypertension, and benzodiazepines should be tapered or paused for 24 hours.