For many, December is a contradictory month. It’s a time for gathering with loved ones, the warm exchange of giving and receiving, and the final chapter before celebrating the start of a new year. Yet as families come together during the holidays, it can be a triggering time for those wrestling with chronic pain, depression, and PTSD.
At Michigan Progressive Health, Dr. Megan Oxley and her team are helping patients navigate these challenges through an innovative and highly effective treatment: ketamine infusion therapy. Originally developed as an anesthetic and safely used in medicine for decades, ketamine has recently emerged as a breakthrough in treating depression, PTSD, and chronic pain, offering rapid relief—where traditional antidepressants may take weeks or fail altogether. According to Dr. Oxley, its use heralds a powerful shift in mental health treatment.
Dr. Oxley began her career as a board-certified emergency medicine physician, spending a decade in the ER before founding Michigan Progressive Health in 2016. “During that work, I was starting to notice that our care was ineffective for certain groups of people,” Dr. Oxley explains. “At the time, I was looking a lot at pain patients—chronic pain patients and migraine patients—and had stumbled on ketamine as an avenue that could be helpful for [them].”
After reading an article spotlighting anesthesiologists who’d launched ketamine clinics to treat depression, Dr. Oxley became fascinated with the drug as a remedy for both physical and mental pain. “My brain was too intrigued to let it go,” Dr. Oxley says. “I did the research, I saw how effective it was, and I did have a family member who was suffering from treatment-resistant depression at the time. I knew this needed to be accessible.”
While ketamine itself isn’t new, its application in mental health has transformed the landscape of treatment. In simple terms, ketamine therapy helps increase the connectivity and flexibility of our brains, allowing patients to break free from negative thought cycles and both form and reform their neural pathways.
“When [ketamine] is in your brain…it gives you a chance to change the habitual ways we think,” Dr. Oxley says. “It’s very difficult to change a habit, let alone change the ways we think about things. Ketamine therapy makes it easier.”
Furthermore, one of ketamine’s most advantageous features is its speed, which outpaces antidepressants at a rate roughly four times faster. According to Dr. Oxley, most patients initially receive treatment twice a week for four weeks, typically seeing improvements starting around halfway through that process. “Most people are noticing that things are shifting,” Dr. Oxley says. “It can be anything from, ‘All my suicidal thoughts are gone,’ to just, ‘It’s easier for me to move through my day.’”
Still, Dr. Oxley is clear that ketamine isn’t a one-time miracle. Each Michigan Progressive Health patient begins their journey with a 90-minute consultation that covers treatment goals while setting realistic expectations. From there, patients will receive infusions in rooms designed jointly around comfort and medical safety, fit with everything from candles to salt lamps as staff monitor heart rates, blood pressure, and video feeds of the session. During the approximately two-hour session, patients may encounter a variety of sensations, including sensitivity to light and sound, and feelings of weightlessness and movement.
“People feel weird and different, and that’s ok—we’re right there and with them through it,” Dr. Oxley says.
Dr. Oxley also debunks the myth that ketamine therapy leads to addiction. “Patients become addicted to substances because they have untreated pain, and they’re trying to treat themselves with whatever that addiction is,” she says. “With ketamine, we’re treating a source of pain—physical and emotional—and since we’re treating the source…patients don’t become addicted, since they don’t hold the pain anymore.”
With next year marking 10 years since its founding, alleviating pain and suffering has been the guiding light at Michigan Progressive Health for a decade. The clinic’s holistic, patient-centered approach continues to redefine what recovery can look like—helping thousands of patients find relief and renewed hope.
To learn more, visit michiganprogressivehealth.com.