At Ketavita Wellness Clinic, we offer IV and IM ketamine therapy as an adjunctive treatment for individuals in recovery from substance use disorders. When you’re engaged in comprehensive addiction treatment but seeking additional neurobiological support for maintaining abstinence and managing co-occurring conditions like depression or anxiety, our ketamine infusions may help address the glutamatergic dysfunction and mood disturbances that contribute to relapse vulnerability.
Located in Wyckoff, New Jersey, our clinic provides evidence-informed care from experienced medical professionals who understand that substance use disorders are chronic conditions requiring comprehensive, sustained treatment. Our ketamine therapy is designed to complement—not replace—your ongoing addiction treatment including outpatient therapy, mutual support groups, and medication-assisted treatment if applicable.
Every treatment journey begins with a thorough evaluation where we review your substance use history including primary substance(s) and patterns of use, current recovery status and length of abstinence, previous treatment and current addiction care engagement, co-occurring depression or anxiety symptoms, medication-assisted treatment if applicable, support systems and recovery environment, triggers for craving or relapse, and medical stability. This assessment helps determine whether adjunctive ketamine therapy is appropriate and safe given your specific circumstances.
Substance use disorders are chronic brain diseases characterized by compulsive substance seeking and use despite harmful consequences. They involve complex neurobiological changes in brain reward, motivation, memory, and control systems that persist long after substance use stops. These changes help explain why addiction is difficult to overcome and why relapse remains common even after treatment.
Core features include loss of control over use despite intentions to limit consumption, continued use despite physical, psychological, or social problems, intense craving for the substance, tolerance requiring increasing amounts to achieve effects, and withdrawal symptoms when stopping use. These features reflect fundamental alterations in brain circuits affecting decision-making, impulse control, and stress regulation.
Substance use disorders affect multiple neurotransmitter systems. While dopamine pathways involved in reward have received primary focus, glutamate pathways involved in learning and memory consolidation are increasingly recognized as critical. Chronic substance use disrupts glutamate homeostasis in the prefrontal cortex and limbic regions. These disruptions contribute to impaired executive function, strengthened drug-associated memories, persistent craving, and heightened relapse vulnerability.
The impact extends across multiple domains. Physical health consequences vary by substance but commonly include cardiovascular disease, liver damage, infectious diseases, and overdose risk. Psychological consequences include high rates of co-occurring depression, anxiety, trauma-related disorders, and suicidal behavior that significantly complicate recovery. Social consequences affect employment, relationships, housing, legal status, and overall quality of life.
Standard evidence-based treatments include behavioral therapies like cognitive-behavioral therapy, contingency management, and motivational enhancement, along with FDA-approved medications for specific substances including naltrexone, acamprosate, and disulfiram for alcohol use disorder, methadone, buprenorphine, and naltrexone for opioid use disorder, and varenicline and buprenorphine for tobacco use disorder. Participation in mutual support groups like Alcoholics Anonymous or SMART Recovery provides crucial peer support.
Despite these treatments, many individuals experience ongoing challenges including treatment-resistant symptoms, repeated relapses despite adherence to treatment, persistent depression or anxiety that increases relapse risk, difficulty managing craving and environmental triggers, and incomplete response to conventional interventions. For these individuals, adjunctive treatments targeting different neurobiological mechanisms may provide additional support.
Glutamatergic dysfunction in the prefrontal cortex and mesolimbic regions has been implicated across multiple substances of abuse. Chronic substance use produces lasting changes in glutamate signaling that contribute to addiction pathology. Brain imaging studies show altered glutamate levels in individuals with substance use disorders. These glutamatergic abnormalities persist during abstinence and may contribute to relapse vulnerability.
Ketamine functions as a noncompetitive NMDA receptor antagonist, blocking excessive glutamatergic signaling. Through this mechanism, ketamine modulates glutamate neurotransmission in brain regions critical for addiction including the prefrontal cortex, nucleus accumbens, and amygdala. Animal and human studies suggest that normalizing glutamatergic function may reduce craving, weaken drug-associated memories, and support abstinence.
Several mechanisms may contribute to potential benefits. First, ketamine enhances glutamate homeostasis in the prefrontal cortex, promoting synaptic plasticity and neuroplasticity. This may facilitate new learning patterns supporting recovery. Second, ketamine rapidly reduces depression and anxiety symptoms that commonly co-occur with substance use disorders and significantly increase relapse risk. By addressing these psychiatric comorbidities, ketamine may remove barriers to sustained recovery.
Third, ketamine may reduce craving through effects on reward processing and drug memory reconsolidation. Research suggests NMDA antagonism can weaken the strength of drug-associated memories that drive craving and drug-seeking behavior when exposed to triggers. Fourth, ketamine’s effects on stress systems may reduce stress-induced craving and relapse, since stress is a major relapse precipitant.
Research on ketamine for substance use disorders examines multiple substances. For alcohol use disorder, studies show that ketamine treatment is associated with improved abstinence rates, reduced craving, and decreased heavy drinking days. Benefits have been observed lasting months following treatment in some studies. For cocaine use disorder, smaller studies demonstrate reduced craving, decreased cocaine use, and improved treatment retention. For opioid use disorder, preliminary evidence suggests benefits for maintaining abstinence and reducing relapse risk.
Important context: Most published research administered ketamine within comprehensive addiction treatment programs that included intensive psychotherapy. Studies combining ketamine with structured psychotherapy show stronger and more durable outcomes than ketamine alone. Early Russian studies reporting sustained abstinence at one to two years used ketamine as part of intensive psychodynamic therapy programs. This suggests optimal outcomes occur when ketamine is integrated with robust psychotherapeutic support.
Your treatment journey at Ketavita begins with comprehensive evaluation to determine whether adjunctive ketamine therapy is appropriate. We’ll discuss your substance use and recovery history in detail including substances used and patterns of use, date of last use and current length of abstinence, previous quit attempts and what happened, current addiction treatment engagement (therapy, groups, etc.), medication-assisted treatment if applicable, co-occurring mental health conditions especially depression or anxiety, and triggers for craving or past relapses.
Establishing that you’re medically stable and engaged in recovery is essential. You should be in sustained early recovery or stable abstinence, actively engaged in outpatient addiction treatment or mutual support, medically stable without acute withdrawal or intoxication, free from active uncontrolled psychosis, and have cardiovascular health adequate for ketamine. We don’t treat active substance use—our role is supporting individuals already engaged in recovery who seek additional neurobiological support.
Understanding your co-occurring conditions is important since depression and anxiety significantly affect addiction recovery: history and current symptoms of depression or anxiety, whether symptoms preceded substance use or developed afterward, current psychiatric medications and their effectiveness, history of self-harm or suicidal ideation, and how mood symptoms affect your recovery. Ketamine’s rapid antidepressant effects may help address these co-occurring conditions that complicate recovery.
We’ll evaluate your recovery support systems: living situation and whether it supports recovery, employment or educational involvement, family relationships and support network, participation in mutual support groups, ongoing addiction treatment services, and plans for continuing care. Sustainable recovery requires comprehensive support beyond any single intervention.
For ketamine therapy supporting substance use disorder recovery, we offer both IV and IM ketamine administration. Treatment typically involves a series of infusions over several weeks. During each session, you’ll receive your ketamine infusion while resting in a comfortable, private treatment room with continuous medical monitoring.
You may experience dissociative effects during the infusion including feelings of detachment, altered perception, mild changes in consciousness, drowsiness, and temporary relaxation. These effects are temporary and typically resolve within 1-2 hours after infusion completion.
Common side effects are generally mild and short-lasting including temporary dissociative sensations during and shortly after infusion, dizziness or lightheadedness, mild nausea, brief perceptual changes, drowsiness, and temporary blood pressure elevation.
After each treatment session, you’ll spend additional time in our office for recovery and monitoring before leaving. You cannot drive for 24 hours after ketamine treatment and must bring someone to drive you home.
Response to adjunctive ketamine therapy varies among individuals. Research in addiction populations shows benefits including reduced craving intensity and frequency, improved mood with decreased depression and anxiety, enhanced motivation for continued recovery work, decreased relapse rates in some studies, and better overall functioning. However, outcomes depend heavily on continued engagement with comprehensive addiction treatment, quality of your recovery support system, addressing co-occurring conditions, and environmental factors affecting recovery.
We track your response using standardized measures of craving, mood symptoms, and overall functioning to assess whether ketamine therapy provides meaningful benefit supporting your recovery.
Ketamine therapy for substance use disorders may be appropriate if you have a diagnosed substance use disorder, are in sustained early recovery or stable abstinence (not actively using), are actively engaged in comprehensive addiction treatment, have co-occurring depression or anxiety that increases relapse risk, have tried conventional treatments with incomplete response or persistent symptoms, have medical stability adequate for ketamine treatment, and have support systems conducive to sustained recovery.
Good candidates are individuals committed to recovery who are actively engaged in addiction treatment but experience persistent depression, anxiety, or craving that complicates their recovery efforts. Research has examined ketamine for alcohol, cocaine, and opioid use disorders, with varying levels of evidence across substances.
Certain factors may affect suitability. You should not receive ketamine therapy if you’re actively using substances without medical stabilization, have severe untreated psychiatric conditions especially active psychosis, are unwilling to continue comprehensive addiction treatment, have significant cardiovascular contraindications, or have unstable living situations without recovery support. Our evaluation determines individual appropriateness.
Important limitations to understand: Ketamine therapy for substance use disorders represents off-label use. While research evidence is accumulating, the evidence base remains limited with small sample sizes, heterogeneous study designs, and limited long-term outcome data. Most research combined ketamine with intensive psychotherapy, whereas our clinic provides ketamine infusions within your existing treatment framework rather than offering integrated psychotherapy ourselves.
Additionally, ketamine has abuse potential. However, research shows that therapeutic ketamine use in medical settings doesn’t typically lead to problematic use even in addiction populations when administered in controlled clinical contexts with appropriate monitoring. We screen carefully and monitor for any concerning patterns.
Our ketamine protocols for substance use disorders are informed by systematic reviews and clinical research. A 2025 systematic review examining 14 studies with 551 participants found ketamine showed efficacy across alcohol, cocaine, opioid, and cannabis use disorders. For alcohol use disorder specifically, ketamine reduced withdrawal symptoms, decreased craving, and supported abstinence. For cocaine use disorder, studies showed reduced craving and decreased use. For opioid use disorder, evidence suggested improved abstinence maintenance.
An earlier 2018 systematic review concluded that ketamine may facilitate abstinence across multiple substances, with some studies showing benefits lasting up to two years. However, both reviews emphasize significant limitations including small sample sizes, lack of placebo-controlled trials, heterogeneous protocols, and limited long-term data.
A 2023 systematic review specifically examining ketamine for alcohol use disorder found that combination treatment with ketamine plus psychotherapy showed most favorable outcomes for achieving abstinence and reducing consumption. Results were more mixed when ketamine was used without structured psychotherapy.
Safety is paramount in all our treatments. We conduct thorough medical and psychiatric screening. All ketamine administrations occur under medical supervision with continuous monitoring. We coordinate with your addiction treatment providers to ensure integrated care. We carefully monitor for any signs of problematic ketamine use.
We recognize that successful addiction recovery requires comprehensive, sustained treatment. Ketamine is one potential adjunctive intervention, not a standalone solution. We strongly emphasize continued engagement with evidence-based addiction care including ongoing individual or group therapy, regular participation in mutual support groups, medication-assisted treatment when appropriate, treatment of co-occurring psychiatric conditions, addressing social determinants including housing and employment, and development of healthy coping strategies and lifestyle changes.
Addiction is a chronic condition requiring long-term treatment and support. Our role is to provide adjunctive neurobiological support that may help address glutamatergic dysfunction, co-occurring mood symptoms, and craving that complicate recovery efforts.
Patient education is central to our approach. We ensure you understand how ketamine affects glutamatergic systems implicated in addiction, what current research shows about benefits and limitations, that ketamine complements rather than replaces comprehensive addiction treatment, realistic expectations given the chronic nature of addiction, potential risks including cardiovascular effects and theoretical abuse concerns, and how ketamine therapy fits within your overall recovery plan.
Ketamine therapy for substance use disorders is typically not covered by insurance as it represents off-label use. We provide transparent pricing information during your consultation so you can make informed decisions about treatment.
IV ketamine therapy is $395 per session. IM ketamine therapy is also $395 per session. Treatment protocols typically involve a series of infusions over several weeks, with the specific number based on individual response and clinical judgment.
The total investment depends on your treatment protocol, response to therapy, and whether maintenance sessions are needed. We discuss expected treatment structure and costs during initial consultation.
While insurance typically doesn’t cover ketamine therapy for substance use disorders, we can provide receipts and clinical documentation that you may submit to your insurance company for possible out-of-network reimbursement. For an additional $50 fee, we can prepare detailed documentation for insurance submission. Coverage decisions are made by individual insurance companies, and approval is not guaranteed.
If you’re committed to recovery from substance use disorder and actively engaged in treatment but struggling with persistent depression, anxiety, or craving that increases relapse risk, adjunctive ketamine therapy at Ketavita Wellness Clinic in Bergen County may provide additional neurobiological support for your recovery efforts.
Schedule a consultation to discuss your recovery journey and current treatment engagement, review co-occurring conditions that may benefit from ketamine, explore whether adjunctive ketamine therapy is appropriate, and develop a treatment plan integrated with your comprehensive addiction care.
Recovery from substance use disorders is possible with comprehensive, sustained treatment. Contact us today to learn whether adjunctive ketamine therapy might support your recovery journey.
Addiction & Behavioral Health
Conditions Treated
365 Franklin Avenue, Wyckoff, NJ 07481