Joshua Bohnsack is a member of the Chicago band Gold Dust, but he’s currently touring a solo album, Desire Path. The songs were inspired by his experience with ketamine.
Growing up in the Quad Cities, mental health wasn’t really talked about, Bohnsack explained to Little Village. While attending the University of Iowa, he sought help for a persistent sense of being unwell. He was given a prescription for an SSRI and sent on his way. He saw little improvement, and was unable to afford consistent therapy.
Years later, after he got a job that provided insurance, Bohnsack found a psychiatrist he trusted. Together, they explored varying avenues to treat depression. Ketamine was way down that list. His psychiatrist floated the idea after years of trying other treatments.
Bohnsack went to a clinic in the suburbs of Chicago without a great deal of faith in the process.
“It all felt very professional, but at the same time, I was like, ‘why am I in the suburbs with a doctor I don’t know, taking a drug that I’ve heard is dangerous my whole life?’” he recalled. “It felt scary, shameful, and it was hard to trust.”
“I didn’t notice the effects right away,” Bohnsack continued. “It was just a weird, like, I-did-drugs-in-an-office-setting kind of feeling. I spent some time on Reddit lurking for answers, like, am I doing this right? How long does it take for ketamine to work?”
He started to feel the benefit and the relief of his symptoms after a month. Now, after several years of treatment, Bohnsack can look back and see how much he struggled before ketamine. He currently teaches at Chicago’s Roosevelt University, and is a founding publisher of Long Day Press, which prints novellas and chapbooks from emerging Midwest writers.
Bohnsack started songwriting to coincide with his therapy sessions. He would listen to his own music at the ketamine clinic during his treatments, re-discovering tonal Easter eggs he’d hidden in the compositions in a dissociative state. He compiled these songs into Desire Path, its title a reference to the paths that humans cut between formal roads — similar to the way the brain forges neural networks. There are pathways, modes of thinking, that instruct a person’s actions, feelings and addictions.
The hardest part of changing the brain is trying to convince it to find a new path or a different destination. But redirection is part of what psychedelics seem to be good at.
Ketamine has hallucinogenic and dissociative properties that make it a cousin to other psychedelics. But unlike those drugs, ketamine has legal uses. In 1970, at the same time other psychedelics were designated Schedule 1, the federal classification for illegal drugs that have no legitimate use, ketamine was approved as an anesthetic by the FDA.
While ketamine is typically administered via IV, the FDA approved a nasal spray, Spravato, for the treatment of depression in 2019. The prescription spray contains esketamine, a refined form of ketamine, as its active ingredient, and may only be administered in certified treatment centers. Spravato treatments may be covered by private health insurance and Medicaid with a co-pay of around $10 to $25. IV ketamine therapy, however, generally costs between $275 and $1,000 a session.
The dramatic growth of the ketamine treatment industry has been compared to the Wild West. As of 2024, there were over 1,500 ketamine clinics in the United States, with an estimated $3.8 billion in revenue, according to a study cited in the Journal of Medical Regulation.
Three of them are called Corridor Ketamine, with locations in Coralville, North Liberty and Davenport. The clinics only accept patients with treatment-resistant depression who are already working with a psychiatrist who approves of using ketamine as a treatment.
The public reception was chilly when they first opened nearly five years ago, according to Corridor Ketamine co-founder Beth Westermann (DNP, ARNP, CRNA). Since then, the general perception of ketamine has oscillated between obscurity and infamy, and there hasn’t been much room for anything else. The most attention the clinic ever got was in 2023 after Matthew Perry died of an overdose from illegally obtained and injected ketamine. People accused Westermann of being a drug peddler.
Westermann showed me one of the treatment rooms in the North Liberty clinic, which was comparable to a therapist’s office. There was a big comfy chair, a sound machine, dim lights and a collection of tactile toys in a basket. The windows of the clinic itself were darkened.
Though much of her job involves managing the reputation of a drug responsible for putting the word “K-hole” in the zeitgeist, Westermann feels confident in the future of her practice. Asked what she hopes people take away from this article, she said, “Ketamine therapy exists.”
Ketamine clinics multiplied quietly while a lot of fanfare was being made over other psychedelic-assisted therapies. Large-scale studies into the efficacy of MDMA-assisted therapy as a PTSD treatment have shown promise. Oregon and Colorado have legalized psilocybin-assisted therapy, prompting other states to explore medicinal programs as well. (A bill advanced in Iowa this past legislative session, but was not taken up by the House or Senate.) In April, President Trump signed an executive order calling for $50 million in HHS funds to research “psychedelic drugs for serious mental illnesses,” specifically ibogaine, which is derived from the bark of the African iboga tree.
At the time of this writing, the University of Iowa Psychedelic Research Program (UIPRP) is recruiting volunteers for a study that measures psilocybin against ketamine for symptom relief of alcohol addiction. They are looking for individuals between the ages of 21 and 65 to undergo guided therapeutic sessions, receiving a randomized dose of either drug.
In the United States, there are currently 38 studies recruiting subjects for research on psilocybin-assisted therapy. There are 18 others underway. One of the unique aspects of UIPRP’s study is the inclusion of ketamine.
Ketamine will serve as the placebo in place of the usual sugar pill or low-grade stimulant in UIPRP’s double-blind psilocybin study. Almost everyone can tell the difference on between a trip and a sugar pill, said Dr. Michael Flaum, co-investigator with the UIPRP. Ketamine is their solution.
Though he has more than 30 years’ experience as a psychiatrist, Flaum made it clear that he is no ketamine expert. As he described it, he only has a toe in this world. The U.S. and larger scientific community lost 60 years of research into these promising mental health treatments to cultural stigma and the War on Drugs, he pointed out.
“In my view,” he said, “ketamine clinics were being stood up so that when classic psychedelics were approved, they would be up and ready to go. In reality, ketamine clinics show us we are looking at a two-tiered healthcare system where the people with the least need have the greatest access.”
Ketamine therapy patients are predominantly middle-aged and able to pay for the treatment out of pocket, a 2025 study into the industry found. Insurance coverage for even FDA-approved ketamine drugs like Spravato is inconsistent at best, and many patients are never reimbursed. Moreover, clinics are primarily located in cities far from rural patients.
“We know it is low socio-demographic people who overwhelmingly suffer from chronic health conditions,” Flaum said. “They don’t have access to the drugs they need, and there’s no foreseeable future in which they will.”
If we know a treatment works, then why isn’t it legal?
Dr. Flaum countered this query with his own: “What does ‘works’ even mean?” There’s still no consensus on the best drug for psychedelic therapy, the method of delivery and the regimen. Should it be prescribed in conjunction with talk therapy? Motivational interviewing? How do you prepare someone for a potentially life-changing psychedelic experience? What’s the best way to follow up with them?
These are just a few of the questions science needs to answer, Flaum explained. Meanwhile, legislators and government regulators need to ensure equitable access to care.
Songwriter Joshua Bohnsack says that he has no interest in branding himself as the ketamine guy. He was resistant to the phrases I threw at him, like “raising awareness” and “shedding light.” Perhaps because of the dual reputation of ketamine, or because it would feel disingenuous to claim anything else, the only message Bohnsack was comfortable endorsing was the same as Westermann’s: Ketamine therapy exists.
This article was originally published in Little Village’s July 2026 issue.
