After completing medical school and a psychiatric residency, Dr. Early joined the faculty at Washington University and initially did research in brain imaging and cognitive studies. He later became interested in developing novel treatments for refractory psychiatric illness, and beginning in 1999 he received grants to compare high dose sevoflurane to other therapies for treatment resistant mood disorders. In 2007, he collaborated with a pain specialist at Baylor, studying ketamine therapy in patients with pain and psychiatric illness and saw first hand the robust effects of this treatment. He also encountered the resistance that is uniformly experienced by investigators attempting to introduce ketamine into institutional settings, and realized that the main obstacles to patients accessing this treatment were financial and regulatory. His experience with sevoflurane made it clear that even very safe, effective treatments may not become available if they do not get past these obstacles. He decided to leave academia and attempt to introduce ketamine into routine psychiatric practice in 2009 and was the first psychiatrist to offer subanesthetic ketamine in a psychiatric private practice in an affordable, safe, and effective manner in California. He has mentored many physicians in the use of outpatient ketamine and is a board member of the Ketamine Research Foundation.