Dissociatives [Ketamine Subthread] Dangers & Risks

[7zark7]

there have been many cases, I've read on that people have died from simply forgetting to breath

Where have you read this?

 

[7zark7]

I think its funny you guys are so K'ed out as to claim ketamine is not harmfull as a recreational drug. I am not sure there is enough clinical evidence to make an informed decision either way about the exact extent of the dangers but just look at any K head and you will see that its far from harmless as a recreational drug.

I don't think anyone is claiming any drug is harmless. What we are trying to find out is what level of harm there is and what can be done to minimise it. Every drug has its abusers and I don't think they are a good example to use when trying to figure out what dangers a drug poses to responsible recreational use.

In this case, we are talking about people experienced with the drug that have noticed something different about the effects of the drugs and the after-effects.

As stated often enough before, the surgical does of Ketamine is many times that of a recreational dose, so dosage isn't really an issue with this drug. Frequency of use, contraindications and psychological mind-set may be.

Also do you understand the extent to which K impairs your visual perception even with light usage? It is one of the least safe rec drugs out there.

Please explain both of those statements - especially the second one. Considering addiction and overdose potential are tiny, I don't understand how someone can say that.

 

[theWorldWithin]

Sorry about the agressive tone, I just get upset when drugs are protrayed as harmless when they are not.

Yes K has a very high fatal overdose limit. However addiction is not rare. In truth neither of us can make any concrete statement about the addictive potential because there is just not enough research into addiction rates yet. But in my experience many users do get addicted and the addiction tend to be extremely ugly.

I feel K is an extremely dangerous drug because of its psychological effects. Dissasociatives in general have a tendency to alter your baseline perceptions in profound ways that are mostly maladaptive to living in society. Sure there are outliers, and you and jamshyd apear to be in this catagory but most regular K users become quite fried. Even light usage can cause a great deal of HPPD in many people. Sure light usage of sub hole doses probably will not result in mental problems but even infrequent use of hole dosages can result in delusional states. The recognition of synchronicity is usually the first sign of this, and as anyone who has tried K knows, the synchronicity effect can persist for quite a while after your last usage.

I will look up the visual impairment study for you when I have a few more minutes, it suggests K causes long tern impairment similar to alcoholics.

BTW, cannabis causes no long term visual impairment and to suggest it is on par with K is simply ridiculous.

 

[7zark7]

Sorry about the agressive tone, I just get upset when drugs are protrayed as harmless when they are not.

Similarly, sorry. I get defensive when people exaggerate the dangers of Ketamine without backing it up

Yes K has a very high fatal overdose limit. However addiction is not rare. In truth neither of us can make any concrete statement about the addictive potential because there is just not enough research into addiction rates yet. But in my experience many users do get addicted and the addiction tend to be extremely ugly.

I would certainly disagree with that - based on personal knowledge Ketamine addiction IS rare, IMO. I don't deny some people may crave it but those cravings won't be THAT bad. Plus withdrawal effects are virtually nil - both physical and psychological. Like you say though - there is not enough data one way or another. I am just basing this on what I have seen, read, heard and experienced.

I feel K is an extremely dangerous drug because of its psychological effects. Dissasociatives in general have a tendency to alter your baseline perceptions in profound ways that are mostly maladaptive to living in society. Sure there are outliers, and you and jamshyd apear to be in this catagory but most regular K users become quite fried. Even light usage can cause a great deal of HPPD in many people. Sure light usage of sub hole doses probably will not result in mental problems but even infrequent use of hole dosages can result in delusional states. The recognition of synchronicity is usually the first sign of this, and as anyone who has tried K knows, the synchronicity effect can persist for quite a while after your last usage.

Hmm... well, again, my experience is quite different to that. I know of many people who regularly use K and they are certainly not "fried" nor I have I heard of anyone mentioning HPPD or lingering mental effects. Obviously they may have kept it to themselves, but I would have thought their personality would have been noticeably different.

Even if that is true for many people (which I doubt it is), it's not exactly "dangerous". OK, it's not a bunch of positive effects, but hardly life-threatening or really that profound compared to other psychedelics.

I will look up the visual impairment study for you when I have a few more minutes, it suggests K causes long tern impairment similar to alcoholics.

Thank you. I am not trying to be obtuse, just genuinely curious. Having seen my Dad - who is an alcoholic - have his eyesight destroyed by the amount he drank, as well as experiencing the ol' Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome, it would be interesting to know what the effects to vision are.

 

[silentscience]

I would certainly disagree with that - based on personal knowledge Ketamine addiction IS rare, IMO. I don't deny some people may crave it but those cravings won't be THAT bad. Plus withdrawal effects are virtually nil - both physical and psychological. Like you say though - there is not enough data one way or another. I am just basing this on what I have seen, read, heard and experienced.

hrm...Ketamine addiction sucks. I have experienced intense psychological and physical cravings for it, causing me to be very aggrivated and angry at times. I think if you only use it once in a while it's fine. My experience with the addiction is after months of daily use

Hmm... well, again, my experience is quite different to that. I know of many people who regularly use K and they are certainly not "fried" nor I have I heard of anyone mentioning HPPD or lingering mental effects. Obviously they may have kept it to themselves, but I would have thought their personality would have been noticeably different.

Even if that is true for many people (which I doubt it is), it's not exactly "dangerous". OK, it's not a bunch of positive effects, but hardly life-threatening or really that profound compared to other psychedelics.

I have also experienced HPPD like symptoms from K, lasting a while, but then dissapearing after 2 months. Since then I have used K in large quantities and not noticed the same phenomena. I think the hppd was caused by mixing with other drugs, namely ecstasy.

 

[spun420833]

I believe I got some sort of of UTI or Kidney infection from this dirty yellow K that came in amber vials. The shit was from down south and it was all that was available in my area one summer. It got very hard to pee, I had to pee frequently and the piss was dark almost brown. I thought I had caught a VD or something. It took a couple of weeks to clear up.

 

[fastandbulbous]

As for the liver thing, my friends report this every now and then, I have only experienced it once after a long binge and then a heavy fatty meal. F&B mentioned that it is due to spasm of gall bladder than the liver itself which makes sense, especially in the case I experienced.

Yeah the gall bladder releases a complex organic acid (deoxycholic acid if I remember correctly) into the GI tract to help with emulsification of said fats for absorbtion. Every time I've experienced a similar thing (3 times in total) it's been from a combination of ket-a-piggery followed by some sort of oily fish meal (on Fridays; you can take the boy out of Catholicism, but not Catholicism out of the boy! ). The pain is excruciating and apparently spasm of the gall bladder is one of the few pains that men can experience to give them an idea of what women get with childbirth.

Ketamine is intensly psychologically addictive, but only if there's easy access to it in large amounts. This drops off dramatically as long as it's not easily on hand and on cessation there are no decernable physical symptoms.

The point is that when you compare it to other drugs with responsible use

Not wishing to be pedantic (but I can't help myself! - ),, but the word 'responsible' when referring to drug use inherently implies safety (it's irresponsible use that separates the lambs from the wolves!)

 

[Jamier]

Hey silent science how much were you taking to need some everyday whats the highest it got to???? I dabble with it here and there doesn't last very long but mighty fun don't see how it could cause problems.. But it is made for animals

 

[silentscience]

Hey silent science how much were you taking to need some everyday whats the highest it got to???? I dabble with it here and there doesn't last very long but mighty fun don't see how it could cause problems.. But it is made for animals

Up to an ounce over a 2 week period, but usually going through 3.5 gs within 3-5 days, maybe a couple days off, then repeat. I did take longer breaks though, once for 3 months.

taking a gram or so a day causes some serious f'in shit. beware.

 

[trancetasy]

falling into the K-hole loop for hours can be quite intense and dangers
it's pretty hard to measure the dose if you are snorting
i've made several mistake by snorting more than i need

personally i've seen several ketamine overdose and it ain't pretty
a couple friends of mine who were into k told me that their vision were getting worse

 

[Xorkoth]

Hey silent science how much were you taking to need some everyday whats the highest it got to???? I dabble with it here and there doesn't last very long but mighty fun don't see how it could cause problems.. But it is made for animals

It's not "made for animals". It is used in veteranary medicine but it's also used for human anaethesia, because it's the safest anaesthetic. They use it on children even.

 

[emjay]

a couple friends of mine who were into k told me that their vision were getting worse

This really doesn't mean much though. Vision gets worse as time goes on, it doesn't get better. Personally, I'm surprised you even made the connection. Worsening eyesight is just a fact of life for most people.

 

[trancetasy]

This really doesn't mean much though. Vision gets worse as time goes on, it doesn't get better. Personally, I'm surprised you even made the connection. Worsening eyesight is just a fact of life for most people.

well they don't wear glasses or contact lens or having bad eyesight
then they got heavy into ketamine use (daily with several bumps)
after that they started telling me that their eyesight were getting worse
plus i've abused k before and i realized a bit of vision worsen
so i know it does infact worsen eye sight

 

[EntheoDjinn]

This really doesn't mean much though. Vision gets worse as time goes on, it doesn't get better. Personally, I'm surprised you even made the connection. Worsening eyesight is just a fact of life for most people.

All the same, it's an interesting point. Unfortunately I'm not a good example as I'm into my 50's now, and my eyesight is deteriorating quite quickly - but nonetheless faster than I would have imagined. I keep pretty healthy, so am quite aware of the ageing process as I pick up speed on the downward journey

Funny thing is - and it may just be a coincidence - the rapid deterioration parallels my (fairly infrequent - once per month) Ketamine use (but I do use MDMA at the same time, so that confounds things even more).

 

[7zark7]

falling into the K-hole loop for hours can be quite intense and dangers
it's pretty hard to measure the dose if you are snorting
i've made several mistake by snorting more than i need

erm... rack the lines up before you have your first hit.

personally i've seen several ketamine overdose and it ain't pretty

Really? What did they dose and what did they intend to dose? How was it administered? What were the side effects?

 

[7zark7]

Vision gets worse as time goes on, it doesn't get better. Personally, I'm surprised you even made the connection. Worsening eyesight is just a fact of life for most people.

Not only that, with the number of people using computers more, I would expect an increase in the number of people with worsening eyesight.


Would be nice to know what is meant by worsening. Is it a muscle problem where your eyes can't focus as well as they used to or a nerve issue? Plus it would be interesting to find out any common additives could also cause this problem with abuse (I am sure I have read that some additives are actually more neurotoxic than the Ketamine itself.)

 

[Jamshyd]

Where on earth did that vision problem thing pop out of? I haven't heard about this supposed "danger" until this thread, and none of the people talking about it here have bothered present actual data...

As for ketamine addiction - of course it is no joke, however it is definitely on par with pot both in terms of intensity and in terms of withdrawal. Jansen talks about this in his book, I will look it up, and I'll post his own findings (even if they contradict what I seem to remember).

I will agree with FnB 100% though that controling supply is key to controling K addiction.

Seriously there is so much misunderstanding about dissociatives in general everywhere. I don't get it. So much so is their stigma that pharmcologists now say "dizocilipine receptor site" instead of "PCP receptor site" even though they're referring to the same friggin thing!

 

[Jamshyd]

"in my opinion, the group who lose control over their use is unlikely to exceed 15% of those who find the experience rewarding"- Jansen, 166

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that number is lower than the rate for cannabis (and not to mention, opiates), especially with the figure that Jansen gives earlier in that book about only about half of those who use Ketamine find it rewarding at all.

ps. Quotes taken from Karl Jansen's Ketamine: Dreams and Realities, and Jansen is considered an authority on Ketamine.

 

[silentscience]

Exactly. Pot is very harmful in that you think it's not! People will go around being complete potheads with no thought towards the addiction and effects of it, but something like K is considered VERY VERY dangerous. The reality is most K heads are well read in what K is and does to them, and actually DO care about what its doing, unlike pot.

 

[Jamshyd]

Make no mistake, Ketamine addiction is disgusting - but I really think it is not as common as most people think (very, very few pople have a supply steady enough to maintain a heavy addiction). Pot, on the other hand, is easier to find than certain spices used in cooking. Unfortunately, a lot of people don't consider it a drug, nor do they consider their multiple daily consumptions a habit (one thing that irks me about regular pot-smokers, even ones I respect, is that they don't include the fact that they smoked pot when they write trip reports on other substances!)