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Lesions found in brains of ketamine addicts/frequent users

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Bluuberry

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Oct 18, 2014
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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3713393/
Brain damages in ketamine addicts as revealed by magnetic resonance imaging

Well, this really sucks. Worst news I've heard in a while. Everyone I've seen bring this up said that we had never found any major lesions in ketamine or pcp addicts. The study found the beginning of lesions even after just 6 months of using 0.2 g a few times weekly. WHAT THE FUCK. I apologize if this has already been posted here, but I've never seen anyone mention it. I don't see any reason that this wouldn't apply to MXE as well, although if someone knows better please let me know. Something to think about for anyone with a disso habit. I really don't think it's worth brain damage.. This is a sad fucking day for me.
 
I read through most of this... bummer indeed. :\ Hard to say about MXE without a separate study (and a study with these timeframes can't be done on MXE yet), but it does make me feel glad I don't use it often. There bwere a couple of months I used it from 3-4 days a week which felt like too much, and surely was. Now it's every couple of weeks.

It's worth noting that the subjects (only a couple if I recall) who had used it not daily in smaller amounts showed much less degradation. But not none.
 
In the discussion, they mention that the users scanned were straight up addicts, often times using up to a gram DAILY for several years! I feel like the once monthly or less user is much less likely to have the same level of damage. Also, Ketamine is known to act differently upon various organs in the body than MXE is, so I also find it implausible to simply assume this applies to MXE as well. I also saw no mention of PCP users, and again they were scanning individuals who had truly obtrusive addictions for very long periods of time, and thus this is a very finite case study in my opinion.

Admittedly, it does make me wonder if the social-anxiety relieving effects I experience from MXE are more based in frontal lobe damage or something, causing me to feel less restricted. Food for thought...

Thanks for sharing this man!
 
Always check out whose funding bullshit like this before you take it too seriously:

Hey presto:

This study was funded by the Grant of Wai Yai Association Drug Abuse Research Fund.

Presumably unless you come up with a conclusion acceptable to people who call themselves "drug abuse" your funding stops.

I think it's total and complete bollocks. And it's nothing new - it's the same old shit Willard White was pushing years ago that was utterly discredited.
 
^Maybe this has something to do with the push for a world-wide Ketamine ban...
 
I don't think they're as reasonable as that - it's a drug, it gets you high therefore they want it banned. Even if it was the safest substance on the planet it would still be banned - look at mushrooms.
 
Using .2g a few times a week for 6 months is still pretty serious abuse. I wonder what the effects of responsible use would be. Anyone care to speculate whether usage say 1 time every 2 weeks for 4 years is equivalent to usage 2 times a week for six months? Can the brain heal damage like this over time?

You should expect this to apply to other NMDA agonists as well unless proven otherwise.
 
Ismene said:
I don't think they're as reasonable as that - it's a drug, it gets you high therefore they want it banned. Even if it was the safest substance on the planet it would still be banned - look at mushrooms.
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What I meant by that, is that perhaps the study was funded by the same people who want to ban ketamine world-wide in this most recent push; I was agreeing with you. It does indeed come across as a biased, fear-mongering type study, much like Willard White's study as you said.
 
So olney's lesions is correct? I always thought it was something Oprah made up.

Although Ismene raises a good point. Isn't this around about the same year that ketamine was banned in the UK?

Such articles often mysteriously appear when the UK is approaching anything remotely resembling talking about sensible drug policy.
 
Well I would be stoked if it was just bullshit, I'm just not so sure myself as to want to risk my neurons.. MXE changed my life, this is actually really sad for me, but that makes me feel a little pathetic too. Hopefully my brain is okay.

I agree with the fact that this study is for addicts, so that it may be less of a big deal with moderate users. However, in my opinion, .2 g a few times a week for 6 months is pretty moderate.. Someone said that they consider that pretty serious abuse, so I guess it all depends on where you draw the line with moderation. My point is, taking a solid dose 3 times weekly for 6 months was enough to show the beginnings of brain lesions. Noted as patches in grey and white matter in the brain which progressively get worse. Perhaps this wouldn't be the case if the doses were kept to a single, solid dose twice a month. It's a shame though, because for me I get the best effect from disso's when I have a session lasting about 3 days of dosing sporadically thru the day and early evening. Less than that and it hasn't really reached the full potential and more than that is just hedonistic and start to lose the benefits rapidly. Seems like that's enough use to cause brain damage so I will definitely be halting all research. I just REALLY don't want to.

They also noticed that the one subject who used ketamine a few times weekly in 0.2g doses with amphetamine and ecstasy, but had only been doing this for 6 months, his lesions were as bad as people who had been doing a gram a day for a couple years.

It does seem a bit fear mongering, and of course I looked at who it was funded by. The problem is, as far as I understand, this is the first MRI study we have done on ketamine addicts. Or atleast that's what the paper claims.

If anyone has more substantial proof that this study is bullshit, please post it. I would love it if it was just some fear-mongering shit from the Chinese government. However, as far as I can tell, it seems like the best data we have to work with right now, and it's not lookin' too bright.. Sucks for me, MXE really helped me get out of a suicidal slump. I still feel like I have a lot to learn from it but I'm not sure how to approach that given this new information.

The worst part is I still want to dive into my fucking stash. Ugh.
 
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You just can't use it for years frequently. It takes about 3 years for serious damage. I wouldn't use ketamine anyway, due to its known kidney damaging properties, but MXE is probably similar. The question is; do dissos damage your brain more than the legal alternative, alcohol. My guess is no. One thing we can draw from the article is that it's a bad idea to take MDMA or amphetamine with it. But then who would use them anyway with their known neurotoxicity? I'm pretty sure I'll be tired of MXE by the first year of use anyway. I guess classic psychedelics are the only things that don't damage something or other, and even they can cause psychosis or HPPD. Pretty much everything you take into your body has some kind of downside, except maybe water. I suppose moderation is the key.
 
So olney's lesions is correct?
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Well, that's the million-dollar question: are these Olney's lesions, or something else? Street ketamine isn't the cleanest drug around, and if you've been snorting it for years you might very well have introduced some other fun stuff into your system. I say this mostly because there are some reports (albeit conflicting) that pharmaceutical ketamine users (e.g. John Lilly) don't suffer the characteristic kidney damage seen in most recreational ketamine users. Olney's lesions appear in specific brain regions and look a certain way; do these? I haven't had time to look for myself.

EDIT: posted my birth year. Wooooo! :p
 
Someone please prove this study wrong.. :( I couldn't find any other similar studies on humans. I really don't want to stop doing MXE, I know it sounds ridiculous but it feels like losing a lover. But I sure love my brain too.
 
I don't see why everyone is panicking about this so much. Somehow I am not really surprised that taking a gram of ketamine on a daily basis for 4 years causes damage. The infamous saying "the dose makes the poison" really does apply here... very likely it's going to be strongly correlated to dose & frequency of usage, or it wouldn't have been approved for human use in the first place.

The authors of the paper don't postulate a mechanism for the damage, either. There is no guarantee it extends to other dissociatives - perhaps this is some secondary non NMDA target being effected by ketamine, and lower doses of more selective drugs will help.

If you want anecdotes, I've been known to dabble in what could probably be called "dumb amounts" of varying dissociatives - DXM, ketamine, MXE, 3-MeO-PCP - for a few years, and my brain's been scanned recently and it seems pretty much textbook. No degeneration or lesions. Then again I only used ketamine for a short while, and my poor nose wouldn't tolerate anything more than about 0.5g/day anyway.
 
Thank you for sharing your anecdotes sekio, that is somewhat reassuring. What do you consider to be "dumb amounts"? I have been using 100-200 mg MXE most days, which I know is way too much, but I wonder if 50-100 mgs a few times a week would be so bad. I guess what worried me was the guy who only had been using it for 6 months already had the beginnings of the lesions.

I would definitely love to be able to find out more about the mechanism of damage. I agree that there's no certainty it would extend to other dissos, but there's also still the possibility that it DOES. I simply don't know very much about pharmacology of disso's, so I don't fully understand how it would be different or if the effect would be absent from say MXE or 3-meo-pcp. I have been thinking about cutting back my MXE use a lot, but it would still be nice to have a few days of fun here and there.
 
jason7 said:
You just can't use it for years frequently. It takes about 3 years for serious damage. I wouldn't use ketamine anyway, due to its known kidney damaging properties, but MXE is probably similar. The question is; do dissos damage your brain more than the legal alternative, alcohol. My guess is no. One thing we can draw from the article is that it's a bad idea to take MDMA or amphetamine with it. But then who would use them anyway with their known neurotoxicity? I'm pretty sure I'll be tired of MXE by the first year of use anyway. I guess classic psychedelics are the only things that don't damage something or other, and even they can cause psychosis or HPPD. Pretty much everything you take into your body has some kind of downside, except maybe water. I suppose moderation is the key.
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I don't know anything about Ketamine, but I think your suggestion that alcohol causes as much brain damage is crazy.

Since when does drinking cause brain LESIONS?
 
There was also Reduced dorsal prefrontal gray matter after chronic ketamine use a few years back. We talked about it way back in the third MXE thread (3rd!). As I recall with that one, the higher the dose and the more frequent the use the more reduction there was. Combined with this study, there is mounting evidence that spending a part or most of every day anesthesized on a veterinary tranquilizer isn't particularly healthy. As said above, this isn't surprising. As was brought up years ago, part of the issue could be that ketamine addicts are partially mimicking a vegitative state for years on end. The brain atrophies with disuse and certainly wouldn't be expected to recover well from any chemical insults that it does incur in the interim.

In any case now is a good time to reiterate that dissociatives shouldn't be used daily. My sense is that ketamine and MXE probably have negligible influence on brain health for most people as long as they're used at most weekly. I've used them more often than that and haven't noticed anything (either has my very sober and professional live-in GF). I also exercise and read a lot, though.

Edit: To sort of respond to Bluuberry's question: I used 60mg of MXE around three or four days a week for probably a year, and 30mg at that frequency for another. Now I use every few weeks or on occasion.
 
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Your point about what you spend your time doing when living that lifestyle is an interesting one. I love to use MXE to enhance creativity, I like to produce music and learn piano on it, or make new plans / carry out said plans and projects. I just fucking love that magical sparkle. It even helped me completely turn around my relationship with my girlfriend that had been shitty for years, and right when I start doing MXE we start to connect on a whole new level and things have just got much better. I think a lot of it had to do with my crippling depression and anxiety that just put me in a shitty mood. MXE just lifts all that away.

I also enjoy reading quite a bit and I find that my experiences are actually markedly better when I'm exercising and eating really great. Most K addicts I know of spend most of their time really fucked up and not really living life. I wonder it could truly be protective of the brain and prevent atrophy if one keeps really active mentally and physically.

Even doing MXE once a week feels like such a loss for me, but I guess I need to re think some things if it bothers me that much. Plus my tolerance after daily use for a while makes it so I could do 100mg over a few hours and barely feel anything. I sure miss having mindblowing nights all night long after just 30-40 mg, but then again the quality I'm getting now may not be up to par.

Anyways sorry to get OT, if anyone else has had an MRI after using dissos for a while please chime in! I appreciate all the info guys and gals.
 
sekio said:
If you want anecdotes, I've been known to dabble in what could probably be called "dumb amounts" of varying dissociatives - DXM, ketamine, MXE, 3-MeO-PCP - for a few years, and my brain's been scanned recently and it seems pretty much textbook. No degeneration or lesions..
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bump, quote, seconded.

Following 'lesions' since the early days of cough syrup and the hype around that in the states, which lead to shelving and ingredient changes..

Now what will this study or news do to what we thought was going to be a new route in depression, bipolar and other psych disorders etc.
 
Bluuberry said:
Your point about what you spend your time doing when living that lifestyle is an interesting one. I love to use MXE to enhance creativity, I like to produce music and learn piano on it, or make new plans / carry out said plans and projects. I just fucking love that magical sparkle. It even helped me completely turn around my relationship with my girlfriend that had been shitty for years, and right when I start doing MXE we start to connect on a whole new level and things have just got much better. I think a lot of it had to do with my crippling depression and anxiety that just put me in a shitty mood. MXE just lifts all that away.

I also enjoy reading quite a bit and I find that my experiences are actually markedly better when I'm exercising and eating really great. Most K addicts I know of spend most of their time really fucked up and not really living life. I wonder it could truly be protective of the brain and prevent atrophy if one keeps really active mentally and physically.

Even doing MXE once a week feels like such a loss for me, but I guess I need to re think some things if it bothers me that much. Plus my tolerance after daily use for a while makes it so I could do 100mg over a few hours and barely feel anything. I sure miss having mindblowing nights all night long after just 30-40 mg, but then again the quality I'm getting now may not be up to par.

Anyways sorry to get OT, if anyone else has had an MRI after using dissos for a while please chime in! I appreciate all the info guys and gals.
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Go to google scholar and type "exercise," "brain injury," "enriched environment," "sociality," "vasculature," "recovery," "rats," etc. Even just two weeks of forced wheel running intervals shows substantial changes in the circulatory robustness of rat brains. If you stay healthfully active physically, intellectually, and emotionally, indications are you will experience profoundly minimized damage relative to what the average recreational drug user would (well, within reason). Living the way we evolved to live and/or better produces durable constitutions.
 
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