Too true, so to properly use some veterinary / illicit ketamine you would basically need a combination of personal restraint to only use low medicinal doses (preferably being relatively drug-naieve I guess because once you have gotten a taste for recreational use it is probably hard to forget about that as being technically an option), but you would also have to be able to / wanna learn to / know somebody able to administer it parenterally - that is through IM or IV injection as I don't know if insufflation is reliable enough or appropriate in this context.
You might see how this is not necessarily the most obvious premise, especially if people who discover these things and consider this possibility learn from bluelight having some likelihood of being here for originally different reasons related to recreational use of drugs.
This is a way of generalizing but it means IMO that to fit those criteria you may be in the minority of people, and if you don't really fit you should be aware of the risks you are taking. The number of people apparently confusing recreational use/effects with medicinal at least partially on this forum indicate that it is easy to fool yourself just like it is typical for people to overestimate and/or deceive themselves in different matters relating to addiction.
Cotcha, that is really interesting about the principle of 'imprinting', at least that is what I would call it, and this is something I have seen signs of - I think - at various times including with psychedelics like LSD. A therapeutic effect can be achieved by combining a certain state of susceptibility or impressionability with a positive imprint. A positive outlook could be enough, but a high impact experience that shows you a positive lesson of life can probably be much more powerful. Negative things can of course be imprinted too, and I have experienced first-hand how that can lead to anxieties and phobias that are hard to shake and overcome.
It is already a step in the right direction probably, achieving a state that in a sense wipes your previous (negative probably if in need of therapy) thought patterns clear, yet is not impervious to your mindset... but developing this further can probably drastically influence the potential of the therapy. I think these involve therapeutic mechanisms / dynamics even without any pharmacological agent, but it would not be *that* surprising if ketamine or LSD therapies have ways to take these dynamics to extreme. That would be expected to feel subjectively as is often described: months or more of therapy condensed into a brief time.
I agree that we shouldn't overextend our enthousiasm and that we have some questions to answer before impatiently starting with - especially self-experimenting - dissociative therapies, like single high dose vs repeated microdose vs that novel middle ground mentioned earlier of using selective agents to enhance microdoses in ways to utilize the potential of high doses without actually having to regularly trip perhaps.
But hopefully it is found in everyone's interest (too bad that it has to be in the interest of big pharma too) to explore both the necessary mechanisms as well as different analogues and their ability to exploit these mechanisms. There are examples of pharmaceuticals that consist of two complementary compounds but it isn't really that typical and also not considered ideal. Sometimes there isn't really another way though, within our current capabilities.
As for myself, I'd like to know if dissociative abuse in the past and the resultant - kinda unusual - perma-tolerance mean that I could not benefit from these therapies anymore if I wanted to. As far as I can tell, this perma-tolerance involves only parts of the mechanisms involved with K like hyperpolarization channels and I think I can still 'blank out' my mind fine with something like diphenidine analogues even if I am unlikely to get an interesting experience from K and more chance of feeling sick.
