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How do i know what kind of ketamine i have?

Youngin

Bluelighter
Joined
Jan 12, 2012
Messages
76
Location
ATLANTA
I aquire my ketamine through what i like to beleive are reputable sources. I get told about diffrent kinds of ketamine im buying but i dont know if thats really what im getting...For example right now i apparently just picked up "Human Grade" K....What types of k are there and what should i look for to differentiate between these types?
 
There are two different isomers of Ketamine I believe.

I don't think "Human Grade" K is anything but BS dealer talk but I could be wrong. Doesn't mean it's not a good product, but I've never heard of Human Grade K.

Someone more knowledgeable can chime in I'm sure.
 
It's essentially impossible for you to tell what "kind" of ketamine you are getting, or if it's even ketamine at all, besides doing simple tests (like does it dissolve in water) and/or ingesting it.

The "two kinds of ketamine" myth/factoid comes up because ketamine molecules are like your hands - there's 2 non-superimposable mirror images of the molecule that have different effects. One of the "handednesses" is much more effective than the other (called S-ketamine), and is seperated out & sold in some formulations (Ketanest S). All other ketamine on the market is a mixture of the two.

Chances are - you're buying racemic ketamine. Brand names don't mean anything.
 
It's probably just BS for different dissociatives like MXE, Ketamine, 4-MeO-PCP, 3-MeO-PCP, Tiletamine, etc. They all do similar/same things but at different dosages (because of their inherent potency).
 
human grade means it evaporated from a brand used for humans opposed to vet ket wich is from a vetenerian source
i have tried 2 types of vet and 1 human and the human for me has always been way more psychedelic and visual wich lead me to believe it was s-ketamine but i can't be sure
 
Racemic ketamine is used for both human and veterinary procedures, there is no difference between k for "animal" and k for "human" usage.
 
is racemic always 50:50 could there be another ratio? as i have definatly found diffrence in the two brands i was using one was so much easier to hole on as the other one was nearly imposible regardless the dose, set&setting
 
If you have a mexican vial they show mg (potency) but no specification of r,s ratio... Ketalar vs. ketaset, different with the later being more groggy... I have never seen a human grade vial, they are much more difficult to find i'd reckon. But if you just have a bag of powder from some gutter punk you would need hplc, or sophisticated chem gear, to determine stereoisomer composition.
 
If you have a mexican vial they show mg (potency) but no specification of r,s ratio... Ketalar vs. ketaset, different with the later being more groggy... I have never seen a human grade vial, they are much more difficult to find i'd reckon. But if you just have a bag of powder from some gutter punk you would need hplc, or sophisticated chem gear, to determine stereoisomer composition.
Damn, Ok you guys are extemely helpful..i have a better understanding of the isomers now...i just wish there was an easier way to see what kind of ketamine you have...especially if like me, you buy it in its already salty form
 
To determine how much R/S ketamine is in your stuff you need a device called a polarimeter, basically a fixed-frequency light source and 2 linear polzrizers to see how much the sample rotates polarized light.

Ketamine is only sold as 50/50 mixes or as pure S-ketamine. Nobody sells the R isomer because it is not used medically.
 
I can't speak about the isomers etc.. as I am not familiar, but I just wanted to say that my friend hooked me up with some 500mg ketavet vials of liquid k and they were awesome. What I did was put a ceramic plate on top of a pot of boiling water, and the steam heats up the plate. I poured the k onto the plate and after maybe 15 minutes the liquid has evaporated leaving a film of k. I the used a razor and scraiped the k from the plate into a nice pile of powder.

That method was before i knew how to IV/IM. But if you have liquid k it works GREAT to turn it into powder. I thought I would loose it to evaporation but I didn't loose any of it. It worked superb.
 
I currently have access to various vials of K (ketaset,ketlar..and others) does anybody have any prefrences?
 
I've often speculated that there's quite a lot of R-Ketamine on the black market, or at least racemic products that contain mostly R. My logic behind this goes something along the lines of:

Semi-legit eastern chemist makes racemic product, seperates product into two lots, one lot of S and one lot of R.

Semi-legit chemist sells S lot to semi-legit buyers specifically requring S-ketamine for higher price, chemist then sells remainder of product (mostly - all R) to other buyers looking to acquire any old cheap ketamine for sale on black market. Much of the ketamine on the street ends up being from the cheaper batch, hence mostly R type.

Of course I'm only speculating here, but considering that there is a distinct market for S-ket (legit and otherwise) and a considerable market for any-old-cheap-ket, it kinda makes economic sense that the R-type left over from any seperation made by the chemist should end up being sold on the black market. Add to that the fact that many dealers/suppliers of illegal ket don't really know or care about the difference and there are enough suppliers willing to base their purchasing judgement on price.

I sorta think it's quite feasable that the manufacturer would want to increase their profits by selling the leftover R-ket cheap and there are enough buyers willing to purchase any-old-ket for the right price.

I myself have certainly bought enough shit K over the years to be fairly certain I've had all manner of different racemic ratios, some of which have seemed to me to be pretty much entirely R.
 
Racemic ketamine is used for both human and veterinary procedures, there is no difference between k for "animal" and k for "human" usage.

I vaguely recall some of my k-head friends talking about how the sterilization standards for veterinary ketamine were stricter than "human" k but I always thought that this made absolutely no sense. Maybe they were talking about getting any ket in a pharmaceutical vial (and perhaps veterinary ket is more common on the market than vials used for human injection?) as opposed to dissolving powdered K crystals into solution for injection... but I imagine that the ketamine vials used for human injection are perfectly sterile and safe like anything else prepared for injection by pharmaceutical companies.

Just another example of somewhat absurd pieces of street scene folklore getting circulated online, I guess.
 
To determine how much R/S ketamine is in your stuff you need a device called a polarimeter, basically a fixed-frequency light source and 2 linear polzrizers to see how much the sample rotates polarized light.

Ketamine is only sold as 50/50 mixes or as pure S-ketamine. Nobody sells the R isomer because it is not used medically.

If we are talking about situations where it's definitely a dealer-buyer situation / street buy rather than friends or acquaintances trading more as some kind of equals.... then yes I guess the amount of R-ketamine you will find is extremely tiny. And the abundance of drugs for sale in general will be more the big heavy ones like coke, heroin, speed, weed, and not the stuff nobody has heard of.

Still in my life I have encountered R-ketamine twice, so sekio when you would be inclined to say nobody? Make it 'almost nobody' instead please. Not because I wanna show off. But because of factual accuracy.

The question that now begs me is: does S-isomer synthesis yield R-ket as a separation 'byproduct'? I guess not, its chiral all the way down the path? I'm not sure if there are synth steps that negate chirality... I thought I remembered a phenomenon from orgchem where a transition state compound loses chirality meaning that the endproduct of the reaction is suddenly racemic again. Help me out?
Ohhh wait hold on, I know synth discussion is not allowed but I just saw on Erowid in the Rhodium vault that chirality only arises at the last step. So through separation (using something like chiral tartaric acid to precipitate? Or by sophisticated chromatography?) there is always the R-isomer as waste.

My whole point being: where those Pakistani and Indian megalabs are concerned, a part was and still is being diverted to black market sales... since R-ketamine has some demand there don't you think they would work up at least part of the R-isomer? If only semi secretly.
So I have had the actual stuff and can clearly tell the difference (motor function impairment or lack thereof says enough even without asking, wouldn't you agree?), plus I just illustrated how it's raison d'être is not pointless, unexplainable or implausible.





Back to joining the answering and discussion of the original question: are there different kinds of ketamine and how can you keep them apart?

Two isomers

Well my answer would be, joining sekio and others here: it depends on what you would call different or not.
There are two isomers as is said, both are ketamine but they have plenty of differences but also similarities. And you can imagine you can mix these 2 isomers in any ratio you want, each mix would feel a little different. An equal 50-50 mix is called racemic. Remember this. :)
So theoretically, there are the 2 pure isomers (imagine them as black and white) and there is a gradual scale going from black to white.

In practice/reality you will find that (what I am totally guessing - but it's an 'educated guess' is) some 85-90% of ketamine you will encounter will be racemic. So it's "grey" from being half white and half black typed.
The left and right hand example is actually much better but not for the gradual scale illustration.
What this means though is that what most people know as ketamine comes from a mix of two somewhat differently acting drugs.

(Isomers of other drugs?)

Let's step back for a moment here and realize that with most or mány other drugs, while the same is true that it is almost all a mix (racemic i.e. the racemate) one of the two types simply does not work! So all the credit goes to the 50% part of it that does work. If the not-working part does not cause significant side-effect or other effect it is simply too expensive to try and leave that part out.

Okay getting back to ketamine: as is now said, there are truly 2 kinds but a third apparent kind which is actually only a mix... is the best known.

Formulations and Preparations

Now a whole other subject arises: ketamine often comes in vials for injection, and they can contain preservatives that can have some minor effect of their own. But in my experience this is never discussed and it doesn't say on any vial I have had.

If ketamine is injected from such vials or cooked into crystal that is used or distributed, some people/dealers/vendors may claim that each brand has it's own characteristics, like pharmaceutical brands of opiates or benzo's are also considered different. Brand is always thought of to be better than generic for example.
It may come down to purity for some part: the proper brands are just made well and are as strong as advertised while generics may be weaker for a variety of reasons.
So truly there are not a whole number of kinds of ketamine as a compound.. but there are different preparations. This could also be included to mean: there are different batches of ALL drugs, and some are deemed superior to others.

Be aware: on this territory there is a lot of bullshitting. Someone who got me vials in the past offered several brands and described them/advertised them differently in quality. I never believed there was anything but makebelief about those claims except for Agrovet being pure S-isomer instead of the racemate (50/50 R+S mix).

You can check here what is so different between R and S, we have a thread on it!
http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/threads/447697-Ketamine-Subthread-Isomers-R-and-S-Ketamine

Quality or Purity Grades

You mentioned 'human grade' ketamine as a term...
Well for something like tablesalt for instance there are a bunch of purity grades, meant for different purposes and uses:
- raw salt, is least pure and cheapest of all, and is meant for salting the roads when they ice up in winter for instance.
- technical grade would mean it is impure, so people shouldn't eat it, but it doesn't contain little rocks like the raw salt. This can be meant for machines, for instance.
- food grade would mean it is purified enough so that people can eat it. There can be other types of salt in it, but they are not unhealthy like they could be in technical grade
- lab grade would mean it is even much more pure than what is used by people in food. In the lab, some impurities can be a sort of pollution for things that are done that have to keep really pure. For some chemicals there is lab grade and synthesis grade. Synthesis grade is the highest and it is insanely pure and insanely expensive.

For ketamine, I don't know of such an official way of grading but I can at least differentiate between:
- clandestinely made ketamine (this can be impure, but statistically I don't think a significant portion of K is made by small clandestine labs like kitchen meth labs.
- If there are illegal labs, I think they are mostly large but I cannot be sure. You can expect those to have some quality standard...
- Illegally diverted but pharmaceutically made raw ketamine. This is basically pure solid product. It arrives on the black market before going to a vial manufacterer as was officially and originally intended.
- Pharmaceutical K from vials. As legal as it comes but paradoxically it can be impure because like I said they could have mixed it with preservatives, one particularly weird one is a benzo additive, which one that is exactly I'll get back to later.

Since ketamine serves no purpose other than use in humans, all of these can be dubbed 'human grade'. If anything, it's worse than lab grade but you cannot expect that especially not for a fair price.

Does fake ketamine count as ketamine?

Then lastly, there is of course the fact that when someone *says* they offer you ketamine, it may actually be a different drug. That doesn't mean there are different kinds of ketamine but rather that there are countless possible things that could be sold under the name of ketamine.

Well I said countless, but most things don't feel like ketamine and you would know right away that you have been duped. But there are analogues on the rise and MXE has seen a huge popularity surge. Such things could be mistaken for ketamine.

I will not go into how you can ID your ketamine as being legit.
 
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That was an extremely helpful post! Mxe i feel is fairly easy to differentiate from ketamine i just wish that there were physical diffrences in ketamine with a higher ratio of R or S so you could easily tell which one your dealing with! That is if you dont know what vial it came from....Also is there anywhere to look that shows the ratio of R and S isomers in particular vials such as ketlar, ketaset and whatnot?
 
Oh I didn't mean to suggest that you remotely likely to come across tailor made mixes with a ratio other than 100%/0% or 50%/50%. Because it would require someone to have at least two of the three ingredients: R, S or racemic.
I've experimented with what would be optimal admixtures for me, but it doesn't happen in medicine. In the pharmaceutical world you will find 100% S-isomer or 50-50% (racemic). Most is racemic, but the prevalence of S in vials seems to be a bit higher than when talking about K crystal across the world, which makes sense. S is more meant for liquid injection and anaesthesia.
I guess the idea that S is the stuff that actually has purpose in anaesthesia has not evolved so far that always pure S is chosen. Maybe something you just have to have to know exists coincidentally or they don't care or believe that it matters enough. A rationale can be: if more anaesthesia is necessary the dose will just be adjusted accordingly during surgery, instead of leaving out the more 'freaky' R. Maybe racemate produces a less deeply immersed kind of anaesthesia that can be preferable.
It may sound romantic to adjust the 'perfect' 'species' of K to your likings but my end-conclusion was that I prefer pure S-isomer if I had to make a one-time-thing choice but if I had to choose what I would be getting every day for the rest of my life (assuming of course I'd be a junkie), then I would go for racemic.
So while exploring the ends of the spectrum is nice, everyone who only has normal old racemic K at their disposal already does have a perfect coctail, ironically.

What you might mean to be looking for is a list that names brands that are pure S, the others being racemic. I recall such a list being started somewhere. Oh yes here it is: http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/threads/535207-Ketamine-Subthread-Different-Brands
 
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