Humans immune to ketamine neurotoxicity?

[Okami]

Recently whilst at a festival I tried ketamine and went on a bit of a binge (it’s hard to tell how much I did because I gave out lines, lines were given to me etc) but I reckon over the course of 4 days I did approximately 1-1.5g. (First drug I can actually see myself potentially being addicted to)

Anyway I got home and started to do my research and stumbled across Olney's lesions. I then found the following sentences on the PCP article on wikipedia. "According to recent research, Olney's lesions only appear in the brains of rodents. This is due to the fact that they lack a major metabolic enzyme that is essential to breaking down NMDA receptor antagonists in the brain. This enzyme is found in humans and makes humans essentially immune to Olney's lesions as has been shown with ketamine." Unfortunately the reference is a book that I don't have and a short article on erowid which is quite vague.

Does this mean that brain damage isn't a concern with the long term effects of ketamine use, only the various bladder problems and other such stuff? Or is that an optimistic statement of the type that people who claim that mdma isn't neurotoxic make. Do we simply not know? Surely it can't be too bad considering that ketamine is used as an anaesthetic in the third world?

If it is neurotoxic or if its not known whether it is, what is a reasonable safe amount to do and how often. I usually restrict my mdma use to at most once a month of 100-125mg and refrain from redosing and the VERY rare occasions I do I only take another 50mg to prolong it. Although they are obviously completely different, what would be the ketamine equivalent of this sort of, erring on the side of caution, use?

 

[sekio]

Olney's lesions have not been observed in primates.

The major concern with ketamine is addiction and dependence leading to problems like depression, bladder troubles, and of course the negative mental effects of taking anesthetics frequently.

Just about the worst damage has actually been observed is a slight loss of brain volume from long-term heavy ketamine use, similar to smoking cigarettes. Honestly ketamine will probably do more damage to your nasal mucosa than anything else - not everyone gets bladder troubles/cramps.

 

[Okami]

What are the negative mental effects of taking specifically anaesthetics regularly? Or just a general mental "coming apart at the seems" that you get from abusing anything.

I was also wondering about my nose too. How much do you need to insuffulate for there to be noticeable damage and what can I do to minimize it? At what point do you start getting nose bleeds? I'm assuming like with most of your body if you give it enough time you nasal cavity will heal by itself.

 

[sekio]

If you're in K-land most of your day, you can't be doing other things, because you're going to be too trashed to speak or walk a straight line. And heavy dissociative use is correlated pretty nicely with people losing their shit - NMDA antagonists are considered to be an OK model of schizophrenia. If you K-hole regualrly you may end up making a religion out of it like Marcia Moore and end up in somewhere you shouldn't be, like high off your tits in a forest at night in subzero temperature. Admittedly that's a minor concern, but these things do happen. Also of course ketamine is expensive in some places of the world.

It's impossible to put a hard figure on how much damage ketamine will do to your nose. It's variable depending on your physiology, what's in your K, and how much/how often you take it. A few days of regular use will probably make your nose start to bleed, but like I said it's variable.

You can minimize damage by using saline nasal rinses to help keep the acidic ketamine residue out of your nose after a session and (of course) by doing less.

Thankfully ketamine is not as damaging as e.g. cocaine, because it doesn't restrict blood supply to your nasal tissue.

 

[bluedolphin]

The major problems associated with medium/long term persistant Ketamine use (usually known as addiction) include probable bladder problems (although not in everyone), increasing delusions and strange beliefs which can lead to schizoaffective syndrome (you don't want to go down this road, but it's hard to avoid if you insist on doing Ketamine all the time), and I believe it also causes people to lose weight in unhealthy ways (not sure why).

Ketamine clogged up my nose at times but I sniffed an incredible quantity of the stuff and never really damaged anything.

Full physical and psychological recovery is usually possible with cessation of the drug. The hardest thing to fix might be bladder damage if you've failed to heed the warnings of frequent and painful urination and kept using.

 

[Okami]

Thanks for the information both of you! By nasal rinse do you mean a nasal spray? How long after doing a line should it be used? I assume if you do it straight away you just won't get high. Is pretty much everything absorbed after 20 minutes or so?

I don't expect to find myself in a forest on k any time soon, I'll probably be using it about once every 2 weeks or so if I can actually find a reliable source that actually gives you a gram when you ask to buy a gram rather than 0.6...

 

[sekio]

By nasal rinse, I am indeed talking about the 0.9% saltwater solution used to rinse your nose. Sterile saline solution.

You should probably wait at least half an hour for most of the ketamine to diffuse through your nose. At worst the nasal spray will just rinse it down your throat.

 

[Okami]

By nasal rinse, I am indeed talking about the 0.9% saltwater solution used to rinse your nose. Sterile saline solution.

You should probably wait at least half an hour for most of the ketamine to diffuse through your nose. At worst the nasal spray will just rinse it down your throat.

How do you rinse ones nose? Splash water up there? Or am I going to have invest in one of these?

 

[Hiltoniano]

^lol at that picture. So u spray the bottle up and snort a little to ad moisture or force the drip. And tilt the bottle upside down it acts as a nettie pot ( that picture ) just squirt with head tilted.

 

[bluedolphin]

Honestly if you're not doing K like all day, every day, I wouldn't worry about the nasal stuff. It's one of the most pleasant substances to insufflate, IMO. Minty, fresh, little to no burn, and won't really clog you up unless you're doing way too much.

Since the OP is new to Ketamine, I would give the advice I wish I had taken myself before I set forth upon years of massive Ketamine abuse: If the experience is special or valuable to you, resist the temptation to take it frequently. Once your Keta-tolerance starts to build (which it will, and you'll easily notice when it does, but at that point you might not want to cut back your use anyway) it can take a *very* long time to diminish. It might even be semi-permanent.

Just something to keep in mind. It's easy to get carried away and lose the magic for good. But you will still get high from it (just unable to hole or take an insane amount to hole) so the temptation remains to continue abusing it past the point of difficult return.

Also keep in mind that for some people (like me) Ketamine is the most addictive drug they've ever done. It's not physically addictive at all, just builds tolerance, but it can be the most psychologically seductive drug possible. If you enjoy DXM already, you might be like me. And if you're like me, you'll also find out the hard way for your self. Good luck.

 

[mllx]

Also keep in mind that for some people (like me) Ketamine is the most addictive drug they've ever done. It's not physically addictive at all, just builds tolerance, but it can be the most psychologically seductive drug possible. If you enjoy DXM already, you might be like me. And if you're like me, you'll also find out the hard way for your self. Good luck.

One question: which kind of person is more likely to find dissociatives more pleasant? Opiate users usually find this kind of drug pleasurable?

And sorry, I don't want to mess this thread.

 

[Okami]

Honestly if you're not doing K like all day, every day, I wouldn't worry about the nasal stuff. It's one of the most pleasant substances to insufflate, IMO. Minty, fresh, little to no burn, and won't really clog you up unless you're doing way too much.

Since the OP is new to Ketamine, I would give the advice I wish I had taken myself before I set forth upon years of massive Ketamine abuse: If the experience is special or valuable to you, resist the temptation to take it frequently. Once your Keta-tolerance starts to build (which it will, and you'll easily notice when it does, but at that point you might not want to cut back your use anyway) it can take a *very* long time to diminish. It might even be semi-permanent.

Just something to keep in mind. It's easy to get carried away and lose the magic for good. But you will still get high from it (just unable to hole or take an insane amount to hole) so the temptation remains to continue abusing it past the point of difficult return.

Also keep in mind that for some people (like me) Ketamine is the most addictive drug they've ever done. It's not physically addictive at all, just builds tolerance, but it can be the most psychologically seductive drug possible. If you enjoy DXM already, you might be like me. And if you're like me, you'll also find out the hard way for your self. Good luck.

Yeah I've done amphetamines and cocaine and I didn't see myself getting addicted to them at all, I can definately see how I would get addicted to K though. I realised that after I bought 1 gram and decided on doing half of it and keeping the other half to do with a friend back at home who wanted to try it, did all of that, then bought another gram that I said I wouldn't touch at all and did all of that as well. Weird though I didn't think I'd like it very much from trip reports and what people told me about it as well. I was more curious than anything else.

I haven't tried any other dissossiatives apart from nos and salvia but salvia is a comepletely different type of dissociative so I guess that doesn't really count. I'm hopeful for 2-meo-ketamine though if its an RC thats actually as close to K as some trip reports have made it out to be I will have to properly be careful with my use. I've only had a single 55mg line since the festival which was quite a while ago because I've mentioned I have no reliable source.

^lol at that picture. So u spray the bottle up and snort a little to ad moisture or force the drip. And tilt the bottle upside down it acts as a nettie pot ( that picture ) just squirt with head tilted.

You're talking about using nasal spray at the moment yeah? Why would you want to force the drip?

 

[Ismene]

The whole Olneys lesions things was shown to be complete bollocks years ago.

 

[Hiltoniano]

^ I didn't really mean "force" the drip. It's like when there's residual powder or whatever up in the noz after a session, squirt a spray up there and and snort. It clears out the noz essentially I was high when I wrote that other one haha.

 

[Ismene]

11 years ago I remember seeing a few bluelighters being absolutely furious if you said Willard White might be wrong. Sebastians ghost was banning people for saying K might not cause brain damage. At least time has settled the Willard White "argument" if there ever was one.