☠ WARNING ☠ *WARNING* Chronic ketamine/dissociative use causes bladder/organ damage

[jhjhsdi]

I've commented on this issue throughout the years.....and it's no joke. I am thankful to still have my bladder, and that I don't have any issues anymore.

In my early 20s, I had access to a limitless supply of ketamine. I started out using it with tiny bumps because I was honestly scared to go into a hole, for whatever reason I have no clue lol. Then I accidentally fell into one, and it was amazzzzziiiinnngggggg. Anyway, I was getting it from India for $4/g, flipping it from $30-$120/g.....so I was making fuck tons of money and everything was free. I started sniffing bigger lines, and the tolerance raises quickly. After a while I was sniffing 2g at a time and barely feeling it. Obviously I was using a lot at that time and my nose was not happy. I was at a festival and remember the first time seeing my septal perforation.....a tiny pinhole through my septum. I still continued to sniff it for a while, before switching to IMing it.

IMing was great at first because it was like I didn't have a tolerance anymore.......and then it built up after so long. I was eventually using 100, yes one hunded, gram every week. 2 grams at once split by 5 needles at once, injecting to my hips, thigh, ass, arms, wherever. Not only did I have a horribly swollen, bruised body, and a hole in my nose, but then started the urinary issuse......and the excrutiating k pains in the sternum. This started long before I got up to those insane amounts though.

I would literally piss out ketamine, like a discharge.....it was horrible. I would piss blood clots. I had to piss, or at least felt like I needed to every two seconds. And when I did, it was usually only a couple extremely painful drops. Eventually I couldn't go anywhere because I had the feeling to piss all the time. I missed some serious music gigs that I was booked for because of it.

That was finally the time that I had to clean myself up. It took maybe two months on my couch. I would have buckets next to me because it was futile to go upstairs to use the bathroom.

Anyway.....long story made short.....I got clean 8 years ago and I have no ill effects, surprisingly and thankfully I use ketamine maybe once a year now, because it is still so amazing, but when I have it....I still go hard. BUT, I can't do it for long because my body reminds me REAL quick with having pain trying to piss after a couple grams.

I want to be involved in some study somehow, because I'm sure I've done more K than thousands of people should in a lifetime 0_o

Be kind to your body with this, and DCK, MXE, 3-MeO-PCP, and the like. They will do the same thing.

Sending lots of love

Wow mate I've been (and sort of am) in the exact same boat as you I think I may even have took my boat deeper out when my usage was at its peak. Sniffing/IMing/IVing up to 20 grams a day. Minimum of 5. All dY every day. That was about 4 years ago and now I keep it down to that amount a few times a week or only a few grams a day. I have flare ups here and there. Having one atm. Read my above post and my one IN BDD if you haven't already.

It was hard in rehab because no one else had been there with ket, all in for smack crack or alcohol issues. I fucking feel your pain bro, and its horrible. The cramps, the pissing, the urge to piss, the urinary trscts pains. I almost wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy, but sadly there's too many horrible people out there for me not to wish it on.

Its amazing how the body can heal hey.

 

[TheAppleCore]

I'm really happy this thread was stickied, because I feel like awareness of this problem is hugely lacking in the RC scene. I've posted about this on the forums a few times, but I might as well add it to this thread as well, I'm one of the unlucky few who developed symptoms after relatively moderate MXE use.

 

[Kaleida]

Zeta:

This is a paper I came across the other day, it was published a couple years ago now but the subject matter is one I never see discussed or acknowledged and it definitely seemed worth contributing here. This is a link to the full PDF.

Delayed urinary symptoms induced by ketamine.

It's a medical account of someone who claims to have used 50 mg of ketamine a day from age 15 to age 17 and then stopped without ever showing symptoms of bladder dysfunction at the time, but then suddenly developed the same kinds of problems discussed in this thread starting at age 24 and worsening until age 26 when this paper was written, and he was found to have signs of damage the same as seen with ketamine use and was officially diagnosed. The paper also includes some relevant and informative literature citations, such as one that claims that "Winstock et al. (2012), in their study of a ketamine-consuming population, reported that 43% of the patients who stopped consuming had the same symptoms and 3.8% presented a progressive deterioration, suggesting that, in some cases, once the disease is established, it could be maintained or even progress."

I do not claim to be an expert on this topic, but it seems like whenever I see the urinary damage done by ketamine or other arylcyclohexylamines being discussed, there are assumptions that if you haven't yet started showing symptoms during your period of use or shortly after it means you're still in the clear, and that if have done damage but you stop using after symptoms appear, the symptoms will not become worse. This case study and the literature it references suggest that neither of those things are necessarily true, which is why I feel it to be an important contribution.

Best regards to those who are struggling, and those who are not.

 

[Xorkoth]

Ugh that's a frightening prospect.

 

[Chris Timothy]

All kinds of things going on in young dude's life, and there's multiple levels of detail missing in the report. Too chaotic a case to draw conclusions about ticking time bomb mechanisms from. And we know weed screws ketamine kidney care big time.

I see no reason to start doubting sensitive people can self-regulate.

 

[Kaleida]

Zeta:

And we know weed screws ketamine kidney care big time.

Do you have a source for this? This is the first I'm hearing of it.

 

[Phobos]

+1

Weed and K would always make me feel terrible and ratchet up my blood pressure fiercely, but kidneys?

Kidneys are the organs that take the most damage from high blood pressure.

 

[Chris Timothy]

Your thoughts become too disorganized to tune into the watering needs of your kidneys. I learned that the hard way during my year-long methoxetamine trip.

If you're perma-stoned, you don't want to hydrate too much. Partially because you have munchies instead, partly because you just don't give a hoot, and want to minimize movement. And if you have an infected renal system, I reckon you're at risk of numbing the discomfort through getting high instead of treating it through flushing. This could allow a relatively minor infection to fester to problematic proportions.

Speculation of course, but I'd say it's more plausible than apoptosis mysteriously going viral or sumn.. Plus there's reporting bias, I know I would certainly consider withholding information from medical personnel, even when there's no risk for legal repercussions. It's not exactly fun to be preached at while squirming in agony!

 

[Chris Timothy]

And that's not to say that crossing weed with dissociatives is harm, it can be insta-Sci-Fi flashy colourful and accurate matrix mesh models of people's brain-functioning popping into your (otherwise rather psychedelically inactive / only a lil' schizophrenically innuended) daily vision and beyond I'm sure, but it's definitely perilous, and a skill to be acquired as opposed to a gift to be delivered.

 

[Vastness]

Zeta:

This is a paper I came across the other day, it was published a couple years ago now but the subject matter is one I never see discussed or acknowledged and it definitely seemed worth contributing here. This is a link to the full PDF.

Delayed urinary symptoms induced by ketamine.

It's a medical account of someone who claims to have used 50 mg of ketamine a day from age 15 to age 17 and then stopped without ever showing symptoms of bladder dysfunction at the time, but then suddenly developed the same kinds of problems discussed in this thread starting at age 24 and worsening until age 26 when this paper was written, and he was found to have signs of damage the same as seen with ketamine use and was officially diagnosed. The paper also includes some relevant and informative literature citations, such as one that claims that "Winstock et al. (2012), in their study of a ketamine-consuming population, reported that 43% of the patients who stopped consuming had the same symptoms and 3.8% presented a progressive deterioration, suggesting that, in some cases, once the disease is established, it could be maintained or even progress."

I do not claim to be an expert on this topic, but it seems like whenever I see the urinary damage done by ketamine or other arylcyclohexylamines being discussed, there are assumptions that if you haven't yet started showing symptoms during your period of use or shortly after it means you're still in the clear, and that if have done damage but you stop using after symptoms appear, the symptoms will not become worse. This case study and the literature it references suggest that neither of those things are necessarily true, which is why I feel it to be an important contribution.

Best regards to those who are struggling, and those who are not.

Thank you for posting that. This is concerning indeed and hopefully the exact kind of stuff I needed to read right now to finally quit using this alluring but addictive substance of highly dubious safety.

I worked out that I've done maybe 30-40mg a day or more for about 10 years now... but most of this being in the last 5 years. Also I haven't actually dosed as consistently as that, that's just an average made up of few-gram binges every couple of weeks to couple of months...

I think for those of us lucky enough not to easily develop persistent symptoms, or who seem to be able to quickly recover after brief periods of abstinence, there is a significant danger of being lulled into a false sense of security and thinking, as you say, that this means that any damage occurring is reversible and as long as we're careful enough and take breaks we're in the clear, whereas that may indeed not be the case.

I will say as someone who has used ketamine on and off for over 10 years now, whenever I do use it now I pretty reliably get some kind of "heavy" feeling in my kidney/bladder area... like something is getting gummed up... this could be psychosomatic because I know that typically you can't really "feel" a lot of internal organ weirdness, and obviously I do know that ketamine does have the potential to actually "gum up" the kidneys by precipitating into blockages in nephrons (sp?)...

(Edit: Study reference - Obstructive nephropathy and kidney injury associated with ketamine abuse)

...but regardless of the cause, I did not get this feeling when I initially started doing ketamine, or even, probably, around 2 years ago when I was using ketamine with roughly the same frequency I am now. Same goes for bladder symptoms, far more reliably now I'll get a feeling of being able to "feel" my bladder that I don't usually have, and a slight sensitivity lasting a few days after a given session... and a session might be as little as 300-500mg, compared to the multi-gram binges I would be doing probably up to around 2 years ago, again.

I remember when I first had the latter bladder feeling, it was very scary and I swore off ketamine for good at the time. But, time, addictive tendencies and the subtle, dark pull of ketamine prevailed, and I went back to it. The bladder/kidney feelings didn't immediately come back, it's worth noting, but over the past few months, I am feeling it more often again, and, probably quite stupidly, now that I have experience of it fading in time I've been a lot more blase about it, thinking it's just going to be a temporary annoyance and isn't really a big deal. On analysis, this is, quite possibly, a drug-induced subversion of a more rational perspective...

My last binge was just 2 days ago - this time over 2 days I used, I think, 700mg-ish, this time again the kidney heaviness was apparent from the first day of 300mg-ish, and now 2 days later I think I maybe still have a little more bladder awareness... could be nocebo-ing myself of course... but, better safe than sorry... for the record, this was the first time I'd used in just over 6 weeks.

 

[Vastness]

^ To be fair the day of my last binge or maybe just small session I did eat basically nothing but pizza all day... which probably didn't help. I'd also had a few alcoholic drinks the day before. I don't usually notice food triggers, although I try to eat fairly clean for the most part anyway, but I do notice probably just over the last year or so that phenibut will sometimes revive some kind of bladder (maybe kidney?) sensation even during periods of ketamine abstinence, which makes sense I guess, phenibut is highly acidic. But this is surely just another indicator of a creeping, gradual change that should not be dismissed. Phenibut, I believe, actually has been implicated in "kidney dysfunction" in higher doses as well, although it is rare.

 

[Vastness]

The discussion of peptides in that other thread just reminded me of something - I remember thinking a while ago that there might be some potential for BPC-157 to be useful in reversing ketamine-induced bladder damage.

For anyone not aware this is an interesting peptide which is stable in human gastric juices (and therefore, supposedly, orally active) and seems to have quite wide effectiveness in promoting various forms of soft-tissue healing. So far most people using it are using it primarily for muscular or tendon injuries, but it has also shown some promise in treatment of bowel conditions like ulcerative colitis and other inflammatory bowel diseases. It appears to have anti-ulcer properties and there are a lot of anecdotal reports of people using it to clear up digestive issues. I wondered if it's healing properties would also extend to the bladder... and in fact, there is some early indication that they do indeed!

Novel Approach in Therapy of Internal Fistulas: The Stable Gastric Pentadecapeptide BPC 157 in Therapy of Vesicovaginal Fistulas in Rats


A "vesicovaginal fistula" apparently, is a hole in the bladder which allows fluids to leak continuously into the vaginal cavity - the study above seems to indicate that BPC-157 made a marked difference to the controls and essentially completely closed these fistulas! I would say despite the fact that this study was done in rats, coupled with the evidence of BPC-157's effectiveness in healing other tissues in humans, this is a very good sign!

I think I recommended a while back to another member here that they give BPC-157 a try, although I have no idea if they did. I forgot but I actually used BPC-157 myself shortly after my first bladder scare - I have no idea if it was effective or not really because I also abstained for maybe as long a 6 months and probably my symptoms were fairly minor... but this does look very promising, I would really urge anyone with persistent bladder related problems from ketamine abuse to give it a try and report back - it seems to be very well tolerated overall so the worst that can happen is probably that it just doesn't work - especially if you go the oral route (I believe it should be active sublingually too, given it's resistance to human digestive enzymes... or possibly nasally, I know there are a few places offering it as a nasal spray).

 

[Chris Timothy]

If acidity is such a risk factor (which I can imagine because being unable to quit coffee post MXE2012 soured up the bladder quite painfully) then we should be drinking maybe as much milk as water shouldn't we? It's a bit scary with the link between calcium and kidney stones, but I vaguely remember something like a ratio factor of 16 in favour of a reducing (as in basic, OH− ) renal environment.

At least milk also replenishes some electrolytes you lose from frequent flushing. I hope my ignorance on the mechanics of kidney stone etiology doesn't void this suggestion into backfire mode though. It shouldn't, right? We're talking human ketamine basins here, not dehydrated hungover drunks. Intuitively I'd say kidney stones is when you cross those two flavours of balls to the wall.

I can imagine my blood not being as properly cleaned as it used to. But the difference is subtle and the changes gradual, and doesn't bother me personally.

 

[Chris Timothy]

Just like Vastness I feel a "gumming up" sensation in the kidneys though, even from mere ephenidine. Kinda like the interior equivalent of those streams in developing countries filled with plastic waste, as shown in the media. Alright, maybe that does bother me.. Even though the risk of general insensitivity towards others' humanity overshadows this, especially when personal evolution has been taking place and dissociatives are used more out of habit than anything else.

 

[Vastness]

^ Interesting that you experienced it from ephenidine too - I never experienced the same kind of sensation with ephenidine, and I have done fairly huge doses of it, apparently, but ephenidine can feel toxic in other ways.

This does make me think that it could be at least partly psychosomatic, as there isn't currently any reason to think that the 'phenidine dissociatives share the same toxicities as ACHs... although, of course, they might do - so little is known about them. Not that there isn't damage happening in either case, obviously... just that this may or may not be damage that can be directly "felt".

Concerningly, to my knowledge, kidney dysfunction in otherwise healthy people can be quite often symptomless and hard to detect until it is in it's advanced stages. The kidneys are pretty good as compensating for reduced function, but they do not have the same regenerative capacity as, say, the liver... so I'm guessing that in most cases of "mild damage" as far as such a term makes sense, it may not become relevant until such time as a natural deterioration of kidney function would be starting to happen anyway, so such a decline may happen faster or earlier in life. Obviously any irreversible damage done is done however, so such pessimistic speculation may not be of too much value... except as a motivator, hopefully, to take such dangers more seriously (just speaking for myself of course, YMMV).

 

[jhjhsdi]

Hmmm. I should definitely have my kidneys checked out asap. Thinking back I had bloods done about 3 or 4 years ago and there was something not 100% about them but I can't for the life of me remember what it was. Not producing enough or over producing something I think... I've done a LOT of ket since then and I mean a fucking stupid amount ?

 

[GearoftheYear]

I find this thread as a sticky slightly controversial but know a BLr death is attributed to regular MXE usage and bile duct issues.

I've had no issues with kidneys over more than a decade of heavy usage based on tests. But I expect issues when older, naturally as an alcoholic would expect liver issues. It's not something to be proud of. Increase in urination definitely occurs, but stops when you stop taking ket.

If regularly using in high doses, consider switching to IM or stopping. I recommend stopping. The trick is green tea and drinking pints of water. I noticed more issues when out of green tea. Also brief binges of high amounts seem to cause less problems than low, daily dosing.

I used to get terrible k cramps sniffing, IM'ing stopped that but so did all self-control.

Without being rude, some of the amounts people report here are nothing compared to what serious k addicts use. A few grams here and there is nothing. When you start pinning ozs or litres over short periods of time you're more in the dose range of the serious UK street kheads. I wouldn't recommend pinning more than 3g a day and if you do that daily, expect UTIs at minimum. A litre is 50g and a common amount for street ket distribution in the UK, it's not seen as a lot.

 

[G_Chem]

So I have used K very sparingly over the years. Probably used less than a gram total in my life time, I always keep it to small doses to compliment other drugs.

This past year I’ve used a majority of my total amount and a lot more frequent then ever before, although still nothing compared to most everyone I know..

Last session I took some LSD plus did maybe one 10-20mg bump later in the night.

The next two days any time is try to take a piss I’d be in so much pain, and I had to piss constantly. It was like whatever sphincter inside of there wasn’t opening properly to allow me to piss and it’d ache every time I tried. My urethra also felt like it was on fire.

It eventually went away but goddamn I think my days with K might be coming to an end. Sucks too cuz I really enjoy it as an end of the night addition to tripping.

-GC

 

[Vastness]

I find this thread as a sticky slightly controversial

How so? That ketamine and likely most other ACH dissociatives can cause bladder and organ damage is not in dispute, it's an established fact, albeit one that the dissociative-using community are still coming to terms with, to some extent. Like global warming, the question isn't if it's happening or not, but what to do about this unfortunate situation, and a sticky in these uncertain and uncomfortable times seems to be quite warranted, and not controversial at all. It serves a vital function by providing a dedicated place for those affected or those who are just interested to share knowledge and support in our small corner of the psycho-dissociative landscape.

Without being rude, some of the amounts people report here are nothing compared to what serious k addicts use. A few grams here and there is nothing. When you start pinning ozs or litres over short periods of time you're more in the dose range of the serious UK street kheads. I wouldn't recommend pinning more than 3g a day and if you do that daily, expect UTIs at minimum. A litre is 50g and a common amount for street ket distribution in the UK, it's not seen as a lot.

It's a factual statement I presume, so I do not presuime rudeness. I feel this paragraph could do with a caveat of a sort however, in that just because you or anyone is using less - even significantly less - than some of the most extreme examples of degenerate drug abuse (as much as I dislike that term)... this does not mean that you are safe.

I think it it this kind of thinking largely that has lead to the current situation where a non-negligible proportion of K users, not even the heaviest users, pretty much all are experiencing or have experienced abnormal bladder/urinary pains and associated functional issues, as well as more internal organ pains of perhaps less clear origin (bile duct, kidneys, etc). The only ones who've never experienced this just didn't use it long enough. But the perception of ketamine as "safe", coupled with vague drug myths of a sort, probably loosely based on some study or other, such as the idea that as long as you don't do more than a gram a day, or a gram a day for a week, one should be able to neatly step over any minor annoyances.

I would say it is apparent now that that is not case, but there are many still not aware of the hidden dangers.

 

[Chris Timothy]

I've used green tea often during my EPE binges one or two years ago. It was somewhat surprising to learn it technically cancels out some of the dissociation. I've been omitting it this year for that reason, but it does feel there's something missing now. Just like with combos with accurately dosed cannabinoids, it seems to biologize / humanize the experience. And such addition in quality seems to easily outweigh any subtraction of quantity (of dissociation).

If the tea's too strong it adds to the kidney load. But kidney load should be hydrated away anyway. So I see no good reason not to incorporate green tea, whether or not it mitigates harm directly.

On the topic of dissociative danger and harm, I think both the advocates and skeptics could be right. It could well be, for instance, that the difference between low harm tolerance and high harm tolerance comes mainly down to whether you manage to intuitively hydrate sufficiently. This makes ketamine both as powerful and versatile as the heavy users claim, and as tricky and treacherous as the weary light users claim. Because then just getting tired of high liquid consumption might be THE factor in kidney trauma, and this might not be a factor that you'll remain everlastingly equally conscious about. So that's both kinda cool and kinda fucked up at the same time. Because it simultaneously empowers the user as harm gets mediated by action, though also makes him or her face surreptitious portent because action is in turn mediated by the drug.