4 ms·
Studies about ketamine have been rolling in over the past few years. Some important notes: 1. Almost all of these are looking at IV ketamine at very low doses
by phren0logy 14y ago
Studies about ketamine have been rolling in over the past few years. Some important notes:
1. Almost all of these are looking at IV ketamine at very low doses (lower than anestheic or "recreational" dosing).
2. Like most of these trials, this is also a small trial (18 patients).
3. This was an adjunctive therapy, for patients who were on stable dosing of lithium or valproic acid which are first line for bipolar disorder.
Cool stuff, but preliminary at this point. Hopefully it will lead to options that are safer, more convenient, and with less abuse potential but maintain the rapid response that appears to be related to glutamatergic activity.
- rdl 14y agoRecreational ketamine use is almost all insufflated (snorted) or intramuscular (IM) injection, right? I'm not sure how different the effects would be for IM vs. IV, except maybe a slightly faster onset and higher peak. The "rule of halves" for different forms of drugs (pill vs. mucous membrane/sublingual vs. insufflated vs. smoked vs. injected) is interesting, but I'm not sure where IM vs. IV falls.
- ArmstrongRSBC 14y agoInsufflated it takes about ten minutes to come on. It is extremely overwhelming - not necessarily in a bad way. Disassociates are by far the weirded class of drugs.
- mikescar 14y agoI've witnessed enough weird ketamine trips to hope nobody close bothers with it again. It's too sketchy and has a wide variety of effects on people, depending on your brain chemistry. It can produce sedation, or very fast anti-depressant effects, and/or other unusual body responses [1]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketamine#Adverse_effects http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketamine#Adverse_effects
- rdl 14y agoWhereas I think it is dramatically underused -- it's a great battlefield or improvised conditions anaesthetic, since it doesn't depress respiration very much. All of the psychiatric features are minor compared to being able to do surgery quickly and not kill the patient.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- Alex3917 14y agoNot sure if this is legit or not, but here is a post from Reddit from someone claiming to be a ketamine researcher giving advice on how one could approximate this methodology on one's own: http://www.reddit.com/r/Drugs/comments/h3lbk/ketamine_as_a_powerful_antidepressant_if_you_have/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Drugs/comments/h3lbk/ketamine_as_a_p... It addresses the issue of how one would do this via insufflation instead of IV. For reference here is the methodology of the actual study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22297150 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22297150
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]