Health - Long term ketamine use

[Niteflights]

I am wondering if any one on the forum knows anyone who has engaged in regular ketamine use for more than a year. By regular I mean at least once per week. I wonder if they could report back on what long term effects and what useage pattern they had.

It would be extremely informative to hear from anyone who witnessed several years of experience with this substance.

best,
Andrei

[enquirewithin]

Once a week and several times a week are very different propositions....

[schwing]

Tootie the Fruity has heard of people that used up about a gram per week for years but still seem to be mentally stable and otherwise fine. And he has also heard of people using a gram+ for a few months that are now pretty fucked up. They seem to be losing grip on reality and believe in certain things that no rational people will believe... not to mention that they are in denial that they have a problem in the first place.

As for general long-term effects, from what I've read from the net the commonly reported ones seem to be short-term memory deficits and certain cognitive functions (can't remember which ones though). As for paranoia and delusions, I'm not sure if they're permanent side-effects or if they'll go away with abstinence from K.

[name_mike]

hi, first post so bear with me.

swim used to use ketamine at least 2 days a week for about 6 years and has had periods when using every day for maybe a month and has only noticed a slightly worse memory than what he could have had but this could be due to any of the other drugs swim uses.

[mseerob]

I have a great belief in brain damage......

[enquirewithin]

Originally Posted by mseerob

I have a great belief in brain damage......

Well, everyone has to believe in something!

[arman]

brain damage is bullshit IMO. SWIM IM'ed K for about 6 months frequently (around 3 times weekly) and just a little change about they way that he look into world changed, no parmanent change. Everything was ok after 1 month of withdrawal.

btw ive done a lot of reading about Olney's lesions and i believe its not true for ketamine.

[mseerob]

Originally Posted by arman

brain damage is bullshit IMO. SWIM IM'ed K for about 6 months frequently (around 3 times weekly) and just a little change about they way that he look into world changed, no parmanent change. Everything was ok after 1 month of withdrawal.

btw ive done a lot of reading about Olney's lesions and i believe its not true for ketamine.

Well its up you swiy and everyone else that wishes to use ketamine recreationally. It's swiy decision really! That shit is not meant to be used as a party drug so its your brain thats getting affected. Im pretty sure that it can cause some sort of damage to the brain if you use it a lot. Its a damn tranquilizer like come on think about it. This shit aint marijuana!!! Thats what swiy believe but your not a scientist. Like swim said its up 2 swiy if swiy would like to use it.

[TMM]

Originally Posted by mseerob

Well its up you swiy and everyone else that wishes to use ketamine recreationally. It's swiy decision really! That shit is not meant to be used as a party drug so its your brain thats getting affected. Im pretty sure that it can cause some sort of damage to the brain if you use it a lot. Its a damn tranquilizer like come on think about it. This shit aint marijuana!!! Thats what swiy believe but your not a scientist. Like swim said its up 2 swiy if swiy would like to use it.

Evidence trumps intuition.

Do you have any?

[mseerob]

swim cant post the link or he will get a warning... I read it on erowid

[Paracelsus]

You can post links to Erowid. They're not really a forum.

[mseerob]

Read it for yourself if you havent already.

http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/dxm/...alth1.shtml#I2


Fuck that, ketamine can even kill you!!!

[Paracelsus]

I read that for myself a long time ago. The author of that paper retracted his statement (it says that in the paper - take a closer look). The section you linked to describes White's very thin hypothesis on how Olney's Lesions happen. There is absolutely NO proof that this happens in humans. And evidence is starting to heap that it actually does NOT happen in humans and under some circumstances not even in rats. Just read the response to that paper. Note that both White and Anderson are quite extreme in their views - one is convinced that Dissociatives burn holes into neurons and the other one thinks they - especially DXM - are pretty much safe.

Ketamine was the cause of death in a handful of fatalities. It is generally VERY safe to use clinically (it's sometimes used as a tranquilizer and analgesic for burn victims who don't respond to opiates) and recreationally. It is extremely hard to overdose on.

On the other hand, ketamine tends to fuck with the way how users perceive the surrounding universe - most likely (my opinion) through the same mechanism like extreme religiosity changes the way believers see the world (temporal lobe epilepsy). And it has recently been involved in some cases of ulcerative cystitis (bladder damage). Ketamine also inhibits dendrite growth. There is no evidence of lasting brain damage from ketamine. Alcohol is much more damaging to neurons than ketamine.

[enquirewithin]

Originally Posted by mseerob

Read it for yourself if you havent already.

http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/dxm/...alth1.shtml#I2


Fuck that, ketamine can even kill you!!!

All drugs affect your brain. They wouldn't be drugs otherwise! For more details about ketamine read Dr. Karl Jansen's Ketamine Dreams and Realities.

There have been virtually no cases of death from ketamine overdoses (despite the fact it can make you feel like you are dying!). Ketamine deaths result from accidents, mainly people falling into baths and swimming pools. There was case near where SWIM lives recently of a woman stupid to drive a car after sniffing ketamine. She lived but crashed her car.

[TMM]

Originally Posted by mseerob

Read it for yourself if you havent already.

http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/dxm/...alth1.shtml#I2


Fuck that, ketamine can even kill you!!!

As Paracelsus said, William White retracted the conclusions of this paper.

http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/dxm/dxm_health3.shtml

So yeah, don't believe everything you read.

[KBLSD]

K is one of few drugs swim has never tried but really wants to swim hears its intense

[Turboawd93]

would you believe one has done over a 4 grams a week.. sometimes more, for the past 6 months with no side effects felt after about 3 days off?

[Graduisic]

as a long term (going on 5 years), high-dose dissociative user, swim has a little bit of insight on the whole brain damage/cognitive impairment thing. his drug of choice is DXM, but it's still on the same subject of Olney's lesions. swim has consistently dosed approx 1g of DXM for the past 2 years, and in his early teenage years consistently dosed 600mg on a regular basis. in his first year of college swim abused his freedom and spent all his time tripping and writing music. often he would dose 900mg at night for 3 nights straight, until he felt that the journey was really 'over'. for the first semester, he was perfectly functional at school, had a GPA of 3.7. psychologically, he was as sound as he could be, being the guy that he was. long-term use caused some initial behavioral side effects and minor short-term memory loss for maybe two days after tripping. his natural tendency to be anti-social was amplified (lack of communications skills, lack of desire to be around people, etc.), and in between doses he would sometimes experience a great deal of depression. his psyche was weakened to the point where he figured he must've just totally cooked his brain. a few months before the school year ended, he was prescribed Celexa (citalopram) from his doctor for depression. he noticed a great deal of similarity between them; no real major effects for the first few weeks of use, then noticing changes in behavior. once again, it made him feel anti-social and kind of brain-fried. (swim does NOT recommend the following for anyone) swim now still takes celexa, and once every two weeks he trips. these two drugs have a synergistic effect on swim. people notice that he laughs more and is more sociable. on someone else, this combination can, and probably would cause serotonin syndrome... but that just doesn't seem to be the case for swim.

but i digress. swim has come to understand that dissociatives alter brain chemistry just like SSRI's, and this chemical change might be self-evaluated as brain damage. based on swim's experience and the fact that he has not mentally deteriorated through 5 years of dissociative use, he believes that the concept of olney's lesions is a heap o' crap. NMDA receptor antagonists can cause cognitive impairment to the point of lacking all motor skills, so being in a consistent state of dissociation (without allowing any time for the drug to leave the system) would cause an individual to exhibit symptoms and behaviors of physical brain damage.

they are among the most powerful cognitive impairing drugs. as such, they certainly alter one's mind and doing so is very dangerous. so, in the end, we are left with a high school chemistry question: is the change physical or chemical? my vote is chemical