Hacker News Reader

Comment by mabbo | Hacker News Reader

> We pay $375 for a 40-minute infusion

Having no knowledge on the matter, what's the price comparison to just buying ketamine illegally and taking it without a doctor's help?

Depression is like (or possibly is) a form of chronic pain. People suffering from it severely might be willing to do anything for relief. Here's good information that a currently-illegal drug can help but if you want to do it legally you might need to take on a third job just to pay the costs.

It reminds me a bit of the South Park episode[0] where 'concentrated dose of about $180,000 shot directly into the bloodstream' is discovered as the cure to AIDS. Volunteers inform poverty-stricken Africa that all those suffering from AIDS have to do is inject themselves with piles of cash.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonsil_Trouble

View on HN

Ket will set you back anywhere from $50-$150 per gram, depending on where in the world you are, and is of varying quality. It looks like they're using up to 1/2 a gram for treatment.

I think the most of that $375 goes towards staffing costs, rather than the drug itself. Ketamine though legitimate channels costs about $5-$10 per gram from what I've heard.

I think that the new part of this publication that they now have an easy to administer nose spray.

Do you have a source on that 1/2 gram number? My reading has lead me to believe that a typical therapeutic dose for these treatments is between 60-75mg. I could be way off, though.

It's .5mg/kg, so even 50 mg is enough for a pretty big guy. 500mg would knock you out for awhile. He might be misplacing a decimal there.

I was looking at studies earlier today, and the upper limit (assuming a 100 kg person) was 0.5 g from one of the studies.

That can't be right, 0.5g will knock out a horse for many hours

> It looks like they're using up to 1/2 a gram for treatment.

Typically they use 0.5mg/kg. I think you may be confusing milligrams (mg) with grams (g).

I was told when I had it done that almost all of the cost was the paid time for a trained professional to do the IV, since ketamine for medical purposes costs on the order of cents per gram or less.

My doctor uses a sedative also to make sure you don't freak out during the treatment. I think most doctors do this. You need to factor that into the cost too.

Sedatives (probably benzodiazepines) are also very inexpensive (on the order of less than a dollar) compared to the $375 figure.

> Having no knowledge on the matter, what's the price comparison to just buying ketamine illegally and taking it without a doctor's help?

It's way cheaper on the black market. The actual cost of manufacture isn't very high, and I don't think it falls under any patents needing licensing. Probably you're mostly paying for the labor.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com