Hacker News Reader

Comment by meepmorp | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

???

Ketamine is only ever recommended as a last ditch treatment in most situations as it comes with it a pretty high risk of psychotic issues. Which is the reason it is only really used on children - for some unknown reason they have much lower risk.

But more importantly, you seem to be ignoring the fact that ketamine is intentionally being abused as a recreational drug exactly for it's psychotic effects. I think the link between abusing a drug for its psychotic effects and... uh... psychotic actions would be pretty direct.

It's used in combat and trauma medicine, as it doesn't drop blood pressure or cause respiratory depression.

There is a vast gulf separating the administration of ketamine for pain relief in trauma patients or the sedation of persons with altered mental status during EMS transport and chronic unsupervised recreational use.

I know, and I never said or implied differently. I'm was originally making the point that is not a "HORSE DRUG," it's a drug that's approved for human use and has been for half a century.

The Horse Drug thing is a bit of an inside joke - Ketamine is a pretty controlled substance, so many of the people who use it recreationally (allegedly) get it through veterinarian sources.

Someone I know who's definitely not me has tried some special K diverted from a Mexican veterinary clinic.

If it's typically used in quantities large enough to have a decent chance of causing serious side effects like brain lesions and permanent personality changes then I'm very surprised.

That's with chronic use over a long period of time - think recreational users after a couple years.

Because there couldn’t be a relationship between ‘causing brain lesions with frequent use’ and ‘acting weird?’

Reply on news.ycombinator.com