http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/29811499
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/25186316
Exercise extreme caution, the article doesn't even seem to acknowledge the seriousness of this at all...
Exercise extreme caution, the article doesn't even seem to acknowledge the seriousness of this at all...
Ketamine abusers typically consume well upwards of a gram, or a couple, daily.
This is a similar situation as the difference between having two glasses of wine on Sundays, and downing a fifth of hard liquor every day.
Edit: FYA: "Matt developed K bladder after taking as much as 15g of the drug a day."
Yeah...if anything, it's testament to the relative safety of the drug, if taking 150x the therapeutic dose daily did not cause the individual to drop dead right away!
I think Ketamine has great potential, but the risk of abuse far outweighs the benefits.
Source: my friend with a ketamine addiction.
You think the risk of abuse outweighs the above potential benefits? Seriously?
Additionally, dosage size and frequency greatly affects tolerance development. There is an order of magnitude difference between the amounts being taken recreationally, and the amounts that have been discussed for treatement.
Based on your stance, I assume you also are strongly opposed to the majority of prescibed anti-anxiety, muscle relaxer, and analgesic medication?
I think ketamine could work wonders for adults who understand the risks of the medication. But responsible adults like the one referenced in your quote are not the only ones taking this medication. I disagree with the use of ketamine and similar drugs because 1. I think many of these disorders are misdiagnosed. For example, a middle aged man could be having anxiety as a result of low testosterone rather than a chemical imbalance. 2. I've personally known people who took drugs in therapeutic doses(prescribed to them) similar to ketamine. They eventually became very comfortable with the drug and saw no harm in asking doctors for a higher dose and even taking it recreationally "once in a while." As you can imagine, once in a while became more frequent than they had planned.
That being said, I've seen anti-anxiety medications work wonders for people. The drugs are not the problem themselves, but rather the lack of education that surrounds them. People too often want to walk into the doctors office and get a pill to fix whatever ails them. My stance is that a quick conversation with a doctor does not warrant a prescription for something like ketamine, ritalin, klonopin, etc. but there are definitely people who need these drugs.
All of these horror stories you link to sound like people who have been habitually abusing ketamine, taking ever larger doses as they build up a tolerance. Pretty much ANYTHING can be abused; do we ban sleeping pills because you can swallow a whole bottle and kill yourself?
Well, here in China, they only supply 3-5 sleeping pills or so after consultation, and you can no longer buy them over the counter. This is precisely because too many people were killing themselves.
With proper safety studies, monitoring, and dosing it seems like there would be less chance of this happening.