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Comment by lomidrevo | Hacker News Reader

The ketamine depression therapy operates with doses of no more than 100mg, taken once or twice a month.

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!

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No drug user starts out by saying, "I'm going to get addicted to this." It creeps up on you. 100mg works for a week, then you need 125mg to maintain the effects, then 175mg, and so on. There was a post on reddit about a heroin addicts experience with the drug. It was eery to hear how it becomes part of your life so easily.

I think Ketamine has great potential, but the risk of abuse far outweighs the benefits.

Heroin is very addictive, Ketamine is not.

Tolerance builds quickly and a strong mental addiction develops quickly. Having to take a shit ton constantly means you're pissing brown within a few months and cessation means withdrawals (nothing even close to heroin, but still there).

Source: my friend with a ketamine addiction.

Self control goes a long way. Particularly for something that's not physically addictive.

That it does, but you cannot dismiss the addictive qualities of ketamine with such a statement, because it is an addictive drug. What part of tolerance build up and withdrawals makes you think it isn't physically addictive? Both are physical documented phenomena.

Ketamine certainly is addictive. I reckon the recreational value of K is seriously weakened by this factor. There are better things to trip on, that don't risk compulsive over consumption.

From an above comment: "My wife just finished a two day ketamine booster yesterday, and without the use of ketamine she would not be able to walk or even open and close her hands. Nothing else has ever helped her CRPS and ketamine has improved her quality of life in immeasurable ways."

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?

Let me clarify my comment as I do think it had a more aggressive tone than I intended.

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.

Depends on why you're taking it. For a lot of people taking it for theraputic reasons, the high feeling is a feeling that one would rather do without. When I first started taking klonopin, it made me not give a shit in the world, which was actually annoying, because I wanted to get into a mindset to actually do stuff, not get high off my ass. Tolerance on the prescribed dose helped me there; I worry less about the stuff that doesn't matter, but I can actually function better.

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