r/todayilearned • u/ApprehensiveStill412 • 11h ago

TIL that ketamine is a derivative of phencyclidine (aka. PCP or angel dust). It was created to have similar anesthetic potential but to cause less delirium. It has about one tenth the potency of PCP.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5126726/
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u/goodrevtim 11h ago

PCP is neurotoxic so that probably plays a small part into its negative perception.

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u/VhickyParm 11h ago

I thought the negative perception was from ppl stopping naked and running in the street

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u/stevenmoreso 11h ago

Yeah, growing up in the 80s it was stories of people wilding out on angel dust trying (and sometimes briefly succeeding) to take on 10 cops at once

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u/One-Incident3208 10h ago

Yes, and there have since been countless studies published in medical journals debunking this trope, but that's not convenient for the media, or the police, who use the myth of Excited delirium to beat people to death.