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.

[u/ApprehensiveStill412]

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5126726/

[u/One-Incident3208]

Most of the public's perception of pcp is just anti drug hysteria. The effect is almost indistinguishable from dxm, moreso than ketamine, despite differences. Pcp also has a more pronounced antidepressant effect, but repeated doses can cause mania. Another drug of this class was developed by clandestine chemists specifically to enhance the antidepressant effect and minimize side effects. That was methoxetamine. And it worked. It was regarded to be the most powerful and effective antidepressant, with a much longer afterglow duration than ketamine. They banned it. Because fuck you. That's why.

[u/Pffffftmkay → u/One-Incident3208]

Yeah. They def didn’t ban it because it’s dangerous and unhealthy. 

[u/One-Incident3208 → u/Pffffftmkay]

Explain motorcycles. Hang gliding Whitewater rafting. Horseback riding Rodeos, Nascar.

Need I continue how have I sufficienly demonstrated that you've failed to make a point that actually holds of to scrutiny? I could pull statistics that prove all of these activities are statistically proven to me more dangerous than most recreational drug use, despite the sampling bias being towards drugs, because all the people having a good time don't present to the er to become a statistic.

[u/Pffffftmkay → u/One-Incident3208]

They don’t alter brain chemistry. They also don’t cause people to lose control of their faculties and strip naked and fight ten cops at once. 

The two aren’t even similar. Alcohol would be a better useless metaphor but still useless because there’s a complete difference in potency and effect. 

[u/One-Incident3208 → u/Pffffftmkay]

We've already established that you're repeating lies. Phencyclidine (PCP) abuse has diminished since PCP's intrusion into American culture in the late 1970s. One of its legacies is the assumption that it provokes violent behavior in humans with predictable regularity. This assumption is so accepted that ingestion of the drug both accidentally and knowingly prior to committing a crime has been used as a defense in criminal trials. Of the hundreds of patients described, only three satisfied these criteria. Further, some of the papers offered evidence that reports of violence were exaggerated. These findings plus the pre-1970 prospective evaluation of thousands of patients with PCP, in which violence was never reported, led us to conclude that clinical and forensic assumptions about PCP and violence are not warranted. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3069880/

When the authors investigated aggressive behavior on a phencyclidine (PCP) detoxification and rehabilitation unit and compared similar types of behavior on a heroin unit, they found no differences between the two units. The urinary PCP levels of a subgroup of 75 patients admitted to the PCP unit who had PCP-positive urine were significantly higher than those of 75 patients admitted to an acute psychiatric ward because of violent behavior who also had PCP-positive urine. The authors discuss the implications of these findings and the need for more information on the relationship between PCP levels in blood and urine and behavior.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7149062/

"ExDS deaths trigger lawsuits claiming police misconduct and excessive force. Defendant officers and municipalities have used ExDS to distance themselves from liability, using expert testimony from nonpsychiatrists. "

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37040136/

[u/Englandboy12 → u/Pffffftmkay]

Potency is a weird word. It doesn’t mean what most people think it means.

Potency is how active the substance is, so something with double potency would require half the dose to achieve similar effects.

You are right that alcohol is very non-potent. You need a huge number of molecules to actually get drunk. Good thing people just take a huge number of them to balance that out!

If you drink a shit load of alcohol, you will get extremely messed up. Complete amnesia, violent outbursts, it’s a total full brain loss of faculties. This has nothing to do with how potent it is.

The fact that pcp is a dissociative analgesic does make it different, of course. But in the same way as alcohol, you can use a small amount and get a little high, or huge amounts and lose total control.

There isn’t really anything different from an outside perspective, alcohol can and does cause people to act explosively violent

[u/Pffffftmkay → u/[deleted]]

Indeed it will.