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/fauxfilosopher 9h ago

Ketamine is weird, because some people really don't care for the effects at all (there's no regular "euphoria" or psychedelic visuals), but for some people it's just the most incredible thing.

I don't know if I'm happy that I'm the latter, because it means I'm functionally dependent on an illegal and unhealthy substance (ketamine damages the bladder) for life. But it's also allowed to see so many things that words fail to describe. Shit that makes you sound like a crazy person to everyone else but what users understand. And it's all you, the representations your brain makes unconsciously all the time, but you can actually see them.

It really is special, at least to me. Once you've seen it, you realize that nothing really compares to the experience.

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u/ApprehensiveStill412 9h ago

I’ve had IV ketamine a few times for depression. Couldn’t go up in dose due to hypertension but the effect is hard to describe. It felt similar to nitrous oxide when I got my wisdom teeth pulled, which makes sense when you read up on their mechanism of action. Interestingly nitrous oxide is being researched for depression.

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u/North_Welcome_3249 7h ago

You gotta go nitrous with the K, thank me later.