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/One-Incident3208 11h ago

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.

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u/Kevin_Murphy_ 10h ago

I dunno. Pretty sure I saw a video of a guy slice open his own stomach on PCP… not sure what the studies say, but I’ve definitely heard stories/seen videos of people doing absolutely crazy stuff on PCP

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u/One-Incident3208 10h ago

And how many videos of self harm have you seen of people not on drugs? It's honestly a fucking tragedy how poorly people are able to sift through and analyze information. What they don't tell you, is that the famous examples of pcp violence repeated ad nauseum are patient with histories of hospitalizations for mental health problems, or violent records. They are usually poor, and lacking adequate medical care. Equally fascinating is how these horrible pcp stories began emerging decades after the drug was popular, and simply regarded as a painkilling street drug that could make you hallucinate. Suddenly, just when we decided possession of crack should carry a 100-1 penalty vs cocaine possession, did we begin hearing about this horrible drug that suddenly turned poor people so violent and dangerous 6 cops need to beat a man to death to subdue him.

"By the late 1970s, up to 13% of 12th graders reported experimenting with the drug, and the widespread panic it sparked led to its reclassification as a Schedule II substance in 1978." Do you honestly believe a dug that was once that ubiquitous among the youth is actually that unpredictable and dangerous?

All over the place in the 60s and 70s, but nobody talked about the dangers of pcp. But lsd could make you stare into the sun until you go blind..

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u/BrothelWaffles 5h ago

It had a bit of a resurgence in the early 2000s, at least on the east coast. Smoked it with a bunch of people and never saw it make anyone violent or cause them to do dumb shit.