What is ketamine?
Ketamine is a short-acting general anaesthetic for human and veterinary use. The drug was first manufactured in the United States in the 1960s and has been described as a 'dissociative anaesthetic' because of its ability to induce a lack of responsive awareness, not only to pain, but also to the general environment.
It is not known exactly how ketamine affects the brain and creates the dissociative effect, however, ketamine is believed to bind to NMDA receptors, which play a key role in thinking, memory, seeing, hearing, pain and other senses. It is believed that the drug blocks normal thinking, memory formation, pain and other incoming data, and that the mind then fills the resulting vacuum with a 'new' reality.
Other names for ketamine
Ketamine is also known as Special K or K.
How many Australians have used ketamine?
Very few Australians have ever tried ketamine. According to the most recent research, 99 per cent of the Australian population have never used ketamine.
Ketamine is a substance that tends to be taken by drug users who have been using drugs (e.g., ecstasy or methamphetamine) for some time. It is usually used in conjunction with other substances and as such, it is very rare to find young Australians trying this drug.
How is ketamine used?
Ketamine is manufactured as a liquid and can be sold on the black market in this form. It is usually dried out into a powder and then used intranasally (‘snorted’) in small amounts known as ‘bumps’. A small number of ketamine users have experimented with injecting the drug.
What are the short-term effects of ketamine?
Ketamine affects different people in different ways. The effect can be influenced by many things including how much of the drug is taken, the environment it is used in, as well as the weight, size and mood of the person using it.
Short-term effects include:
- euphoria
- hallucinations
- pleasant sensations of floating and stimulation
- confusion
- dizziness
- impaired motor co-ordination
- slurred speech
- nausea and vomiting.
The effects of a small amount of ketamine can resemble an out-of-body experience. Many who take large amounts of the drug are convinced that their experiences were real even though they accept that they took a drug. They insist that the drug opened a door into another world. This is often described as the ‘K-hole’. Sometimes perception in this 'other world' develops into a paranoid psychosis.
What are the long-term effects of ketamine?
Like any drug, ketamine will affect different people in different ways and there is no way of knowing how the drug will affect the person using it in the long-term. However, people who use ketamine regularly can become dependent on the drug.
One long-term effect of using the drug is ‘flashbacks’. A flashback is a spontaneous recurrence of a specific experience which occurred while taking the drug. This is similar to the effect that people can experience on LSD.
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