Ketamine

Ketamine is an anesthetic medication, which is very small doses that can be used to help control pain in those that have not responded to standard treatment. It should be prescribed by the advice of a specialist managing your care.

How to use it?

Your pain care consultant will discuss the best way for you to take it. Where possible its given as a liquid medicine by mouth. Most patients take it three or four times a day.

How long will I need to take ketamine?

This will depend on why you are taking it and how your pain responds to treatment.

You can continue taking as long as it helps your pain if you do not have any side effects.

It may be necessary for your doctor to change the dose.

Are there side effects of taking ketamine?

Everyone reacts differently to medication but you may not experience any of these.

It is advisable to report any side effects to your doctor. Vivid dreams, nightmares, mood swings, hallucinations, or feeling restless. These symptoms can often be helped with the addition of other medications, enabling you to continue using ketamine without experiencing these side effects. High blood pressure and fast pulse rate. The doctor will monitor your blood pressure and pulse rate when you start treatment and then as needed.

Typical Ketamine Recreational Dose Ranges

Abuse of large doses can also lead to powerful visual hallucinations that are intensified by environmental stimuli. Coma and deep unconsciousness can occur.

In smaller doses, such as those typically used recreational Ketamine can lead to various effects such as:

• feelings of calmness and relaxation, relief from pain
• depressed mental state
• dizziness
• detached feeling from body
• slurred speech
• diminished reflexes
• hallucinations lasting from 30 to 60 minutes
• nystagmus (repetitive, uncontrolled movements of the eyes).

Ketamine Health Hazards & Side Effects

• Short-term: Problems with attention, learning and memory more so, patient will experience dreamlike states, hallucinations, sedation, confusion also, loss of memory either, raised blood pressure, unconsciousness and dangerously slowed breathing.
• Long-term: Ulcers with pain in the bladder, kidney problems also, stomach pain with depression and poor memory.

     Side Effects

The most common side effects associated with ketamine when used medically are nausea, vomiting, dizziness, diplopia (double vision), drowsiness, dysphoria (unease, restlessness), and confusion. There is also the risk of HIV, hepatitis, and other infectious diseases from shared needles more so, use can be fatal in people who are alcoholics or acutely intoxicated with alcohol.

The intensity of side effects related to the dose of the drug consumed.

Central nervous system side effects such as agitation are less intense than those seen with PCP abuse.

For those who abuse ketamine via insufflation (“snorting”) adverse reactions may be less serious, but still present. Fast heart rate on like, high blood pressure, hallucinations, and impaired consciousness upon presentation to the emergency department may be most common effects with “snorting”.

Tolerance; can build to the effects over time, requiring greater doses of the drug to reach the same level of effect. Reports shows that dissociative effects may also disappear over time. The dissociative effect alters the users perception of light and sound and produces feelings of detachment from self and surroundings.

Withdrawal; may occur after chronic extended use of ketamine. Withdrawal symptoms may include chills, sweats, excitation on like, hallucinations also teary eyes and drug cravings.

Overdose

• Contact emergency care such as 911 for an overdose case, they should be contacted immediately because an overdose can lead to unconsciousness and dangerously slowed breathing. There is no antidote for this drug.
• Overdose situations are treated with symptomatic and supportive care in the hospital setting. In the emergency department, adverse effects typically resolve in 1 to 3 hours.
• Benzodiazepines such as lorazepam may be used if needed for seizures, excitation, or muscle rigidity.
• Respiratory support is rarely needed but assisted ventilation or supplemental oxygen may be required on like, respiratory depression may be more likely if combined with sedatives.