Ketamine
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A Pile of Drugs
A pile of ketamine and pills. Ketamine—chemically, a compound called ketamine hydrochloride—is a drug that was developed in the 1960s to sedate animals and humans for surgery, though it eventually was replaced by medications that worked faster with less risk. Beginning in the 1990s, initially to the puzzlement of police, burglars began breaking into veterinary clinics and stealing ketamine. They soon learned that recreational drug users had discovered ketamine and were turning it into the new hallucinogenic party drug. In its standard powdered form, ketamine looked like cocaine, and could be snorted in the same way. But it also could be easily modified for injecting, smoking or even mixing into drinks.
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Snorting Ketamine Lines
Close-up of a user snorting a line of Ketamine. The drug, also known on the street as “Special K,” provides users with a hallucinogenic experience that is shorter in duration than LSD or PCP. Another selling point to users was that the drug was only mildly addictive compared to other popular party drugs such as crack and methamphetamine. And finally, because ketamine was metabolized faster than other hallucinogens and narcotics, users didn’t have to worry as much about flunking employers’ drug tests. The drug also had another, darker, attraction to sexual predators, since they could slip it into another person’s drink and put the victim into a disoriented, helpless state.
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Powder Piles
Ketamine powder being dumped onto a pile. Because ketamine is an anesthetic that causes a loss of sensation, it makes users feel drunk, relaxed, euphoric and almost as if they are in the middle of a dream. But in addition to rendering a user largely helpless and vulnerable to victimization, ketamine use also carries health risks. In 2008, British urologists published a letter in the British Medical Journal, warning that they had encountered a number of ketamine abusers with severe bladder damage. A 2010 article in the Guardian, a UK newspaper, reported that an additional 15-20 other users had developed such problems, and two actually had to have their bladders surgically removed. Some believe the bladder injuries are caused by impurities, rather than by the drug itself.
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Kutting Up Ketamine
An anonymous user puts ketamine on a mirror to snort. Ketamine was first synthesized by the early 1960s. It is closely related chemically to PCP, another drug initially developed as an anesthetic that migrated to the street. In fact, ketamine initially was seen as a less dangerous replacement for PCP, after that drug was withdrawn from human use in 1965 after reports of patients complaining of long-lasting hallucinogenic effects. Ketamine, in contrast, was billed as a safe, potent short-duration intravenous anesthetic and pain reliever that allowed patients to continue breathing normally. The drug did turn out to have some value for treating human patients with specific problems, such as those suffering with reflex sympathetic dystrophy, a chronic pain neurological syndrome. But its side effects led it to be replaced for most uses by other drugs, except in veterinary procedures.
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Powder Lines
Ketamine powder seen spread out in lines on a table. The non-medical use of ketamine actually began in the mid-1960s, just a few years after the drug was first developed. Underground chemists learned to synthesize ketamine and there were reports of it being sold on the streets of Los Angeles and San Francisco in the early 1970s. The earliest users were mostly intellectuals who experimented with the drug in the same fashion as LSD was initially used, as a means of exploring different states of consciousness. By the late 1970s, however, ketamine use began to shift more toward recreational abusers in search of a quick high.
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Whole Lotta Ketamine
Bags of confiscated ketamine. In the early 1980s, ketamine use began growing among urban youth and young, adventurous adults in the U.S. and Great Britain. Its popularity paralleled the rising phenomenon of dance clubs that played long, seamless “club mix” versions of songs and introduced special lighting and other effects to give patrons a more vivid sensory experience. At early raves, ketamine sometimes was passed off on unsuspecting buyers who thought it was ecstasy, but in time, it emerged as a drug of choice that attracted ravers, DJs and musicians. The term “lost in a K hole” became a euphemism for a hallucinogenic ketamine trip.
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The Weight of Drugs
Ketamine is weighed for a drug dealing. Drugs like ketamine aren't sold on the street corner; middle-class kids often order their drugs through mobile phone text messages and have them delivered to frat houses, bars and night clubs. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the popularity of the drug in the rave scene inspired songs with titles such as “K-Street D-tour,” “Ketamine Entity,” and the Chemical Brothers’ “Lost in the K Hole,” whose cryptic lyrics—simply the words “new idea,” repeated over and over”—mimic the confused haze induced by the drug.
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Special K Syringe
Kai'enne, 27, holds a syringe of ketamine. Kai'enne injects the drug, instead of snorting it, and believes her trip to be a spiritual journey. In recent years, medical researchers actually have discovered that ketamine might have legitimate value as a fast-acting emergency treatment for severely depressed patients, particularly ones who are suicidal. In contrast to conventional antidepressants, which generally take weeks to work if they work at all, researchers have found that ketamine can lessen a patient’s depression in hours. A 2010 study by Yale University researchers revealed that the drug may actually restore connections between brain cells damaged by chronic stress. But so far clinical use has been limited, because it must be administered intravenously under medical supervision, and can cause short-term psychotic symptoms in some patients.
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Smiley Snorting
Ketamine dealer, "Smiley", snorting a line of ketamine. Snorting small amounts of the drug is known as 'doing bumps'. While some ketamine is stolen or diverted from legitimate users and redirected to the street, the drug also can be synthesized by clandestine labs, since the process for making bootleg ketamine is widely available on the Internet. Ketamine is often converted from liquid form into crystals, using everyday appliances such as a microwave oven or a hair dryer, or simply by allowing the liquid to evaporate in open air. The resulting crystals can be ground or crushed into a fine powder that sells for as little as $20 for a 100 to 200 milligram package.
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Shooting Up Special K
Ketamine addict, Chris, injects ketamine. The drug acts as a stimulant and causes hallucinations and disorientation. A 2001 study by University College London researchers found that heavy users of the drug suffered from memory problems, and performed poorly on skills such as reading names. In the course of a year, their performance actually worsened. Occasional users of the drug performed better on the tests. But both occasional and heavy ketamine users showed evidence of unusual beliefs or mild delusions, such as conspiracy theories, in psychological testing. Other studies have linked the drug to kidney and bladder damage.
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Seized Drugs
Detective John Margetson holds a bag of seized ketamine from a raid. In January 2011, Canadian border patrol agents made what they said was the largest ketamine bust in Canadian history in Vancouver. Inspectors became suspicious of a shipping container of coffee mugs from Hong Kong, after an x-ray inspection showed oddities. Inside the container, they found that about a quarter of the approximately 400 boxes of coffee mugs also contained sealed bags of ketamine—about a ton of it. The amount seized, which would have provided more than a million doses for abusers, was worth $15 million on the street.
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Pumping In Drugs
An addict injecting himself with ketamine. Ketamine became a controlled Schedule III substance in the U.S. in 1999, based on U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency data showing growing abuse of the drug. The legal marketed forms of ketamine—Ketalar for human use, and Ketaset, Ketajet and Vetalar for veterinary use—are available only to licensed medical and veterinary professionals. Because ketamine is more difficult to synthesize than other illegal drugs such as methamphetamine, the vast majority of ketamine distributed illegally in the U.S. is diverted or stolen from legitimate sources. From 1994 to 2001, the portion of U.S. emergency room admissions mentioned ketamine use increased 36-fold, from 19 to 679.
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On the Lookout
A Customs agent's badge. Ketamine trafficking and abuse has become a global problem, according to a recent U.S. Department of State report. In addition to the U.S., Canada and the U.K, officials in Hong Kong authorities now consider the drug to be one of their biggest problems. In 2008, Taiwanese officials seized 30 kilograms of ketamine that had arrived from China on one of the first direct cargo flights allowed between China and Taiwan. In India, officials recently busted an international ring that supplied ketamine and other drugs to the U.S., utilizing courier services.
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Ketamine Cash Out
Ketamine dealer, "Smiley", shows his earnings from his drug dealings. Ketamine and other drugs are on the table. Smiley usually sells an ounce for $600; in a good week, he can make a $20,000 profit, he says. But the ketamine trade exacts a higher price from users in terms of damage to their health. According to a 2009 Reuters article, a recent study in Hong Kong of 97 drug users, most of whom primarily took ketamine, found that over 60 percent of them suffered from depression, 31 percent complained of poor concentration, and 23 percent had memory problems.
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Ketamine Addict
Ketamine addict, Chris, stands in a Toronto neighborhood. More ketamine, or "Special K" is consumed in Toronto than any other North American city. According to a recent Wired magazine article, as many as 70 percent of rave-goers in Toronto report taking ketamine. A study by researchers at Toronto’s Ryerson University found that recreational ketamine users often felt as if they left their bodies or underwent other bizarre physical transformations. These effects occur because the drug reduces transmission of the brain chemical glutamate through a particular class of molecular gateways, and interferes with glutamate’s ability to energize certain brain areas. As a result, ketamine creates sensations of illusory movement.
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Drugs and More Drugs
Bags of Ketamine on table among other drugs. Ketamine is generally sold as either an odorless, colorless liquid or as an off-white powder. In a recent study by scientists at Toronto’s Ryerson University, about three-quarters of ketamine users reported having had a feeling of temporarily leaving their bodies, usually on several occasions. 60 percent experienced sensations of rapidly moving up and down, falling, flying, or spinning.About 42 percent believed they saw themselves from an outside vantage point, and 41 percent had hallucinations of sitting up, moving a limb, or walking around a room, only to realize later that they had remained motionless.
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Dangerous Drug Injection
Chris, 27, injects ketamine into his vein, a dangerous approach in which risks include collapsed veins and blood clots. He has been addicted to ketamine for eight years. Although opiates such as heroin are more strongly physically addictive that ketamine, the drug can be psychologically addictive, and people who use it regularly may find it difficult to stop. The extreme euphoria induced by the drug has a reinforcing effect on users, addiction experts say. Kicking ketamine generally requires close supervision from a physician or another health-care professional, so that the user doesn’t resume using the drug when cravings begin.
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Containers of Ketamine
Bags of ketamine sit on a table. Ketamine is a popular veterinary anesthetic and painkiller, which can be used on a variety of animals. Illicit use of ketamine is commonly diverted from veterinary sources. Two British women recently were hospitalized after drinking aloe vera juice that someone apparently had spiked with ketamine in stores in the city of Leicester. One of the victims, a 60-year-old woman, complained of a burning sensation in her throat after drinking the mixture, and then collapsed. Her daughter told a local newspaper that “I thought she was going to die.” The drink manufacturer, a company in India, said it had no idea how the dangerous drug got into its drinks.
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Confiscated Ketamine
Ketamine seized by the Canadian Border Services Agency. In the United States, ketamine was made illegal in 1999. Canada made ketamine a schedule 1 drug in 2005, after its popularity had grown intensely. A recent report by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police noted increased supplies and trafficking of ketamine in Canada, especially in the Pacific and Northwest regions and Ontario. The RCMP said that ketamine is growing in popularity as both a supplement and alternative to drugs such as MDMA (ecstasy) and methamphetamine, which are in high demand among drug users. Ketamine and other synthetic drugs such as gamma hydroxybutyrate (GHB) are increasingly available in Canada.
