Posted by Questionmark on May 17, 2009, at 5:20:55
In reply to Re: Ketamine Ketamine Ketamine, posted by uncouth on May 13, 2009, at 17:52:37
www.erowid.org/chemicals/ketamine/ketamine_info6.shtml
According to that page on [the site] erowid, the ketamine/depression study used IV ketamine doses of 0.5 mg per kg of body weight (e.g. 35 mg for a 70 kg/154 lb person). There may be an ideal dosage (or blood concentration) and/or duration-of-action window for this therapeutic effect to be most possible, and who knows how narrow that window may be exactly?.
So my layman's suggestion would be that it might be best to try it intranasally. (Injecting anything seems too risky for me to recommend such an undertaking to anyone, unless they had proper training/knowledge.) This route (just in case you don't know) would result in much quicker delivery to the bloodstream, higher peak blood concentration [per same dose], and shorter duration of action, than oral ingestion (though not quite as much as injecting but hopefully close enough i would assume). In other words, it would be closer to the study's dosing (and blood concentration, etc.) -- which in turn would be more likely to be in that therapeutic window. That is unless the study designers were not near the center of that window, but i would guess that they had good reasons for coming up with the dose that they used.
Also, as you probably know, if you do try it intranasally, i would reduce your dose significantly (unless you weigh much much more than i do, which besides not saying much is of course fine). Basically i would calculate what 0.5mg per kg of your body weight would be, and then maybe add a few milligrams or so on top of that (the latter just in order to be more likely to achieve peak brain concentrations that would be similar to injecting 0.5mg/kg body weight).
My opinion is that the oral route might just be too different (or i.e. too outside that "window" potentially) to get the desired or at least ideal neurophysiological, and hence antidepressant, effects.
Oh I would also suggest, ideally at least, not trying this experiment more than once in a short period of time (at least 24 hrs to 1 week maybe?), since this may alter brain chemistry or receptor , uh, physiology(?) in a way that is less effective for the antidepressant response.Remember people, using ketamine is not effective in this way (effecting an antidepressant response) in just any amounts and frequencies of use. Otherwise i would assume that we would be hearing a lot more about depressive ketamine users finding relief from depression. And I have no knowledge on it, but i don't see ketamine users as being generally happy-go-lucky or what have you. Anyway essentially i'm just further supporting this ideal therapeutic dosage window theme, and, in particular, that use that is too high-dose or frequent probably is counterproductive for this goal. Obviously. I'm just reminding i guess. But yeah especially important to remember is that the dose used in the study is significantly lower than the typical recreational doses used. Ah sorry if i'm rambling now.
Uncouth... Good luck! And please let us know how it turns out.
> just took about 100mg orally (solution in water). visual field was distorted a bit (shaking), felt "something" but also felt the depression lift for about 30 minutes. it wasn't a "high" or a disassociative experience by any means, and it didn't last, but i'll try again at a higher dose and at a different method of ingestion.
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> the research studies that used IV ketamine said that the effects from a single dose lasted days...thats my target. what an ideal situation if i could just ingest some ketamine once a week, be high for an hour, but have the mood effects last the whole week? i can dream....
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poster:Questionmark
thread:893317
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20090515/msgs/896193.html