Went bananas on ketamine and this happened to my back.

As someone who has ready access to hundreds of milligrams of IV ketamine for work, but absolutely no desire to do any of it myself, I've often wondered what the street value of the cupfuls of it I throw in the trash each day is, and furthermore, how someone goes about buying and doing it recreationally.

Depends where you are and what form you sell it in. Many people will pay upwards of $50 for a 10ml bottle simply for the novelty of finding liquid K. Street K is cooked into a powder and it is sold for about $20-30 a gram and is often cut. Buying powder is easy, find a hippy drug dealer, it's in every major city. Finding liquid requires finding a crooked vet, nurse, or going to a country with less strict animal pharmacy laws. If you go to India you can buy human grade ketamine over the counter in rural hospitals. You could legally buy it over the counter in mexico from animal hospitals until like 2004; and you still can today, it's just not legal anymore.

You do know that's a drug used as a general anesthetic, right? To put people out for surgical level stimulus in a setting where they are watched continuously by someone like me to ensure their vital signs don't go all wonky...how does it fly doing that on the street? How are there not more injuries/fatalities? What kind of doses are you guys doing?

It's a general anesthetic but it's anesthetic properties stem from it being a powerful dissociative. It's incredibly good at delivering what it promises, which is a complete dissociation from your body/ego for upwards of 15 minutes. It's also remarkably safe as far as IV drugs go, the LD50 is very high (something like 300mg/kg). Done in the correct setting with a sitter/coach to both limit your dose and prevent you from hurting yourself it's one of the safer recreation drugs. Doing liquid ketamine as a recreational drug the doses start at around 20 units via IM, and the maximum effect is around 100 units for the full effect (which will last from 15-20 minutes). More than 100 units isn't dangerous, but you will most likely black out and not remember the trip. Also, it is not recommended to IV ketamine for recreation as you will immediately go unconscious with small doses, and not experience the effects.

Also, in anesthesia, one would never give ketamine without first giving something like a benzodiazepine to prevent terror/aggression at the inevitable hallucinations that follow a dose of ketamine. What do people do on the street to prevent this terror/aggression? Nothing? No wonder.

It's all about setting. Most of the times I see ketamine now given it is under duress for someone who is in the process of losing a patent airway, they're scared and so the added sensory dissociation from the ketamine only adds to the fear and can lead to PTSD. When done for fun ideally you will have a sitter, dim lighting, be in bed or another safe area, and be free to explore the effects of the drug on your mind. It's actually really pleasant and leaves most people feeling rather fulfilled.

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