Ravers, doctors, and therapists
of the world unite.
This is the story of how ketamine
quietly took over the planet.
Over the years, ketamine has
carved out its own part of the night.
And it’s not so much peak time
in a rowdy club as it is later on,
when ravers return to their friends’
houses for after parties
to take ket
and talk absolute rubbish.
Kind of feel like I’m grabbing
red energy from the ground
and injecting it into myself.
My hand’s working like an alien hand.
I couldn’t feel
two fingers on my hands.
And I jumped in another universe,
and I could see myself
as an alien dancing on a beach.
What?!
That was **** up, man.
I was a **** alien.
[The War on Drugs Show]
This is the story of how, despite
the incontinence, the jibberish,
the delusions, and the crusties,
the knocked-out horses
and a concerted international
attempt to shut it down,
ketamine has quietly been
winning battle after battle
in the war on drugs,
to the delight of doctors,
ravers, and therapists worldwide.
You have to do K at least 500 times
before you even
start to understand it.
Ketamine’s story begins in 1956
at a pharmaceuticals company
in the United States.
Researchers found that a new drug
called phencyclidine or PCP
made a wonderful anesthetic
for small mammals.
But while this was a red letter day
for all the little monkeys and rats
waiting for life-saving
medical procedures,
PCP didn’t cut it
as an anesthetic for humans.
It made them weird and angry
when they woke up,
sometimes for hours on end.
So, a bunch of PCP derivatives
were synthesized.
One compound in particular,
developed by a chemist
named Calvin Stevens in 1962,
was a revelation,
a short-lasting anesthetic
called CI-581.
This is the compound
now known to you and I
as Special K, rhino smasher,
wonk or ketamine.
After a number of years in testing,
ketamine was approved
by the FDA in 1970.
Almost immediately, it was
put to use on American soldiers
in the Vietnam War.
Ketamine is unique among anesthetics;
it barely affects
the respiratory system.
This meant that in Vietnam, dying
soldiers could be pumped full of ket,
operated on and saved without doctors
having to cart pain in the arse
breathing machines around
the burning, deadly jungle.
This trait means the drug remains
vital today the world over.
In the West, it’s used by
trialed surgeons and dentists.
In the developing world,
it’s used in the many operating rooms
that don’t have breathing machines
or reliable electricity.
And despite the many
dystopian advances in warfare
the last 50 years, Navy SEAL medics
still swear by ketamine.
They love its ability to rapidly
subdue soldiers who’ve been
heavily wounded or even lost
multiple limbs in combat
by relieving pain,
but also by administering
a timely dose of amnesia.
Despite the global ban proposed
by China in 2015,
ketamine remains
an essential medicine
in the eyes of
the World Health Organization.
Most of the world’s ketamine is
manufactured in secretive
factories in Asia,
and the vast majority still ends up
in the hands of vets and doctors.
But despite it being
torturously difficult to make,
some drug gangs have
cracked the chemical code.
It’s not just doctors who lap it up,
it’s psychonauts and club kids, too.
If the authorities catch you
smuggling or dealing drugs in China,
they might kill you.
But the bulk of the world’s
recreational supply is
synthesized there,
and many Chinese continue to
snort ket with wanton abandon.
In fact, foreign journalists have
repeatedly discovered revelers
openly bingeing on the drug
in all-night karaoke hotels.
In the four years that
followed its UK ban,
use of K among 16-to-24-year-olds
did not drop off,
it doubled.
In 2018, the amount of ketamine
seized by the police
had risen by 30 percent,
and more young Brits
were taking it than ever before.
With enthusiasm for ket seemingly
growing in the US, Europe, and Asia,
it’s time to bring you up to speed.
What is a K-hole?
So, the K-hole is that state of
complete disconnection from the world
that you get when you take ketamine.
I’ve heard people describe it as like
putting your brain on airplane mode,
and that means basically you don’t
get any inputs from outside.
People don’t notice, for instance,
that they're freezing to death
if they're out in the winter
or they don’t notice if they’re
drowning when they’re
taking ketamine in the bath.
Doesn’t ketamine
make you incontinent, too?
So the K-bladder is a real thing,
it’s not an urban myth.
There are people in Britain who've
had to have their bladders removed
on account of the damage
that ketamine use has
done to their bladders.
So why do people take it
if it first paralyzes you
and then makes you piss yourself?
So ketamine is popular because of
the interesting mental state
it produces.
It's also used after parties to help
people come down from being
overactive, overstimulated.
It is an anesthetic;
it calms down the brain,
it dampens down activity,
and lets people sort of chill out
in a chemical way.
The most interesting thing about
ketamine today, though,
isn’t that it’s
used to anesthetize pets
or help stressed out hedonists
get wonky.
It’s that more and more doctors
and psychologists across the world
are heralding ketamine as
a life-changing
and potentially life-saving treatment
for otherwise unshakeable
cases of depression.
It eats you alive,
it’s just, you feel like...
there's no other option
but to say,
“This is it,
I can’t take it no more.”
I tried going to the doctor,
they tried to prescribe some pills
and it wasn’t doing anything,
so I just said, “Forget it.”
And now I’m doing
ketamine treatments.
For years, ketamine has been
available as a last-ditch treatment
for depression sufferers
in low-key, off-label drip clinics,
both stateside and in the UK.
In these controlled conditions,
it seems to be especially effective
for an estimated third of
depression patients
for whom all other methods
have failed.
Often these are people who see
ketamine as their final hope.
Most currently available
treatments for depression,
they’re mostly based upon
what’s called
the seratonin hypothesis
of depression
and the idea that you don’t
have enough serotonin,
you don’t have enough of these
feel-good hormones in the brain,
and if you replace them with
medicines that increase those levels,
you feel better.
And they work moderately well.
But when I read the early
papers on ketamine,
there had only been a few studies
at that point back in 2010,
they spun my head around
because they were unique
in some very important ways
and the results were dramatic.
Until now, in psychiatry, there was
no drug which would act so fast
and which would save lives so fast,
and with such an immediate effect.
So ketamine is a life-saving drug,
according to me.
Now, K is taking its first steps
out of these clinics
to more widespread therapeutic use.
In 2019, the FDA approved
a ketamine nasal spray
for Americans suffering
severe depression.
And ketamine therapy has shown
positive effects when used to treat
other conditions too,
like PTSD and alcoholism.
Before, it was just a staple.
It was as close to normal
to drink a beer
as it would be to drink
a glass of water when you’re thirsty.
How much exactly have you drunk
in the last two months?
If you exclude last night,
I’ve literally had
four glasses of wine.
-In 60 days, more or less?
-Yeah.
It may lack the glamorous
associations of cocaine
and the kudos of ecstasy.
There’s certainly going to be no
white wall retrospectives
in 20 years’ time
about how the ketamine generation’s
‘Summer of Wonk’
changed the planet forever.
But for decades,
K has been quietly winning
battles in the war on drugs
worldwide,
thwarting bans and cultural concerns
about horses and nappies,
and beguiling medical experts
to extend its empire
through every populated continent.
When China asked the UN to ban it,
ketamine won.
Where it has been
outlawed by governments,
recreational users almost invariably
sustained or increased.
Despite the barriers put up
by the war on drugs,
ketamine’s therapeutic potential
is finally being realized.
And the next few years could usher in
its third act as a legal tool
for therapists seeking to save the
lives of countless depressed people
the world over.
We’d like to congratulate drugs
for winning the war on drugs.
