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Comment by thebigjewbowski | Hacker News Reader

I’m always curious about using ketamine for situations like this.

I’ve found that with medical marijuana you still feel the pain but you just don’t care because you’re stoned, granted I haven’t had pain such as yours.

With ketamine, at low doses you get a disassociated effect without much cognitive load but I haven’t taken it when I was in pain and unfortunately don’t have ready access to it anymore.

I’d taken Vicodin for 2 days after a surgery and quit it immediately because I couldn’t think clearly, nausea, etc and didn’t want anything to do with it.

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I can answer this actually.

I bulged a disk in my back, new job, no health insurance. My boss was a friend and knew I was a weirdo. I would bike (!) to work, take a keytip of ketamine, program for about an hour, lay down, do a gravity inversion (had one shipped to the house we were using as an office), do another minimal key, I could get three, maybe four of those out of a day.

I hate the effect of opiates except for the part where they make physical pain go away, and even if I had a doctor at the time, to get a scrip, it was a non starter for getting work done.

Worked out ok, still use a standing desk, lift weights, my back has been at least nominal every since, no surgery. I don't recommend it, the bulging disk part, and I'm not here advocate for off-label use of controlled substances, ketamine is habit-forming and can be quite destructive. It was effective however.

That’s great to hear!

It does seem to be gaining in popularity for anxiety and depression.

I really can’t imagine it being as destructive as opiates having known plenty of people who have done both to the extent of having a habit with only opiates ruining people’s lives and killing some them. As far as I understand it ketamine is more of a psychological dependence than a physical one.

Time will tell I suppose.

I said "habit-forming" rather than "addictive" for a reason, yes. That habit can be quite physically destructive, you can find papers on the effects of a heavy habit out of China which are somewhat toe-curling. It's not capable of stopping breathing or causing cardiac arrest, dying of an overdose isn't practical.

However, ketamine can make the brain go... weird. Like cocaine and amphetamine, habitual/binge use gets psychotogenic, and while bizarre delusions won't usually kill you (or anyone else), they can absolutely fuck up relationships, or earn someone a brand-new one with the authorities. Opiates, for all their terrible flaws, don't do this.

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