Ketamine: Dreams and Realities
K Wa ve s a nd K Ra v es
ring to PCP studies—or even worse, the dizocilpine (MK801) literature—to make a point about ketamine, as the effects and toxicity are too different. Nevertheless, all three drugs do belong to a peculiar group of chemicals called arylcyclohexlamines. Ketamine is not related to heroin, nor is it a form of LSD, amphetamine, MDMA/ecstasy, or cocaine although it sometimes has effects resembling all of these. Ketamine is a complex psychoactive drug with a huge range of possible effects on consciousness, the brain, and the rest of the body. The first accounts of ketamine’s effects in humans appeared in 1965.116, 399 It was found to be a potent psychedelic drug, and the effects were described as trance-like. The following year, ketamine was patented by Parke-Davis for use as an anesthetic in humans and other animals: an all-American, all-artificial drug—one that was not first synthesized in Europe like LSD, or extracted from plants like mescaline and psilocybin.115 Litigation and greed were invited to the christening. Although Stevens was a consultant to the Parke-Davis program, and was strongly steered towards the discovery by the team, he quietly rushed through a patent application without consulting the company. Belgium was chosen as the flag of convenience, resulting in the mysterious “Belgian patent of 1963.” Parke-Davis was enraged and called in their lawyers. After an epic battle, a large payment was made to Stevens, and ownership of ketamine was returned to the company—hence the American patent of 1966.398
Like the medicinal chemists, some of the hospital staff involved in these trials took ketamine off the surgical table and out into the community. Knowledge also spread through other channels. A heroindependent person in Australia burgled a vet in the 1970s, found “this stuff called Ketalar®,” and injected the liquid to see what would happen. He had never heard of the drug before, but belonged to a group of drug burglars who injected anything the label described as psychoactive. His next memory was of floating somewhere above the roof, on what he described to me as an “instant trip.” In Argentina, “ketamina” was used to regress clients back to the womb so that they could be reborn into the brave new world (1974).155 In South-East Asia, helicopters weren’t the only vehicles for hovering over the rice paddies. Some Vietnam veterans went home with a new outlook on “anesthetics.” (The drug is mentioned in the odd episode of the TV show M*A*S*H.) By the end of the seventies, the FDA was worried about ketamine on the streets.141, 542 FDA worries were heightened further by the publication of two books in 1978: Journeys into the Bright World by Marcia Moore and Howard Alltounian, M.D., and The Scientist: A Novel Autobiography by John Lilly, M.D. These authors were highly-educated psychonauts who traveled to the edge, and sometimes fell off it to land face down in the pool. Their stories are considered in detail in the next chapter, “The Priestess and The Psychonaut.” The last two decades have seen ketamine move into the mainstream with the growth of techno clubs and raves. In the United States, the drug has now spread throughout the hinterland from initial hubs in New York and California. The office of the drug czar added ketamine to the “emerging drugs list” in 1995, noting use across the country,48,
My interviews revealed that as early as 1967–1968 ketamine was already being used outside of the hospital and laboratory. The drug was being spread by some rogue “medicinal chemists” from Michigan out to the Florida coast under the names of “mean green” and “rockmesc.” Ketamine has long been sold as something other than what it actually is, as the early name “rock mescaline” implies. In 1970, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved ketamine for use in children and the elderly. The early hospital trials recorded experiences both pleasant and unpleasant.490, 513
while the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) web site and the Forensic Drug Abuse Advisor warned of “ketamine abuse increasing” in 1997.13, 105 New York made ketamine into a controlled drug, but the bodies still hit the deck at Twilo and other clubs until the Mayor’s zero tolerance approach started to drive dance drug use underground— the opposite direction to changes occurring in Europe. In August 1999,
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