Ketamine
Ketamine is actually a powerful psychoactive drug and it’s famously used recreationally and also as an animal tranquillizer. But it has actually a range of really important medical uses. First and foremost it’s an analgesic and secondly it’s also a dissociative.
Ketamine causes a sense of kind of separation and loss of the senses of self. And it can use this attribute to dissociation to cause anesthesia or total removal of any pain.
But there are many harms involved with the use of ketamine not so much for single doses. Like we are describing in the use of anesthesia or anti depression but particularly with long term use it is really harmful.
Most famously there’s serious damage to the bladder, what we call cystitis with chronic frequent use. But it can also impair if used on a daily basis, cognition and our ability to think and particular our memory both working and short-term memory. And it’s also addictive as a compound.
So there are many reasons why we have to be really cautious when we talk about using that ketamine.