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Ketamine
Ketamine was developed as a tranquilizer, or anesthetic, for veterinarians to use on animals. It was approved for animal and human use in 1970. Today, however, there is some illegal use among teens and young adults. It can be injected or snorted. Ketamine is also known as special K or vitamin K.
Certain doses of ketamine can cause dream-like states and hallucinations. In high doses, ketamine can cause delirium, amnesia, impaired motor function, high blood pressure, depression, and potentially fatal respiratory problems.
Ketamine can affect your brain and body. Ketamine is often used at all-night dance parties ("raves"), nightclubs, and concerts. Club drugs, like K, can damage the neurons in your brain, impairing your senses, memory, judgment, and coordination. In most cases, users experience hallucinations and disconnection from everything around them. They can also feel numbness in the hands and feet, and loss of muscle control. People on K can't talk easily and they feel little or no pain. These sensations can last up to an hour from a single dose, and a great deal longer for higher doses. In rare cases, flashbacks can happen up to a year later.
Ketamine is a liquid, but most users let it evaporate into a white powder, then snort it. If you were to inject it, you'd lose control of your muscles before finishing the injection. Because it's usually in white powder form, K is often confused with cocaine or crystal. Occasionally people pass it off as ecstasy, or mix it with caffeine.
Ketamine is not always what it seems. Because club drugs, like special K, are illegal and often produced in home laboratories, it is impossible to know exactly what chemicals were used to produce them and where they came from. How strong or dangerous any illegal drug is varies each time.
Ketamine can kill you. Higher doses of club drugs, like specialK, can cause severe breathing problems, coma, or even death.
Know the risks. Mixing K and other drugs together or with alcohol is highly dangerous. The effects of one drug can magnify the effects and risks of another. In fact, mixing substances can be deadly
Signs of Ketamine use
- Problems remembering things they recently said or did
- Loss of coordination, dizziness, fainting
- Depression
- Confusion
- Sleep problems
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