> I’m sorry but you are strongly over exaggerating the (side) effects of i.v. ketamine. It’s not a dose that sends you in a K hole. It’s way less than that.
0.5 mg/kg intravenous. For frame of reference, a small recreational dose is between 5-25 mg (insufflated[0]), and a larger recreational dose (for people targeting a "k-hole") is more like 50-100mg. For clinical depression (ie, not this study, but for a similar purpose), the fixed dose is 84mg (not weight-based).
So assuming a 75kg individual, that would be a 37.5mg intravenous dose, which is definitely going to provide a noticeable effect for any ketamine-naive user (ie, someone who does not already have a tolerance for the drug from recent prior use).
> The problem with ketamine and suicidality studies is that suicides - thankfully don’t happen very often - so we have no direct evidence that ketamine prevents suicides.
That's not really a problem - suicidal ideation is a strong enough predictor for suicidality and mental health that it's common to use as a biomarker. In other words, nearly anything that reduces suicidal ideation is presumed to reduce suicidality (on a large scale) - it's not necessary to wait months or years to see what happens (and in fact, depending on the specifics of the study, it can be considered unethical to do so).
Source: former clinical researcher and drug counselor
[0] bioavailability when insufflated is significantly less than other means of ingestion
0.5 mg/kg intravenous. For frame of reference, a small recreational dose is between 5-25 mg (insufflated[0]), and a larger recreational dose (for people targeting a "k-hole") is more like 50-100mg. For clinical depression (ie, not this study, but for a similar purpose), the fixed dose is 84mg (not weight-based).
So assuming a 75kg individual, that would be a 37.5mg intravenous dose, which is definitely going to provide a noticeable effect for any ketamine-naive user (ie, someone who does not already have a tolerance for the drug from recent prior use).
> The problem with ketamine and suicidality studies is that suicides - thankfully don’t happen very often - so we have no direct evidence that ketamine prevents suicides.
That's not really a problem - suicidal ideation is a strong enough predictor for suicidality and mental health that it's common to use as a biomarker. In other words, nearly anything that reduces suicidal ideation is presumed to reduce suicidality (on a large scale) - it's not necessary to wait months or years to see what happens (and in fact, depending on the specifics of the study, it can be considered unethical to do so).
Source: former clinical researcher and drug counselor
[0] bioavailability when insufflated is significantly less than other means of ingestion