Ketamine is also a rapidly acting antidepressant.was synthesized in the 1960s by scientists at Parke-Davis Laboratories while they were searching for a general anesthetic to replace phencyclidine, which is an older medicine that caused confusion and agitation when people awoke from surgery. Phencyclidine is also known as PCP.
Ketamine was first administered to a human in 1964. The patient responded very well. Subsequently, patients treated with ketamine reported feeling as if they were floating in space or had no feeling in their arms or legs. When one of the scientists described this reaction to his wife, she suggested the medicine was a “dissociative anesthetic” and this label stuck.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved ketamine in 1970, the same year the Controlled Substances Act was passed. The CSA created five schedules of controlled substances. Then, during the Vietnam War, reports of ketamine abuse emerged, resulting in this medicine being placed in Schedule III. This positioned ketamine in a less restrictive category than theRecently, ketamine was discovered to occur in nature.
Important questions to address when utilizing ketamine include how much of this medicine is effective and how it should be administered. Reports in the popular press, such as those describing the unfortunate death of Matthew Perry, highlight the danger of using excessive doses of ketamine. As most medical students are taught, the only difference between a medicine and a poison is the dose.