Oral ketamine and side-effects.
 

Hi everyone!

I have been taking oral Ketamine (8cc) per night. I have experienced strange side-effects. Feels like and looks like "Thrush" on my tongue. Sore throat, a bad taste and a general feeling like I have the "flu". Oh, plus the dreams! Has anyone had these feelings also?

I know Drea has taken it orally. I am also wondering what doseage she took and how it made her feel during the day (mine is at night). I have to have my teeth brushed, my face washed and the coffee made before I can even think about taking it. Kiss my kids and apologize for going "out" for the night.

I would really like to find something that I could be coherent to; if the house were to catch fire, etc... Just don't like not being aware. It scares the crap outta me honestly.

It does help with sleep and the pain. It doesn't help with the worries.

Thanks for any input.

Kim

I get ketamine infusions, I dont take it orally. I have been getting horrific nightmares this past month after my last infusion. I don't even want to go to sleep they are so bad. I am taking an anti-hallucination medicine and I have upped the dosage 2 times, and still have no luck. It is worse than not sleeping at all. I wake up scared. I have had infusions for almost a year, and have never had this until this past infusion.

I hope you get some relief. I don't think there is another med out there like ketamine. I know alot of people have had alot of relief from methadone, but other than that it doesn't do nearly the same as ketamine from my experience.

Hannah

Hi Kim

I do not take it orally but I have done 3 - 5 day inpatient infusions with boosters and yet it did help with the burning, spreading, fatigue of RSD and some of the pain I also have PN in the same area and it does not do anything for the PN. The PN is in the same area from the same inquiry. Ketamine and I have a real love hate relationship it helps but what I go through I wonder if it was worth it. Anyway I never really had hallucinations during each procedure but I had what I would call heavy day dreaming like in my own world. Anyway to this day and my last booster was Jan 09 so almost 2 years, I still have strange dreams again not as expressive as during an infusion but my dreams are like being in another world the same type I had when I was in doing the procedures. I don't have nightmares just like storytime it's weird. And I know how you feel if something happened while I was sleeping and the house was on fire or something else. It feels like you are in never never land but I have a 19 year old son and I still wake up on the weekends to make sure he's home safe, so maybe we are not in such a deep sleep. But I can totally relate. I think it's strange that I still dream like this after all this time. And just for FYI I don't take much medication at all at matter of fact I'm on the least amount I have ever been on since this whole nightmare started.

Good Luck

Gabbycakes

Didn't work for me
 

Hey --

I took oral ketamine from this December until July.

It does have strange effects. When I got up to 75mg over the course of the day, I had exactly what you've well described as feeling like the flu. I had a similar feeling of exhaustion, where I crashed every day around 8:00-ish. It was a like a wave coming over me, which I guessed was analagous to having mono (though I've never had mono).

During the day there was a sluggishness, but the dreams were the most salient side effect. I tapered off at night, actually, when once or twice I felt paranoia, really needing to make sure the bedroom door was shut and locked kind of thing. The effect on dreams was pretty pronounced. It was weird. My usual state is a fast CUT, static-y dream state. With Ketamine, my dreams slow downed markedly. I felt every frame (I work in films, so I was telling people they became like Italian neo-realist cinema). And they were straight forward metaphors, all dealing with my feeling of physical loss and impotence. All fascinating if it wasn't me experiencing this.

I knew that the studies said oral ketamine really doesn't help on its own, but I had wanted to try. It's clear it wasn't working in my case, as I have continued to get worse this whole year. The good thing is that almost immediately on stopping a few weeks ago the exhausted feeling lifted. I became much more clear headed, and realized just how 'under' I really was and didn't realize while taking it all that time. I was able just like that to get back to writing (not that it's any good...)

-- Dennis