Ketamine Drug Driving Limit = 20 µg/L
Ketamine is a medication used mainly for starting and maintaining anesthesia. Other uses include sedation in intensive care, as a pain killer, as treatment of bronchospasm, as a treatment for complex regional pain syndrome and as an antidepressant. It induces a trance like state while providing pain relief, sedation, and memory loss. Heart function, breathing and airway reflexes generally remain functional.
Common side effects include a number of psychological reactions as the medication wears off. This may include agitation, confusion and psychosis among others. Elevated blood pressure and muscle tremors are relatively common, while low blood pressure and a decreasing in breathing is less so. Spasms of the larynx may rarely occur.
Ketamine is very short-acting. It takes effect within about 10 minutes, while its hallucinogenic effects last 60 minutes when inhaled or injected and up to two hours when ingested orally.
Ketamine produces a dissociative state, characterised by a sense of detachment from one’s physical body and the external world which is known as depersonalization and derealization.[34] At sufficiently high doses, users may experience what is called the “K-hole”, a state of extreme dissociation with visual and auditory hallucinations.
