See image credits below.
The following is an excerpt from p. 184-186 of Chapter 4, “Mystical Medicine, Wicked Weapon: A Both/And Approach to Ketamine” from my new book, Drugism (2022):
Ketamine was invented by a chemist named Calvin Stevens for the Parke Davis pharmaceutical company in 1962.[i] Some context on Parke Davis might allow us to appreciate this fact more deeply. The company had a long history with psychoactive drugs.
Starting in the late nineteenth century, Parke Davis sold dried peyote as well as tinctures of both cannabis and cocaine.[ii] Gradually, all of those drugs were outlawed. As more and more drugs were banned, pharmaceutical companies like Parke Davis had to find or design other compounds which could be used medically but which were legal, effective, and, more or less, safe.
It was as part of this process that chemists at Parke Davis developed the arylcyclohexylamine family of compounds in a quest for new anesthetics. Among the very first of these compounds was phencyclidine, initially given the research name CI-395 but better known today as PCP. PCP was first synthesized in 1926 but did not enter the legal pharmaceutical market until the 1950s.[iii] Within a few years, it became clear that the drug caused adverse reactions in significant numbers of patients.
Wayne State University received funds from the CIA for pharmacology research in the same period that Stevens developed ketamine.
The company developed several more compounds in the same family, hoping to find an effective anesthetic free of serious adverse effects. Another, originally given the project name CI-400 and later known as PCE, was developed after PCP.
And in 1962, ketamine was developed under the project name CI-581, by chemist Calvin Stevens. Stevens was a chemist and professor at Wayne State University at the time. It should be noted that in this same period, Wayne State University received funds from the CIA for pharmacology research. In most cases, the chemists paid with these funds were unaware that the money came from the agency.[iv] If Stevens’ work was in fact paid for by the CIA—which is quite possible—it is unlikely that he himself would even have known.
The following year, 1963, Stevens patented the drug without telling Parke Davis.[v] When the company soon found out, they were of course not pleased, and an extensive legal battle ensued. Another year later, in 1964, the first doses of ketamine were administered to humans. Like many other drugs of the era, it was first administered to incarcerated people.
The first people to ever experience ketamine were incarcerated at Jackson Prison in Michigan.
The first people to ever experience ketamine were incarcerated at Jackson Prison in Michigan. It was the summer of 1964 when they were administered the drug by Edward Domino and Guenter Corssen, two professors from the University of Michigan.[vi]
As far as the content of their experiences, we have only slightly more documentation than we do in the cases of the people who took DMT and bufotenine while incarcerated in Kentucky and Ohio, respectively. The most detailed account of the Jackson Prison ketamine sessions comes from an article written decades afterward by Edward Domino, one of the scientists involved.
In the article, Domino wrote that the people who received ketamine felt “spaced out” and had “strange experiences like a feeling of floating in outer space and having no feeling in their arms and legs.”[vii] Some of them were noticeably frightened and said the drug’s effects felt “like death.”[viii]One third of the recipients experienced “side effects,” but precisely what these were is not clear.[ix]
Parke-Davis executives feared Luby would pronounce ketamine schizophrenomimetic, so they had an in-house psychiatrist review the results instead.
Domino, excited by the results, wanted to share the news with Elliot Luby, a fellow chemist at the University of Michigan. But the higher-ups at Parke-Davis did not like this idea. Luby had published findings in the fifties that suggested PCP, another Parke-Davis product, caused schizophrenia-like symptoms. Parke-Davis executives worried that Luby would similarly pronounce ketamine a schizophrenomimetic, thus hindering its chances for commercial development. Instead, they had an in-house psychiatrist review the results.[x]
Parke-Davis’s in-house psychiatrist concluded that the side effects of ketamine were comparable to those of ether, then a standard and widely used anesthetic. Soon thereafter, the company’s executives decided to pursue the drug’s development. In the midst of all this, Domino told his wife, Toni, about the Jackson Prison sessions. In response, she coined the term “dissociative anesthetic” to describe ketamine’s effects.[xi] The label has stuck with the drug ever since.
Edward Domino’s wife Toni coined the term “dissociative anesthetic” in 1964. The label has stuck with the drug ever since.
[Continue reading here.]
Endnotes
[i] Wolfson and Hartelius, eds., 141.
[ii] Jansen, 23; DeGrandpre, The Cult of…, 103.
[iii] Wolfson and Hartelius, eds., 138-139; Domino, “Taming the Ketamine…,” 679.
[iv] Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief, 131.
[v] Jansen, 24.
[vi] Domino, 679.
[vii] Ibid.
[viii] Domino, Chodoff, and Corssen, “Pharmacologic effects of…”
[ix] Domino, 679.
[x] Ibid., 679-680.
[xi] Ibid., 680; on ether, to which ketamine was compared, see Chang, et al, “Ether in the…”
Sources
Chang, Connie Y., Elisabeth Goldstein, Nitin Agarwal, and Kenneth G. Swan. “Ether in the developing world: rethinking an abandoned agent.” BMC Anesthesiology, 2015; 15; 149.
DeGrandpre, Richard. The Cult of Pharmacology: How America Became the World’s Most Troubled Drug Culture. Duke University Press, Durham, NC. 2006.
Domino, Edward F. “Taming the Ketamine Tiger.” Anesthesiology, 113(3):678-686. September, 2010.
Domino, Edward F., Peter Chodoff, and Guenter Corssen. “Pharmacologic effects of CI-581, a new dissociative anesthetic, in man.” Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, 6(3):279-291.
Jansen, Karl. Ketamine: Dreams and Realities. Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, Sarasota, FL. 2004.
Kinzer, Stephen. Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control. Henry Holt and Company, New York, NY. 2019.
Wolfson, Phil and Glenn Hartelius, eds. The Ketamine Papers: Science, Therapy, and Transformation. Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, Santa Cruz, CA. 2016.
Image credits
Illustration of Jackson Prison from NPR at https://www.michiganradio.org/law/2013-12-20/listen-to-these-stories-from-those-who-knew-what-it-was-like-in-jackson-state-prison
Photo of incarcerated individual from VistaCreate at https://create.vista.com/unlimited/stock-photos/184718930/stock-photo-cropped-image-african-american-prisoner/
Photo of Wayne State University from A History of Wayne State University in Photographs By Evelyn Aschenbrenner at https://books.google.com/books?id=KDzeSxqzusYC&pg=PA192#v=onepage&q&f=false
Photo of chemistry laboratory equipment from LabPro at https://labproinc.com/blogs/laboratory-equipment/beakers-vs-flasks-the-pros-and-cons-of-frequently-used-lab-glassware
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