The NYT Put Numbers on Ketamine's Danger Zone: A Clinical Dose Is 30–150mg, Recreational Users Reported Taking 1,000
"The dose makes the poison," The New York Times' Andrew Jacobs wrote this week, revisiting the pharmacology question at the center of the Cornell lawsuit we covered when New York's attorney general took over the case. Named specialists put real numbers on just how wide ketamine's effective range actually is: a clinical IV or IM dose for depression runs roughly 30–150mg, delivered slowly over 40–60 minutes with vitals monitored throughout, while recreational users snorting the powdered form "sometimes... more than 1,000 milligrams at once," per Dr. Sandhya Prashad, president of the American Society of Ketamine Physicians, Psychotherapists and Practitioners — up to ten times the clinical dose, measured out with none of a clinic's precision.
That gap is what produces a K-hole, a state of near-catatonic dissociation that, per Prashad, even a modest dose can trigger in a first-time user, leaving someone "awake but disconnected" for up to 45 minutes. Dr. Dave Rabin, a ketamine-assisted-therapy psychiatrist, drew the same line our own coverage did — it's the dose, not the drug itself, that separates therapeutic use from dangerous use: "Too much ketamine and a person's judgment is impaired and they don't have the agency to assert themselves," he told the Times, while also warning that cases like this risk getting "powerful therapeutic tools like ketamine" miscategorized as pure drugs of abuse.
As with our earlier coverage, this is pharmacology and harm-reduction reporting, not legal commentary on an active, disputed case — no charges have been filed, and the accused deny wrongdoing. Full reporting, including testimony from the woman identified in the lawsuit as Jane Doe, at The New York Times.