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Drug counselor who delivered ketamine dose that killed Matthew Perry gets two years
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 16 May 2026
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Afaik LD50 of ketamine is estimated at around 100 times the amount of a recreational dose, so around 100x100mg=10g. Sure, you could just eat it, but you would need way more than that, because the bioavailability of ingested Ketamine is much lower.
Smorting 10g of ketamine is literally impossible because your nose would clog up after max. 1g and you wouldnt be able to lift a finger for the next few hours.
But what were actually talking about here is injected ketamine (not sure if he used IV or IM, but it should be similar), which would need to be dissolved in water. You cant dissolve 10g of ketamine in 10ml of water. What I was talking about is the regular medical IM/IV solution (which Perry probbaly used), which usually is 50mg/ml. For 10g of ketamine, that would be 10g/(50mg/ml) = 10.000g/(50mg/ml) = 200ml. So maybe not impossible, but it would take 20+ normal syringes. There are higher concentrattion solutions, for which it is recommended to dilute them first for medical use, but for the sake of the argument you could probably inject 40ml of 250mg/ml solution and OD from that.
But just to be clear, in Perrys case they tested his blood and the ketamine concentration was around a "regular" recreational dose.
I just did some brief research and the LD50 for intravenous ketamine is way lower than that. I've seen a lot of different numbers but anywhere from 50 to 150 milligrams per kilogram. Oral LD50s are much higher in the range you're talking about.
Well 50-150mg/kg would be 4-12g for an 80kg adult. I dont think 10g is such a bad estimate. Ofc we cant know for sure because there are probably only a handful of ketamine deaths in humans. Estimates usually come from tests with rats or mice.
Oral being higher is kind of what I was saying with the lower bioavailability.