From Popular Anesthetic to Antidepressant, Ketamine Isn't the Drug You Think It Is

An hour before we spoke, Darragh O'Carroll, an emergency room physician from Hawaii, had just given an elderly patient a sedating shot of ketamine. The man had pneumonia and was acting confused and fidgety, making him hard to treat. "Not only it was a pain control for him when I was putting needles into his neck, but it also kept him still," O'Carroll says. "And with very minimal risk of lowering his blood pressure." Ketamine's use as an anesthetic -- and not as a party drug -- is wides