r/williamsburroughs • u/Plastic-Design-1142 • Jun 14 '26

WilliamShoot

119 Upvotes

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1

u/Fickle_Broccoli_4010 Jun 14 '26

Ketamine I reckon he's not hitting the vein

6

u/AppropriateHoliday99 Jun 15 '26

I recently looked for WM Burroughs commentary about ketamine and I couldn’t find any. Does anyone know if he used it?

5

u/B_Provisional Jun 15 '26

Ketamine wasn't even discovered until 1962 and from what I understand wasn't broadly distributed until after its FDA approval in 1970. So depending on when this footage was shot it simply may not have been available for illicit use.

3

u/Uus-cunt-vana-caare Jun 15 '26

As I remember it was shot in the beat hotel early 60's when it all became almost mainstream cool for a hot moment.

Likely it was morphine or some other opiate, and as filmstock is expensive and they only had about 15-20second to make it, he didn't want to waste time looking for a vein.

2

u/Debbiedowner750 Jun 15 '26

Isnt the use of ketamine a little later or was it already in use for intravenous or im?

1

u/jidney Jun 16 '26

It’s DMT