"The girls watched TV for a while and then Louise's friend went to bed. Louise was tired too but didn't think she'd be able to sleep, maybe because of taking the drug but also because she had things on her mind. She had given up her job [as a visual merchandiser for the fashion chain New Look] before going to Australia and she knew she had to find another one because she had bills to pay. She'd been worrying about that. So she said she was going to take a bath to help her relax. About an hour later her friend woke up and realised straight away that something was wrong. She just had a feeling. She went into the bathroom and found her. She had fallen asleep in the bath and drowned." Horrified, Louise's friend called the emergency services who told her how to try and resuscitate her but by then it was too late."

"We present a rare case of an autoerotic accident involving a fatal combination of asphyxia by suffocation and intoxication with self-administered intravenous ketamine. Of note in this case is the fact that the victim was an emergency medical technician.

[...] Toxicological analysis of blood taken from the femoral vein (other specimens like urine and cardiac blood were not available) revealed a ketamine concentration of 2.5 μg/ml, well within the therapeutic range (1.0-6.0 μg/ml). This concentration may have been even higher in the final, agonal stage because ketamine is metabolised with a short half-life period by a hepatic cytochrome P₄₅₀-dependent enzyme system and will be further conjugated to glucuronide derivatives which subsequently undergo renal elimination."

"On New Years Eve, 1996, the noted author and lay-psychedelic researcher known only by the pseudonym D.M. Turner drew a hot bath, injected himself with an unknown amount of ketamine, and settled in for the last trip of his life. When his body was found weeks later, the cause of death was determined to be natural causes. It is assumed that Mr. Turner lost consciouness at some point during the evening, slid under the water, and quietly drowned. But no one really knows what happened that night. Taking into account ketamine's extremely low toxicity levels, it is highly improbable that this was an overdose situation. However, since Mr. Turner was also one of ketamine's greatest advocates, it is ominous that his is the first publicly known ketamine-related death. His passing is a truly sad and perplexing loss for all of us, and we will no doubt miss his articulate and insightful voice."

In January 1997, D.M. Turner [...] died in a bathtub in San Francisco, aged 34, with a bottle of ketamine next to the bath. The cause of death was listed as 'drowning'. However, it is not easy to slip below the waterline in the average bath. His body was found in a kneeling position, head down, facing the taps. He may have collapsed or (less likely) slipped into the bath while still affected by the drug, ending up with his head below water.

"Moore disappeared from her house on January 14, 1979. Her husband spent a year searching for her, including journeys to Hong Kong and Thailand, places to which she had traveled in the past. Her skeleton was found in early spring, 1981, in the place where she had frozen to death. She had made a journey at night into the dark world of the forest, a potent Jungian symbol, curled up in a tree, and then injected herself repeatedly with all of the ketamine she had been able to find. That night the pond froze over, the moon rose, and the Fire Lady was killed by the ice.

'Marcia became addicted to ketamine and committed suicide. The drug is dangerous and its use should not be encouraged... I told her that it was a seductress, not a Goddess.' -- Howard Alltounian, M.D. (Moore's husband), Interviewed by Karl Jansen (April 1998)

The evidence is more suggestive of accidental death than suicide, and bears similar hallmarks to a death from exposure in a person intoxicated with alcohol. There was nothing to indicate that she was depressed or that her conscious intent was to die, and she did not leave a note. Nevertheless, there may have been powerful subconscious elements that sought to go through the door for the last time, and never return."