Anyone Done IV Ketamine?

[Eva 33]

I have chronic pain and see a pain management specialist. I am prescribed opiates for my constant pain.

My pain doctor does do 'Ketamine infusions' via IV. Ketamine is believed to be helpful for many different chronic pain syndromes. Unfortunately, insurance does NOT cover Ketamine infusions, and they are extremely expensive. I've heard it's an 'all-day' thing and that it costs a LOT of money (I don't want to say the exact $ amount, due to forum rules).

In the past, I have taken IM Ketamine a few times. I found the 'dissociative' state induced by Ketamine to be rather strange. (It's been a long time since I've done K., so it's hard to remember exactly what it was like). I've never mentioned this past Ketamine use to my pain doc, since it was so long ago and I only tried it a few times. (The Ketamine came from a 'pharmacist friend' of mine).

I do have lots of experience with altered states of consciousness, having done MDMA and LSD several times. I've also done just about every other psychedelic drug out there. I always had reliable sources for these substances, so I knew what I was getting was pure.

I've heard that IV Ketamine infusions can cause hallucinations. Maybe you'd think with all my psychedelic experience, this wouldn't scare me. For some reason, it does scare me a little bit. I've always been a cautious person. I certainly don't want to be under the influence of Ketamine and start babbling about my past use of psychedelics (something I've never told my pain doc about). I have no idea how my pain doc would react if he learned this information about me.

My pain doc seems pretty nice. He didn't want to do drug tests, but after Michael Jackson died, he said that pain docs in California were being targeted by the DEA and that he now had no choice but to start doing drug tests.

I am a bit worried that if I do one of these Ketamine IV infusions, I'll start talking about how 'familiar' altered states of consciousness are to me. I think if I was doing the Ketamine infusions with someone who was NOT my pain doc, it would be different. I depend on my pain doc for my opiates, which I desperately need in order to function at all, since my daily pain is so severe. If my PM found out I'm an 'experienced psychonaut', I wonder if he'd treat me differently?

Has anyone here done Ketamine IV? How did it differ in effects from Ketamine IM? What were the effects? I imagine I'd need to find someone to drive me home? Thanks for any feedback!

 

[sekio]

Ketamine IV is just like ketamine IM but it takes effect faster.

If you're rendered insensible by too much K, there is pretty much no chance of you speaking intelligibly, much less disclosing all your secrets. It's not exactly like MDMA or benzos where you'll want to gush secrets to other people or be careless with your speech. But a ketamine infusion is meant to be a low dose over ~40 minutes or so, not enough to make you hallucinate. You're meant to stay "in control", the idea is not to knock you out.

this would do better in Psychedelic Drugs. OD->PDD

 

[amanitadine]

I found IV ketamine to be more two dimensional (vs 4 dimensional heheh) than IM...more hedonistic, less recall, more of a rush, less depth (if that wasn't clear by the woefully inadequate 2-D vs 4-D analogy), and overall much less impressive.

But as Sekio said, an infusion would render most of these points moot, and make it even less immersive than IM. The idea is to reach as much of a steady state plasma concentration as possible for a longer period of time, and at lower doses than normally used for recreation.

You'll find it an entirely different experience than what you are used to I'd wager...and not one you are likely to babble on during, at least coherently. I wouldn't sweat it...fear is absent from ketamine, and there is none of the ego grappling stuff of classical psychedelics. It is called a dissociative anesthetic for a reason!

Let us know how it goes, if you go for it.