Hmm.. let me clarify a little. If an alcoholic does repeated DWI and then gets killed, then no alcohol isn't just involved, addiction is a primary cause. Denying that is not my point. I'm saying that if a recovered alcoholic gets killed through DWI, that doesn't necessarily invalidate his recovery. It's straightforward to speculate it did, but it doesn't follow directly through logical deduction. In fact, it could be that Turner heeding the psychedelic warnings and down-regulating his substance use itself has been a factor.. you know, shooting up the usual dose with diminished tolerance. Then past addiction is still indirectly a factor in his death, just not necessarily present addiction, which might as well not have been there.
I guess I need to read this thread in it;s entirely before forming a proper opinion but I can follow this easily, why would a person who was once addicted to alcohol who just happened to be killed by a person presently addicted to alcohol be a relevant consideration except, perhaps, to point out an unlucky coincidence of some kind, that he was killed by a person perhaps quite similar to past version of himself... if one believed addiction was some kind of moral crime one might point to karmic factors but IMO that would just be disrespectful and cruel... I don't follow what you say about someone reducing their dose of an injecting-habit with a presumably somewhat incapacitating substance somehow having relevance to the manner of their death if it could have happened to any random soberhead walking down the street... his past addiction is a coincidental irrelevance except I suppose that maybe it contributed to his presence in areas with a higher risk of death caused by other relatively uncontrolled sustance abusers... maybe that's what you mean by it being "indirectly" a factor in his death? But only so far as the fact he liked to walk down the road at a certain unfortunate time was also an indirect factor... unless he was actively impaired by an altered state of consciousness that might otherwise have allowed him to avoid a grisly fate... his own problems aren't really relevant in any meaningful sense except, I guess, in a kinda convoluted way in that if a person encourages dangerous behaviour like say... texting and driving... and then someone else kills them while doing this... then I guess yeah it's kinda relevant. Clearly I need to read this thread to understand what's going on here though and why it even matters. However thanks for inviting me to the discussion, but and if the thread will make this clearer, feel free to just wait for me to work it out, but...
Unless you're in the @Vastness camp that is.
What camp is it that you perceive me to be in and what argument am I expected to make here?
But I on the other hand like to sharply delineate the addiction concept. If every use is put on a spectrum of addiction, and addiction is unwanted, then therefore every use is unwanted.
Ah, OK. I guess maybe I've made some kind of argument that addiction is a concept that is not black and white, and is indeed a spectrum, but I think this is just a semantic point I might have made at some point to demonstrate basically exactly what you went on to dispute. The fact that practically EVERYTHING IMHO can be said to be some kind of a spectrum isn't a value judgement on that this and therefore to me, it does not follow that if addiction is a spectrum then every use is unwanted because yes, addiction in and of itself has a clear definition that can imply dysfunction but doesn't necessitate it. Is addiction unwanted, always? I'd say no. People can be "addicted" to fairly positive things although such behaviour would rarely be described as such because addiction is a term with negative connotations, for which obviously, there are reasons, but yeah, if addiction is a spectrum and addiction is unwanted then every behaviour that might qualify as addicted is also unwanted but I would never personally argue that addiction is unwanted in and of itself. I'd like to be addicted to self-improvement, seeking happiness, finding ways to spread joy and benefit the people around me and the human species. I wouldn't like to be addicted to anything that made me behave in ways that impaired my ability to do this, harmed me or others around me, and I think when people speak of addiction negatively it's implied that it's the dysfunction behaviours addictions can cause that are the problem - not the basic psychological phenomenon of the human mind beginning to lose it's ability to act consciously and deliberately, and specifically when this involves a subversion of certain executive functions by addictions which end up resulting in dysfunction and harm that no one would actually choose if navigating the mind was as simply as flipping a few switches to control one's behaviour in a way that was not at odds with anything that a higher version of themselves, for lack of any immediately more clear description than I can think of it.
So I guess I gotta go read the rest of this thread now and report back but as far as the topic title I'm gonna say that ketamine can be a portal to both god and perhaps an "infinite reality", although I have trouble with such expansive and poorly defined terms, but it's not a reliable one and the same portal has wrong turns that lead to finite, godless, inescapable realms of darkness. Of course the same can be said of many, many drugs - I've said it before and I'll say it again though, with ketamine specifically, reports of people managing to use it to actively improve their lives in any sustainable, measurable way that they can actually coherently describe are few and far between, perhaps even nonexistent, compared to to the immense volumes of tragic outcomes where people go looking for god and sacred truths but never find it, instead getting hopelessly lost along the way, and with many dark and tragic endings.
Edit, having basically read the thread...
OK well turns out I didn't really need to do that because the Turner thing is a specific case not directly related to the thread topic except that I guess he was another person who was interested in ketamine. This thread is basically just a glorified and slightly poetic trip report that makes some in my view quite irresponsible and completely unnuanced claims about various, invariably, always, frustratingly vague properties of the ketamine experience as if they are universal, objective facts, when they are not.
@TripSitterNZ - I'm genuinely very happy you had a good experience with ketamine, and it's no secret obviously my own love for the substance despite my deep, deep, distrust of it, and I enjoyed your ode to the K-hole in your opening post. Everyone else who also had a good time - good for you. I've had many too, I think ketamine is a very interesting and somewhat magical substance too. But it isn't magic. And there's barely anything of real substance in this thread to justify the title. This thread would be better placed in the Words forum or Drug Culture or something, Everyone who asked for clarity and pointed out the problems with the ever present vagueness, thank you for that because I was thinking the same thing right away, For example:
Chris Timothy said:
Can you elaborate on how you feel it cured your trauma? I'm aware of how sensitive of a topic that can be, and I don't want to inquisitive.. it's just that when you keep everything vague like this, the recurrent healing from trauma starts sounding more like coping.
I'm sure it isn't.. I mean I'm well aware of the power of dissociatives, like obviously. It's just that there is a delusional potential in them too, and describing the perceived psychological mechanism in more detail would reassure the readers that's not what's happening here.
You made this point admirably kindly and with humility and I totally agree with it. I think it was somewhat answered, but just speaking for myself I'm not reassured that anyone here has used ketamine for long enough to really understand how sustainable the good stuff really isn't - and because of the reasons I stated before which have not, as far as I can tell, been contradicted in any kind of clear way, this will not be true for everyone and I obviously have no way of knowing who in this thread it is really true for but as a a general rule - the good stuff is not usually sustainable. There will be exceptions of course, but the fact they are exceptions kinda just proves the rule.
I am probably being harsh here but I am just jaded with the flippancy with which every now and then someone declares that one or another dissociative is god's gift to humanity and like nothing else, because it never is, or at least - I have no reason to believe it yet, and I have many reasons to believe if there is such a substance - ketamine and probably, indeed, arylcyclohexylamine dissociatives are not going to be the class into which that magic substance falls.
