It's now been exactly since months since I last used K and I thought I'd give a little update for anyone who's still interested.
The story so far goes like this:
April - August 2017 - I used ketamine recreationally. Never more than a g in a weekend. Roughly every fortnight at first, culminating in a series of 2-3 weekends and music festivals where I used multiple days in a row. Still rarely more than a 1g in a weekend.
August 2017 - I started to notice strange abdominal symptoms that I immediately suspected to be ketamine related. Twinges and increased awareness in various parts of my abdomen and groin including what felt like my bladder
- These symptoms worsened through September and at their peak were bad enough to effect my sleeping for a few nights.
- They eventually died down and by the end of November I thought they had prettty much gone.
December 2017 - After assuming the symptoms gone and that I would be making a full recovery, the symptoms returned. This corresponded with a time in my life when I was partying a lot, using other drugs and alcoohol.
January 2018 - These symptoms worsened until I had another period where it affected my sleep for a few nights. This made me doubly anxious (a feedback cycle I think) and my mental health suffered for a while.
February - April - The symptoms seem to have very slowly got better. It's so gradual as to make it quite hard to recognise improvements but there definitely have been improvements.
April 2018 - After trying two GPs and a urologist with no answers I tried another urologist. He examined my bladder with an ultrasound and very quickly said "everything's fine". He then conducted a prostate exam which I found to be extremely painful. He seemed to think immediately (based on my reaction) that I had prostatitis. I gave him a semen sample which came back negative two days later. He advised that I take 800mg of ibuprofren every day for two weeks to ease my inflamed prostate. Tomorrow is the end of the two week period and though it does seem to be still improving, it's hard to tell why as it had been on the improve for the last few months anyway.
N.B. I've had blood tests with two different GPs and been fully tested for any STDs.
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I'm still nowhere near having any answers but I still believe that the ketamine triggered whatever is happening. It's possible that it's affecting my prostate as much as my bladder but there's some talk in medical circles of prostatitis and interstitial cystitis being the same thing, so...