DISCLAIMER: I have a lot of mixed feelings about this subject and I was also stimmed up while writing, so I ended up slightly off-topic in places. I decided to leave it unedited because I believe it offers a novel first hand account of extreme MXE abuse from a retrospective point of view. The bit at the end explaining the psychological action behind MXE addiction is pretty crude and hypothetical, but it does conform with my own experiences and what I've seen of others.
Once upon a time, I considered Ketamine to be my favourite drug. It holds a special place in my heart as the first dissociative I tried, and spurred my continuing love for dissociatives. In retrospect, I think I ended up romanticising it quite a bit more than it deserved - I certainly had some VERY mindblowing experiences on ketamine, but these were dotted between a much larger amount of "nice but nothing to write home about" experiences. I find that the deep psychedelic effects of Ketamine only manifest when I have combined it with another drug like MDMA or a psych. From what I hear, I.M. injection is the only way to go if you want to see what Ketamine truly has to offer. This is on my bucket list for sure, but until then I don't see myself returning to K often.
As for MXE, I absolutely love(d) the stuff... a bit too much for my own good. I could wax nostalgic about the good times I had with MXE, and those good times were REALLY fucking good! Particularly in my early days of using it, before I became utterly irresponsible with it and I was able to use it socially and I didn't have to try and hide my use from concerned friends. Low-medium doses are great fun in a wide variety situations, and unlike Ketamine, I didn't have too much trouble reaching the 'hole' with MXE. Plus, the afterglow with MXE is more pronounced for me than it is with K.
A year or two ago, I not only considered MXE to be my favourite drug, but I started to become so obsessed that I deluded myself into thinking it could do no wrong. I wanted those early MXE days to last for ever, but alas, life moves on... several months later, I moved city and my life had transformed. I relapsed on benzos to cope with these anxieties and found myself spiraling into a self-destructive lifestyle. When MXE entered my life again, I found myself consistently overdoing it and often making an arse of myself. I would buy, say, a 3 gram bag with the intention of keeping it as a stash only to find I was unable to stretch it out to a full 3 days! On one occasion, an MXE package arrived on the day before a postgrad level assignment was due. It wasn't a big assignment, but predictably I hadn't even started... Didn't even last 2 hours before I managed to delude myself into thinking that a low dose might help spur creativity (I study English Literature.... I can barely fucking read on MXE). Ended up trying to do the assignment while trashed hating myself the whole time, yet still redosing because "I feel really dissociated.... I hear snorting it is more stimulating so maybe I can sober myself up with a bump".... seriously! Anyway, I got off benzos and reassesed my attitude towards drugs since then, and feel I am in a much better place...
Earlier this Summer, I bought a 5g bag for old times sake, figuring that I will be able to use it responsibly now that my life circumstances have improved. I had been doing cocaine that day (hate the stuff, rarely touch it), and was coming down..... and, of course, I had no benzos to fall back on anymore. I was well aware of the stupidity of mynext decision, but out come a couple of unweighed bumps of MXE (I weighed out a similar sized bump at a later date out of curiousity, and it turned out my escalating MXE use had led me to eyeball bigger and bigger bumps... these 'small bumps' were 70-100mg a piece!). I did a third bump of a similar size when I began to feel that sweet sweet NMDA dissociation masking the cocaine edginess...
...Next thing I know, a day has passed and I have close to no memory of what has happened..... I didn't even register the fact that I'd blacked out for about half an hour until I remembered it wasn't daylight a moment ago! I checked the house for clues of what had happened and found some weird things like I had stripped my bed covers off and shoved them in a random closet, red wine stains all over the kitchen/dinning room (and it aint a small room). But the most disturbing discovery... I had consumed approx 4.5g of MXE! I checked floors, pockets, carpets, bins... all I found was the empty baggie, some scrapings on surfaces and a bunch that I'd somehow managed to get inside the USB ports on my laptop. To clarify, I was reasonably functional at this point, but I definately felt very 'off', like a toxic dissociative feeling...I wasn't high but my sense perception was messed up and I did experience one major hallucination.
I don't seem to have suffered any permanent side effects from this incident, but at the time I had convinced myself I was going to be permenantly damaged. Anxiety and emptiness was crippling, but the thing that terrified me most was losing my ability to sleep for 5 straight days. I altered my diet, ensured I got plenty exercise to tire myself out, avoided caffeine (or any drugs for that matter), spent long stretches of time meditating and stretching, paying attention to light levels at certain times of the day etc. etc... everything I could think of that might help me sleep I tried it because I was was seriously fearing for my sanity at this point, and couldn't stop thinking of the fact that I have never came across a higher reported single dosage of MXE... what if there was a mechanism through which the drug irreversibly alter the functioning of a part of the brain that is necessary for inducing sleep. I was living alone at the time and felt unable to talk to anyone about this because I was supposed to be off drugs. It took 5 days before I could sleep again, yet it only took 1 day after the overdose before I ordered another bag. THANKFULLY this one proved to be the last I have purchased. I now realise I can't use MXE without recklessly redosing in an attempt to recapture the good old days.
Anyway, I realise I have ended up on a complete tangent here (meth), but I think it is important to consider the negatives of each drug in order to fairly compare them, not just the high. We are all aware of Ketamine organ damage and addiction potential, but info on MXE addiction and dangers is more limited. In my (pretty extensive) experience, it is the tranquil escapism that Ketamine addicts value, whereas the combination of mania, stimulation and reinforcing euphoria has the potential to delude users into becoming obsessed with illogical ideas fostered in the dissociative headspace. This hypothesis could be backed up by the observation that serious MXE heads tend to perceive their use as being spiritually motivated. In reality, most of the 'revelations' that users experience are arbitrary, and only seem profound due to the accompanying euphoria/monamine release. The resulting mania allows MXE heads to buy into their own delusions, and this acts as a justification to continue chasing the world of the M-Hole while neglecting consensus reality. The addict becomes increasingly deluded in their thought process until they find themselves snorting bumps of MXE as a means of sobering up from too much MXE.
Or at least that's my theory haha
TL;DR: Both are nice in moderation
