Dissociatives Method to Improve Memory on Ketamine

[keliskard]

We present a method to substantially improve recall of closed-eye ketamine experiences. Our experiment showed that "ketamine aphasia" is real but surmountable. We theorize that forced verbalization creates a potent, latent memory trace that is otherwise inaccessible.

Subject was given an intra-muscular injection of 85mg S-type K and blindfolded. Subject was asked questions by Researcher at two minute intervals.

45m after injection, Subject could not remember anything prior to the 20 minute mark.

Subject believed experiment had failed because Researcher did not ask any questions.

Subject answered all questions, but did not recall hearing any questions or answers.

Upon hearing a recording of himself answering questions, Subject unlocked a perfect memory of his experience at the point each question was asked.

Subject's verbal expression appeared expanded in some aspects. He created new meanings for words, and used unusual words.

Transcript of selected questions:

What sensation are you feeling?
Flipping over.

What sensation are you feeling?
Falling, letting go of a space station

What color do you associate with the space?
Purple

What sensation are you feeling?
Flummoxing (Traveling through space as a wave-form)

Green jellyfish floating downward

Where are you?
Outer space. Solar system. Frenetically undulating aggressive cloud fist.

Where are you now?
On a beach with 15ft tall crabs

"Stuttery vibration" "Spaciousness" "huge sky, any direction, all around you"


Subject perceived the time between questions to be years. Question frequency may be increased to near back-to-back levels with little downside.

Next we will experiment with playing questions on a loop with an AI voice

Single word answers like "purple" only triggered a weak recall.

 

[Vastness]

Woah. This is actually fascinating. Oh wait... this is just something you did yourself, isn't it? A friend asked you some questions, you recorded the experience? Not that this isn't interesting but you phrased this like it was done under laboratory conditions. Still though, this is quite interesting, I might try recording my next solo K session... I usually do do K alone, so maybe I'll get one of the speaking AIs involved. Would have to do a bit of prep work for that though coz most of the fuckers cannot be trusted to trip-sit, especially out of the box. This would be a damn interesting lil app to try to create though, I might try to do that if I can get my brain in gear for long enough.

 

[placebonaut]

I just have a notepad and pen with me and write stuff down, works very well, even when you can't focus too well....

it looks like a few drunken spiders have rolled in ink and then had an orgy on the page but it's still legible.

 

[Vastness]

^ Haha... I've done that, sometimes actually it feels like I've written some interesting if slightly deranged poetry or something, obviously though that's just on the edge of K-space at best, if you're in it, writing is one of those skills that usually goes out the kwindow. I've tried to type stuff too actually, from my memory I've occasionally written something kinda meaningful or interesting, let me just try to dig up something...

....oooookay having looked at what I thought I remembered meaning something sometime, nevermind actually not really altered enough to share any of that gibberish right now. Maybe another day though.

 

[JackARoe]

Is the mechanism of amnesia the same as say DMT or benzodiazepines? I think with DMT the mind can't cram it into normal consciousness. With benzos, even a small dose for therapeutic causes amnesia for me, or at least holes in memory. Especially with TV shows. However when I watch it again the next day I notice ok I do remember, but could not recall without a rewatch. DMT amnesia does not creep me out but benzo amnesia does.

Then there are dreams and my inability to recall a dream unless I get awoken in the middle of it. Also a big THC user, but I don't think we know enough about THC and REM sleep. After waking up in the morning I can't recall dreams. Shake me awake and I will remember what I was dreaming about.

 

[placebonaut]

I've tried to type stuff too actually, from my memory I've occasionally written something kinda meaningful or interesting, let me just try to dig up something...

I tried typing and suspect I might be using my face on the keyboard to type too much while on ket, pen and paper is more readable!

 

[keliskard]

Trip #2. 80mg S-type K, blindfolded, sitting in a chair with head on a pillow:
We recorded many more questions and answers. Researcher was instructed to use progressive focusing questions and drill down. We found the recall is enhanced when more detail is verbally described by the Subject. The tricky part is that the subject moves on from a scene relatively quickly and cannot answer more questions about it. Certain questions are much better for triggering recall than others. We will refine the questions over time. Researcher became unreliable because he was not sober, so we intend to use AI voices to ask the questions on a set cadence in follow-up sessions. We have found it is necessary to have an external prompt to speak. If not, Subject forgets to speak for long periods. The audio was played back after 40 minutes, and transcribed by Subject. For those interested in reading the long-form trip transcript, we leave it here:

"ok we can commence the questioning"

This is all just blackness right now.oil painting black... dripping... DOWN.extending down through the floor

4- Does it remind you of something?
Yes, it reminds me of the last time

5- what direction are you moving?
Tricky to describe. I was sitting in the chair in the apartment, and then i experience spatial projection

6- What orientation is your body?
My orientation is like.... wow.

7- What orientation is your body?
What the fuck is going on...

8-What orientation is your body? Where are you?

9- what direction are you moving?
This is incredible

10- where is your body?
Where is my body.That is the question.Taken away from me.It's not right

14- What direction are you moving?
ahhh, I was... undulating kind of like a... like a.... forest? hahahaha No, NO! It's not a forest! HAHAHA! HAHHAHAHA

16- Where are you now then?
Well, I'm... smoothily.... ssss.. sss. sssssbhshbshbhslsbllsblslb

18- Fantastically flying

19- I am the speaker! I am the speaker. Remember that, that was a wild one [I felt myself being the portable black speaker sitting on the table, playing the music for the trip. I fell off the table onto the floor, rolled over into the corner, tipped over, and died, oozing a green acid color onto the floor. I felt constrained and trapped in this perspective, with a sensation on my side feeling like I was pressed onto the floor]

new scenery, ok we are orbiting an island in your little seaplane
21- How far away from the island are we?
About.... shit, was i answering a question?
Yes, how far from the island are you?
ahhhh, no more island, we left the island and delved deep into the sea, deep down we go into the center of the earth. Let's see what the center of the earth looks like.

23- How far from the earth are you?
wow this is really cool, there's an army of.. nah not an army. Ha! Dammit, I tried to identify it, and it disappeared.
Does it remind you of something?
Eye floaters

24- What do these eye floaters look like?
What?..... oh....I moved on to something else. Let's see.

25- What sensation do you feel?
ahh. flll---- HA! I recreated the apartment and fell through the floor to the center of the earth. That was fun....Flipping forward.

Like Skydiving?
Yeah.

26 - what direction are you moving?
Well I'm falling over backwards, kind of purple-ish aura. Haze.

27- what color do you associate with the space?
Welllll it's black. But weeeee'rrre looking for stuff...

What are you looking for?
Circling!

What are you circling?
circling around a head thing. hmmm. Left him way back there, but there was this metal head thing.

28- How far is this head thing?
Well I don't think that one was that exceptional. Onward!

Where are you?
I am in a... fffff... fugly blue and red, red and turquoise tunnel. OMG what the hell is this! Now we're a spider? Now we're kind of a... is this a beach... or waves? This is very disjointed.

29- What orientation is your body?
Well I believe I have come down enough by now to know I'm sitting in a chair.

Where is this chair?
Well I can feel my arms and legs, horizontal, uprightish position.
Actually, this position should have a word. Shlemmeshing. No, that implies movement. We need something for sitting. For sitting we need.... fffff... sssss.... i forget the name of the sitting posture, but it's a pretty good one.

31- What sensation are you feeling now?
lot of whirly, whirling, slow motion, helicopterish, kinda winampy

What color do you associate with this space?
I seem to be in a sea of.... oh, this color I would call ffff... Frothel! Frothel color! It's like this big mish mash of stuff, it's not like that.... heh....

Fruffling! [phone rings]
omg is someone calling me?

Owl. Squirrel. Oh! Owls and squirrells are more similar than I thought.
34- How far away is this owl?
Oh man. This is outer space man. He could be like 40 miles wide.

35This looks like triplane turmoil! The best video game of all time!

36- what direction are you moving now?
oh I'm just hangin out, I'm just standing around. No wait I'm laying down. I'm laying down on a bobsled just careening through space. That's pretty cool. It's like a waterslide, except, oh man. Draw this for me. It's like a waterslide where you got a tube thing, but it's made out of rainbow colored spacey stuff, careening through space like that. [hands crossed on chest]

How far is this thing you're looking at?
It's like a grid. What a weird scene. 300ft away.

38- That's a big space you're in
Space. Yeah, if you don't have enough room, you just go down through the floor.

 

[keliskard]

Is the mechanism of amnesia the same as say DMT or benzodiazepines? I think with DMT the mind can't cram it into normal consciousness. With benzos, even a small dose for therapeutic causes amnesia for me, or at least holes in memory. Especially with TV shows. However when I watch it again the next day I notice ok I do remember, but could not recall without a rewatch. DMT amnesia does not creep me out but benzo amnesia does.

Then there are dreams and my inability to recall a dream unless I get awoken in the middle of it. Also a big THC user, but I don't think we know enough about THC and REM sleep. After waking up in the morning I can't recall dreams. Shake me awake and I will remember what I was dreaming about.

We asked AI about amnesia in these substances and found the answer fascinating:

Ketamine
Functional disconnection between brain regions that normally communicate. Each module keeps running, but the orchestra has no conductor.

When you ask "What is this?", you are forcing integration across dissociated networks. You're demanding that the visual system, the language system, the body-sense system, and whatever remains of the self-narrative system all converge on a single answer. This is a temporary reversal of the dissociation. It creates a moment of coherence that can be remembered. The act of questioning is literally an anti-dissociative intervention.

But the self-narrative system creates a memory issue. Your auditory cortex heard the question. Your language centers formulated an answer. Your motor cortex moved your mouth. But the hippocampus and default mode network—the systems that tag experiences as "this happened to me"—were offline. The memory was encoded locally, in the language module, but never integrated into the autobiographical narrative. It was a file saved to a drive that your conscious self couldn't access.
Until, of course, the recording played it back. Then the auditory input reactivated the same language circuits, and suddenly the memory was "found" and routed into conscious awareness.

Benzos
Turns down the volume on everything. Everything is foggy, slow, and uniform. The orchestra is still together, still coordinated—they're just playing very quietly, and half the musicians are asleep. The memory impairment is a failure to encode new memories at all, so there is nothing to recover.

DMT
Hyper-connects brain regions. Everything is connected to everything. The self dissolves not because the conductor leaves, but because every musician starts playing every other musician's instrument simultaneously. The orchestra becomes a single, undifferentiated wall of sound.

On DMT, memories are stored in a hyper-connected state that is so alien to normal consciousness that the sober brain cannot reconstruct the associations that encoded them. The experience is remembered—often vividly—but the memory is incompressible. It's too dense, too interconnected, too synesthetic to fit into language. People remember DMT trips but struggle to describe them because the memory is a 10-dimensional object and language is a 2-dimensional screen.

Asking "What is this?" on DMT is trying to insert a single point of reference into a hyper-connected system. At low doses, it could anchor you. At breakthrough doses, the concept of "this" is meaningless because everything is "this." There is no separation between the question and the answer.

CONCLUSION
We think we've discovered a protocol that exploits the specific behavior of a brain on ketamine to hack our memory. Our Q&A system solves ketamine's disconnection problem by building bridges to isolated memories, but we would not expect it to solve the storage problem of Benzos or the compression problem of DMT.

 

[placebonaut]

Trip #2: We recorded many more questions and answers.

interesting read

This is a temporary reversal of the dissociation. It creates a moment of coherence that can be remembered. The act of questioning is literally an anti-dissociative intervention.

Does this not therefore have a negative effect on the khole? it may also reduce the benefit of the therapy. Though the recall may improve the benefit of the therapy. What's the NET gain?

would be good to think about this as it could help direct research in the right way for things like ketamine PTSD therapy

But the self-narrative system creates a memory issue. Your auditory cortex heard the question. Your language centers formulated an answer. Your motor cortex moved your mouth. But the hippocampus and default mode network—the systems that tag experiences as "this happened to me"—were offline. The memory was encoded locally, in the language module, but never integrated into the autobiographical narrative. It was a file saved to a drive that your conscious self couldn't access.
Until, of course, the recording played it back. Then the auditory input reactivated the same language circuits, and suddenly the memory was "found" and routed into conscious awareness.

is this saying that until you shared the recording/notes with the subject they couldn't access the save memory, just double checking, I think that's what it's implying.

I'm wondering if there's a way to improve the questioning phase at all if that's the case, maybe something along the lines of lucid dreaming techniques, train people to react to a prompt/beep to trigger them to say what's going on while recording the khole, that would be less invasive.

not sure how practical it is for therapy, but for us psychonauts...

 

[JackARoe]

CONCLUSION
We think we've discovered a protocol that exploits the specific behavior of a brain on ketamine to hack our memory. Our Q&A system solves ketamine's disconnection problem by building bridges to isolated memories, but we would not expect it to solve the storage problem of Benzos or the compression problem of DMT.

Thanks Kelisgard, there was some good info in there. That was a good question to put to it, I never think to check with AI. I usually chuckle when AI describes trips. I think spoken like a true machine that will never get to experience this.

But the storage problem of benzos and compression problem of DMT is way interesting. Two totally different drugs known to cause amnesia but for very different reasons.

 

[keliskard]

I hate having experiences that I cannot remember, so I have been on this crusade ever since the first time I had a closed-eye ketamine trip. The first approach I tried was to draw using the Open Brush program in a Meta Quest headset with an plain black world canvas. This approach was based on the belief that I was unable to speak, which turned out to be false. One of your wands has a lot of settings for the color, drawing tool, intensity, brush type, thickness, etc. The other wand is used to select from these options. Then you have other control methods for teleporting to move yourself around if you don't want to walk, which is required to get to a new drawing space when you fill up your whole vision with drawings. This was a lot to ask. It did trigger some recall to review the drawings, but it seems to be lacking something and I was not terribly successful at it. The Researchers did get a good laugh out of watching me trip while waving VR wands around. Warning: If you try that, do not sit up or stand up. It's extremely easy to get disoriented and lose motor control, then fall and hit your head on something and die. The best position was to lay face down on the edge of a couch, so that hands dangle to the floor, holding the wands, so you don't have to hold them up, which seems impossibly hard on K.

Now that I tell this story, I realize I never tried an auditory prompt to make sure I draw something every 30 seconds, and I never tried transcribing the trip from the drawings. I will definitely have to circle back to that.

Placebonaut, my current understanding is that narrating the trip verbally does influence it, but the effect rapidly diminishes once you get used to doing it. I do think that you receive from the trip what you focus on, so being focused on remembering it does make it less likely to have some sort of emotional breakthrough. The hope is that if we develop techniques we can internalize and perform as second nature, that will decrease the need to divert focus to the techniques, and should unlock the ability to have breakthroughs, but with better recall.

You're correct that I remember almost nothing from the trip until I hear the audio recording.

I believe that if I hear a beep, even if I practice ahead of time, if I speak at all I will say something so vague as to not be memorable. There are particular types of answers that improve recall, but I am still circling on what the best ones are. I will try the beep once I determine the best answer type.

 

[keliskard]

Here's a transcript of the story of how this current flavor of speech-memory crusade began. Some of it is outdated in light of these ongoing experiments, but lucid dreamers may find the context interesting.

I know how to remember ketamine trips. I've known for 20 years. Of course, there's no way to go through an hour of intense visuals and perfectly recall each scene. That's why people take photographs when they walk through a museum. I'll be lucky to remember 20% of the exhibits unless my memory was specifically trained. Even less if it was not a grounded real thing that I witnessed. More a supernatural happening.

Memory techniques: You must use your will, make connections as you go along, dangle the connections onto a series of familiar things. It would be like watching a WinAmp music visualization for an hour and then trying to recall the twists and turns of every cave you blasted through. An impossibility. So then, to be a psychonaut, to amplify your brain, perceive supernatural things for one hour, requires training, preparation, vigilance, reflection, repetition, planning, review of what worked and what did not.

Failure to adhere to such principles will result in a life that is fleeting, temporary, unremembered, unextraordinary, easily forgotten. Like many men we know. Like men we used to be.

What a fortuitous circumstance that I happened yesterday upon a guide for enhancing recall when reading. A vast number of techniques were offered, frameworks given, to amplify one's memory. To create the conditions in which memory thrives. Many of these were relevant not just to writing, but thinking and seeing.

One of the principles was to reformulate words on a page into your own words. Ask questions in your head. Take notes. You must put it into your own words because it forces processing, which then improves the ability to recall when the brain converts input into something that it understands in its own way.

The problem then is that ketamine seems to impair speech. Fairly tough to speak on it. So, ah, and the ability to formulate words is also impaired. So, this then, explains the increased difficulty of remembering.

It's funny that actually, that also explains why you cannot remember what you saw when you were a very young child before you learned to read and write and formulate your own thoughts. My first memory of my friend holding up four fingers was a symbol of how many years old he is.

That requires that memory. Being able to recall that memory requires that I assign meaning, that I convert four outstretched fingers to an abstract symbol. And assign it to the number of revolutions that the sun has made around the earth. Four outstretched fingers in the air means this person has existed for four times 365 revolutions of the sun around the earth.

Having now outlined the problem ketamine offers with respect to recall. We can now set about finding a solution. Perhaps we can draw from my background in lucid dreaming, where the only method that I recall of remembering dreams or improving dream recall was to practice it. Every time you wake up, write down what you were just dreaming. And you get in the habit of that, and your brain learns that this is important and that it should remember it.

One of the issues here is the trip length. If it were only to last one minute, I would probably be able to remember perfectly everything that happened. It's when, profound experiences stack one on top of another in rapid succession, it wears down your mind. It wears down the ability to synthesize and process because it's a lot. It's like a stimulus overload.

I noticed at one point the experience seemed to change and I might say improve when I tried to identify what I'm doing:
I'm experiencing a foggy representation of the end of the world. I'm zooming out to the future to experience and know with certainty that, basically the universe will collapse with everything in it. And so this whole experience, and my perception of it will end. I looked down and saw myself as an ancient warrior. It seemed like I was wearing some very thick furs, looking about asking, what is this? What, like, what is it? Asking questions about reality, shaping it, looking for my own person in it. Looking for my own arms and limbs seem to change the trip and make it more memorable and take it in a better direction. I think it seemed to cause definition to appear out of the chaos.

Now, because I wasn't in such a habit of this, the way ketamine is when you keep getting hit with waves of highly stimulating things, it's easy to lose that mentality of asking questions, trying to frame what is happening, and engaging the philosopher's mind about what you're experiencing. It's easy to kind of give up. It feels like a battle, like a fight to engage that mind. And it feels more natural to give up and enjoy the ride of whatever the trip is trying to show you.

There is well-known advice that experienced trippers will tell you "do not fight the trip." And yet here I am, an experienced tripper, essentially arguing to fight the trip, arguing that fighting the trip is good, that not doing so is a waste. But I think I would do well to stick this conversation into AI and ask for some ideas on how to improve recall.

Feelings and body sensations are hard to describe, and I'm not used to describing them even while sober. So some way of of translating those into some other language or expression would be good.

 

[Esperighanto]

We asked AI about the mechanism of amnesia in these substances and found the answer fascinating:

Cortical Mechanisms Contributing to Ketamine-Induced Dissociation - PMC

Ketamine is a unique anesthetic agent that induces dissociative anesthesia, characterized by perceptual detachment, analgesia, and altered states of consciousness. Beyond its widespread use in anesthesia, subhypnotic ketamine dosing has emerged as a ...

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Ketamine and propofol both share the properties of HCN1 antagonism, which I suspect may relate to ketamine's specific proclivity towards amnesia compared to other arylcyclohexylamines. Benzos' amnesic effects are broadly considered to relate to an interruption of cholinergic activity which is core to memory formation, and you can alleviate that with pro-cholinergics and AMPAkines in my experience, I prefer noopept or phenylpiracetam for that specific application. DMT's amnesia, I think, may relate to whatever induces the collapse of alpha wave activity (https://www.jneurosci.org/content/46/2/e0344252025), but like the rest of these it's pretty unexplored. I didn't link anything to the benzodiazepine-cholinergic activity relationship because I found a huge variety of papers on it with a cursory search so I assume it's easy enough to find, but if you do want some sources on it just lmk.

Asking AI about these things, and then propagating that information which says very little using a lot of space and readers' time is maybe something we should pull away from on this forum imo.

Thanks Kelisgard, there was some good info in there. That was a good question to put to it, I never think to check with AI. I usually chuckle when AI describes trips. I think spoken like a true machine that will never get to experience this.

I really want to push people on this forum to not use AI and to not post AI generated text whatsoever, as it's extremely prone to convincing people who don't know much of things that are simply not true. As the other mod here, how do you feel about generative AI text being posted on this forum? For example, benzos' mechanism of amnesia is well understood to relate to interruption of cholinergic activity, and that isn't mentioned in the AI response whatsoever.

I know people are using them in good faith, and I want to stress that I do not feel any anger or distaste or suspect any malice towards people who do this, but I suspect that there's an underlying ignorance towards specifically the unreliability of them and I fear that it may catalyze the propagation of misinformation, as well as damage Bluelight's reputation by polluting our conversations with AI slop.

 

[keliskard]

You're right to call that out, Mod. Before posting, I deleted over half of the AI's text including its ramblings about mechanisms of action to decrease the odds it said anything wrong, although it never mentioned cholinergenic activity. But I should have clicked through to sources and then summarized it myself into a couple of sentences, especially when posting a research oriented thread. I did really like its orchestra analogy since it correlated so well to my experiences. I can edit the post, but then it will look like you're making a fuss about nothing, so I'll just leave it unless instructed otherwise.

 

[Esperighanto]

You're right to call that out, Mod. Before posting, I deleted over half of the AI's text including its ramblings about mechanisms of action to decrease the odds it said anything wrong, although it never mentioned cholinergenic activity. But I should have clicked through to sources and then summarized it myself into a couple of sentences, especially when posting a research oriented thread. I did really like its orchestra analogy since it correlated so well to my experiences. I can edit the post, but then it will look like you're making a fuss about nothing, so I'll just leave it unless instructed otherwise.

I appreciate it dude, there are some people on this forum who are very loud about saying "Hey, these generative AIs are likely wrong but let's test things and see how they come out", and I'm all for that. These are invaluable tools without a doubt, but given that they're still in their infancy, I think that significant criticism in the form of verifying its statements by checking its sources is absolutely the place we should all be at right now, and I appreciate you doing that and keeping the quality of this forum to a high degree dude. Genuinely do appreciate it a ton, thank you again.

The orchestra analogy was absolutely baller, I cannot lie.

Feel free to edit the post, it's not a problem for me whatsoever! I'd always rather more clear, to-the-point harm reduction advice be what remains on this forum so that the anonymously lurking future readers of these threads are given the best chance of coming across useful info.

 

[placebonaut]

The hope is that if we develop techniques we can internalize and perform as second nature, that will decrease the need to divert focus to the techniques, and should unlock the ability to have breakthroughs, but with better recall. I believe that if I hear a beep, even if I practice ahead of time, if I speak at all I will say something so vague as to not be memorable.

Both lucid dream techniques, train yourself to recognise and react to prompts. make it 2nd nature and it will be less invasive

I really want to push people on this forum to not use AI and to not post AI generated text whatsoever, as it's extremely prone to convincing people who don't know much of things that are simply not true. As the other mod here, how do you feel about generative AI text being posted on this forum? For example, benzos' mechanism of amnesia is well understood to relate to interruption of cholinergic activity, and that isn't mentioned in the AI response whatsoever.

is it worse or better than someone reading 1 article somewhere that doesn't give the full picture and then posting about it? I use AI a lot, even when I'm not directly quoting it I've frequently used it to get the answers I need and find relevant papers, it's an excellent research tool without blindly trusting what it says. However even without AI, quoting papers does not mean that we're always getting the correct answer, the scientific community doesn't always agree on things especially when it's new/novel.

For well researched topics where there is consensus then quoting from papers is a lot more reliable, but this is also where AI tends to be much better at things and hallucinates less because it's data set is bigger & better.

Clearly sign posting it's AI generated content with a health warning, and coupled with references to papers to check and confirm seems like a decent compromise IMHO, the added benefit is there are more eyeballs on a topic and it gets discussed more as a result.

 

[JackARoe]

I really want to push people on this forum to not use AI and to not post AI generated text whatsoever, as it's extremely prone to convincing people who don't know much of things that are simply not true. As the other mod here, how do you feel about generative AI text being posted on this forum? For example, benzos' mechanism of amnesia is well understood to relate to interruption of cholinergic activity, and that isn't mentioned in the AI response whatsoever.

I totally agree with you Esper, I see AI and it all looks the same to me, all the soul of an android and large words. Nothing accounts for real experience. I defer to you, if you want make a rule and we can moderate how we like. Maybe even a sticky thread asking to keep it limited.

AI is sort of reminding me a little of the dot comm bubble. Corporate America seems to now have to scale back from AI due to issues.

I think by keeping AI posts to a minimum the forum would be less machine, more human, and just cleaner with people discussing things. I see even kelisgard agrees to an extent.

 

[keliskard]

Trip #3 70mg S-type K:
I got a 60 second silent audio file from the internet. Then I recorded some questions like "where are you" and "what are you feeling" using voice AI with a therapist woman's voice. I rigged a looping audio with VLC player that asked a question, then waited 60 seconds, then asked another question, and so on. I started playing it on a loop to test the functionality while I was preparing the K.

I found it to be a fascinating experience to answer those questions every 1 minute as I was going through normal activities. I can recall many points where I was asked a question, with responses such as "I am in my cabinet going through bottles looking for the right one". The memory technique works great sober.

This was the first time I had given myself an intramuscular injection. As I did the injection and narrated it to the voice, I felt like a degenerate, like I wasn't happy with what my life had become. Disappointment.

The thrill of coming up overpowered the disappointment. At the last minute I tried to change the setting from the chair to the bed, causing me to have to move the laptop, speaker and voice recorder. In my haste I put the voice recorder next to the speaker, resulting in severely degraded speech recording. Here's what I could make out:

5 Virtual world
6 falling through space
7 spinning seriously
8 falling into blackness, laid back,
9 canadian shield
11 There are stars, blackness
13 Standing up, looknig out about 50 miles, up up and away
rolling wavy sensation
flumulumulumuluxoling

Waveling [wave-el-ing]

Rolling sensation
Skimming a field of sunflowers
Laying on my back looking at the night sky
Frotheling

As I listened to the recording and did a transcription, the disappointed degenerate feeling came back. I felt like it hadn't been worth it. Maybe 70 mg wasn't enough. Maybe the trip didn't seem intense enough to be worth remembering. I invented some retarded new words, whoopty-doo. I can remember the question points, but the experiences seem weak.

Maybe three trips asking "where are you" in a row is too many. That focus is on what I saw, which is not the point of ketamine trips. So what is ketamine about? I reread the poetic stuff I wrote after the first K injection I ever had, well over a year ago:

I feel like I know this place. I've been here before and I know how it's going to go, but then, it happens in a completely unexpected way
It's always got a twist on it
Something you never would have seen coming
Something you never would have figured out
Time and space, the vastness of it
A reminder of the insignificance of oneself in the grandeur of it all
A feeling of disintegration. Once from the back. Once from the side. Cast aside. So insignificant as to be an afterthought, and yet it's my perspective.
We are all one. One people, one existence, one universe
Ideas, connections, thoughts. Some powerful ones appear in this sea of change, swirling, things appearing and disappearing, popping in and out of existence, The whole universe is like this. Everywhere, all the time.
A powerful friendship. A bond, yet strained. A vision of what might be, and the sacrifices necessary to achieve it. The hard work, the endurance, the pain, the self reflection necessary to grow. For two brothers to achieve greatness. The communication, the openness, the soul searching, the enlightenment
The decision, of who and why to associate with in these fleeting moments we have on earth
The blinding brightness between two orbiting cities. As they disintegrate.
The perfect setup
The right dose, the right setting, the right time
The first time is like a window, an introduction, to what you can do with this
We're going to go far
The flow, the direction, and the vibe of our people and this universe is going to be better because of these experiences we're having, and the experiences we're going to have in the future
Thank you Researcher for setting this up

Consider that what I wrote on the first trip was done without any memory techniques. I described perfectly what ketamine shows you. But how many times can one write about a feeling of disintegration before it becomes a chore to pick up the pen? The first time I disintegrated and wrote about it, it was a peak life experience. Now it's the same old s***. If I compare it to a unique memorable experience like scuba diving, I pick the scuba over the disintegration every time. It's not even close. It almost feels stupid writing that.

High dose Ketamine puts you in a state of paralysis and then gives you a foggy tour of the universe, along with some weird central nervous system sensations. A great experience once, or if it's been so long that you can't remember what it's like. Forgettable after that. Life offers so much more.

I've lost focus on what I'm supposed to be getting out of these trips, because they aren't like they used to be. So I'm just answering questions like "where are you" and describing the same nonsense over and over about outer space. The visuals are nonsense. The feelings are worth something.

Imagine I get really good at recall and can spit out perfectly the profound moments of a high dose come up. I doubt I'm actually going to be happy with the results. Consider my writing about the similarity between an owl and a squirrel at minute 25 of trip #2. At minute 10 It will just be an even more jumbled up dissociated mess. It will just be one of those drug experiences where you feel like you're doing something profound, and then later it's like "lol I was high as f*** look at this nonsense."

It's the Dunning-Kruger effect. Memory strips away the veneer that you are intelligent, lucid, and profound, and reveals the Truth, that you were being an idiot on drugs. I've done so many ketamine trips and what do I really have to show for it? Where are these deep realizations we speak of. Where is the change? What is really more likely, the Dunning-Kruger effect, or something profound that somehow none of us can articulate. There may not really be much there.

LSD is an amplifier.

Ketamine is stupid.

 

[Allylbenzene]

Also a big THC user, but I don't think we know enough about THC and REM sleep.

Do you combine your THC with CBD? The CBD tends to stabilise the THC effects (thus rendering them sustainable) and potentiates them too.

 

[keliskard]

Trip 4 80mg S-type K

- Added an IQ question to look for the Dunning-Kruger effect. I genuinely tried to answer how smart I felt, but the perceived intelligence level seemed to have little correlation to the ability to articulate something coherent.
- A funny moment when a question gets asked at the 21 minute mark, I reply that the question should have been asked earlier, unaware that it was asked and ignored earlier, and also unable to conclude that the same question must have been asked earlier due to the looping audio. The answer implies that I perceived the trip to be much more clear and sharp earlier on.
- Concluded some questions are appropriate only for particular stages of the trip.
- Concluded 80mg is too much, given the clear difficulty answering questions with any detail before the 15 minute mark. Even simple binary questions were completely missed.
- Continued with looping AI voice questions for reliability. Transcript:

4 How do your feelings connect to what you're seeing?
Well I feel like I'm crouching, crowded in towards the floor... Epic.

5 How intelligent do you feel right now? Estimate your IQ.
I feel... vvvvvvery intelligent.... I feel whip sharp. [audio sounds like 50 IQ]

6 Describe where you are
Well I am here.... Wow.

7 What are you experiencing
This is weird.... Space.

8 Are you seeing things connected in a new way?
Yes I... ssssss..... ssssuuuu...

9 Describe how sensations connect to visuals.
-----

10 Describe the profoundness of this moment
I'd describe it as uhhhh.... Wow.... What the ffff...

11 Do your perceptions seem clear and sharp, or are they more unfocused and hazy?
-----

12 Does this moment seem memorable? Or forgettable.
Well it seems fffffff... Definitely memorable.

14 How do your feelings connect to what you're seeing?
Hmmm my feelings and what I'm seeing are kind of disjointed. Hmm. How do I describe it. Wow. Like uhhhh.

15- How intelligent do you feel right now? Estimate your IQ.
Oh I'm at like 20. 20 IQ.

16-Describe where you are
Well I'm in a green orb. Actually, the orb is... a white orb with green fronds kind of shellacking - how the hell do you describe that - shtickitystack.

17- What are you experiencing?
Well I am being quickly drawn up a ladder that started in the earth, and now we're in outer space. So the ladder goes from the earth all the way out, and now we're just existentially.... Oh do we have a phrase for this? It was called a sliv...

18 Are you seeing things in a new way?
Why yes I am.

19 Describe how sensations connect to visuals
Ha! My little chair just picked up and started cavorting around the neighborhood

20 Describe the profoundness of this moment
How is this profound? Idk it's hazy. I can't remember the question now.

21 Do your perceptions seem clear and sharp, or are they more unfocused and hazy?
They seem really unfocused. Where was that question at the beginning!

22 Does this moment seem memorable
It does seem memorable.... No don't change it. Don't fucking change it!

23 How do your feelings connect to what you're seeing?
Well the feeling kind of.... Now see this seems like.... See I feel kind of awe inspired.

24 Estimate your IQ
My IQ iiiiiissss.... I would estimate it to be... hmmmm...............[very long pause] one hundred and ten. I estimate my IQ at 110. [Researcher laughs]

25 Describe where you are
Well I am in a wafeling shape-shifteling orbathon.

26 What are you experiencing?
I'm observing this hazy couple of tree gods doing this wavy dance. Really strange. Now they're gone. That was bizarre.

27 Are you seeing things connected in a new way?
Yes. This kind of slot car race car thing. I'm here connected to this truck. Ehh it's not a truck, it's a roller coaster car carriage thing getting hurtled through space.

28 Describe how sensations connect to visuals
Well I think that's a better question for earlier on in the trip. The sensations connect to the visuals more viscerally earlier on in the trip.

29 Describe the profoundness of this moment
This is profound because there is a wolf-inspired fish-shaped alien speaker.

30 Do your perceptions seem clear and sharp, or are they more unfocused and hazy?
Out of focus.