Is there anything at the bottom of Ketamine's rabbit hole?

[EntheoDjinn]

................. "put all my troubles in an old Ket bag" . I couldn't resist even though almost nobody on this forum is old enough to get it.

................ and smile, smile smile

 

[theMerovingian]

Pharmaceutical grade ket puts a smile on my face. Really hate when I'm out of it. I find its good like if you suffer from depression and is uplifting and helps with my mood. When I have it I keep saying to myself oh I have to make this last but three days and its all gone. A real kick in the groin. I just laze out listening to music. A mate use to always bang on about Ketamine I'm so happy for that I can see now why he use to so miss it when he could not get his hands on it.

 

[Vastness]

Thanks for that link to "Journeys into the Bright World", EntheoDjinn, I am in the process of reading it now, it really is pretty fascinating the gradual tightening of Ketamine's insidious grip, literally dragging the authors into the bright depths...

I remember describing to a friend the subtly increasing pull of the 'hole as being "like gravity" in the way that it becomes something of which you are sometimes aware, but which still acts without you always giving it much thought.

I can relate to some of the descriptions, such as the feeling of "fragility" after even relatively small K sessions, like waking reality is just a little bit more oppressive and hard to deal with. Also, while I have never had a daily habit I was involved in a somewhat unhealthy but mercifully quite brief romantic relationship that involved binges of gradually increasing intensity almost every weekend, and although I usually consider myself a rational person, and have no religious leanings, I remember beginning to believe Ketamine was somehow allowing me to glimpse a divine play between forces of good and evil behind the scenes of the universe... in retrospect, I believe this duality was actually a reflection of my own internal conflicted feelings about the relationship and my then partner. I did not do K for a long time following the end of this relationship, and as I mentioned earlier when I did it again recently, these feelings did not recur.

That said, I did also begin to believe that some of the places I visited were actually real places, existing in some parallel reality or time to our corporeal plane... and to be honest, even now, even with full awareness of the effect that drugs can have on our ideas about reality and the likely irrationality of this belief... I still kind of think that maybe they are.



Anyway, coming back to the book, it does seem to me that Marcia Moore might have some traits that predisposed her to being more susceptible to delusions given that prior to this she already held some quite irrational beliefs involving the validity of Astrology and past-life regression techniques. I am not yet certain the fate of Howard as I haven't got that far yet but it does seem at a few points that he has a more rational approach whereas Marcia quickly just throws her higher reasoning faculties out the window. 8)

There are also several points fairly early on which could reliably be considered warning signs, I think, such as her reference to consensus reality as the "charcoal grey world" (Howard on a few occasions tries to dissuade her from using this language, countering that the world we live in is a beautiful one). Also she comes up with this diminutive, unthinking and timid caricature of herself which she calls "Minnie Mouse" or "Worry Wort" and seems to represent the body she inhabits within the aforementioned "charcoal grey world". This is in stark and somewhat bizarre contrast to the beginnings of the egotism that Ketamine is now sometimes known to induce, such as her references to herself as the "fire lady" and the almost hilariously tragic cliche of an Egyptian queen. On that note, although Howard is listed as a co-author so far it really seems like the book is written entirely from Marcia's perspective, in fact even at the points where Howard seems to offer a more rational viewpoint this is basically just ignored.

This is not intended as a slight on the character of either person, in case it sounds like it, obviously we are all hopefully aware of the grip that any mind altering substance can exert over a human being and obviously it is easy to observe the things I mentioned retrospectively, decades later in the Information Age as we are, no doubt it would be orders of magnitude harder to observe these things from within, but these are just my observations so far.

 

[lysergamide]

I find people finding k 'dark' is due to the quality and isomers. Good ketamine I find very warm and nice and psychedelic.

After sniffing through so many ozs I've lost count with ket, I just treat it as my version of alcohol now. I like psychedelics most but they aren't always suitable, so if I want to 'dumb down' rather than enlighten myself as such I choose ket over something like LSD. There is nothing to take from a ket trip because any thoughts you have or realizations you wont act upon, you'll come out of the khole and rack another than forget it. With traditional psychedelics I act upon what I've learnt. Thankfully it seems to be much better on my body than alcohol. But it's just like the downer psychedelic, purely recreational to me.

I know people who use more sporadically definitely do get anti-depressant/theraputic effects off a k-hole. But for me now I just get more like a hungover/depleted/irritable feeling. Unless I'm in a k-hole there isn't any therapeutic feeling, no afterglow etc.

I do like how ketamine has different states, but I've never been in a strong enough position of self-control to weigh out my ket doses and experiment with it, k hole or nothing!

 

[Bluuberry]

"put all my troubles in an old Ket bag" . I couldn't resist even though almost nobody on this forum is old enough to get it.

I had to look it up anyways. Nice one, hahaha.

"While you've got a Lucifer to light your fag, smile, boys - that's the style. What's the use of worrying? It was never worthwhile, so pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag and smile, smile, smile. "

 

[EntheoDjinn]

........ and off into the first world war to see the world and most probably get killed, wounded or gassed

 

[EntheoDjinn]

...................I do like how ketamine has different states, but I've never been in a strong enough position of self-control to weigh out my ket doses and experiment with it, k hole or nothing!

Whilst I do enjoy in some strange way the deeper states brought about by larger doses, I find the lower doses really great for listening to music - specifically psytrance. The repetitive 4x4 beats and deep warm base really resonate and make the experience magical for me. I especially use it when I'm searching for tracks to play at parties and clubs.

On the coincidence theme - and I'm a very rational person in many respects - once a few years ago I was struggling to find 3 track to finish of a 1.5 hour set. I sent the K up my nostrils and sat back with my partner to listen to psyradio.fm. The first 3 tracks that came on were just perfect for closing my set. I noted them - i.e. wobbled up to the computer and bookmarked them. After all was said and done (i.e. back to normality, or what passes for it) the tracks still sounded great. And they went down a treat at the club.

Even I have difficulty rationalising stuff sometimes