Ketamine - experienced - Blast me with a firehose and detail the interior of my soul.

[MyDoorsAreOpen]

I had a rough shakedown sort of ketamine experience yesterday. I'm not really sure how much I took. Something like a fifth to an eighth of a gram bag, so 150~200mg. I'd had kind of a lackluster k experience the day before, that just left me a little loopy and with post nasal drip from hell. It's hard to imagine being tolerant with how infrequently I've ever used this drug, so I chalk it up to poor insufflation technique.

I put on the documentary about the Buddha directed by Richard Gere. 2 hours long, and good stuff to think about while k'd up. Boy was I glad I did (see below). I almost picked Heavy Metal. I packed a oney with some decent weed, crushed up some crystalline k, and took a hoot of it in each nostril. When I felt the burn, I knew it wouldn't be long.

I lay down on the couch and put on a blanket, and lay perfectly still, waiting for the comeup. After 10 minutes, it struck me that although I definitely felt a tickle of kettyness at the edge of my consciousness -- a tease! -- I got up and prepared another line.

Usually it's the peripheral part, the body high, of ketamine that I notice first. I can choose to be entirely unaware of the existence of my arms and legs, and poof, they're gone. But not this time. This time, what caught my attention first were the really strange and arbitrarily loose associations I was making with things in the movie. The movie used shots of Buddhist art from all around Asia to tell the story of his life, and I'd have thoughts like, of course the sick and dying man is wearing yellow, because that's the color his flesh will have when it rots. When the narrator told of the Buddha abandoning his home and family, and spoke the words, 'He could not bear to hold his infant son in his arms...', I had a moment of profound epiphany, and thought Wow! To hold someone in your arms is the most caring thing you can possibly do!.

Whoa.

I mean yeah, that's an amazing thought, and I really want to believe it, but I just couldn't imagine it flowing through my head ordinarily. I think there's someone else back in my head who hasn't been here a long time. Hello, ketamine.

And at that moment, I couldn't feel my arms.

The movie became a little disjointed. I kept finding minor unimportant details memorable -- the color tones of a tree painting or the shape of a metal bell -- and I'd often turn them over in my head so long that I'd lost the plot as it moved along.

Then came a scene where the Buddha left his life of luxury, and was tempted by Maya, or illusion personified in demonic form, with distractions of the flesh. There was a shot of a big green tree with demonic figures in it, and suddenly my inner monologue said unexpectedly, But dude, you don't believe in any of this. There are no demons. This is all just ancient mumbo jumbo. Go ahead. Try and make yourself believe it. I'll bet you can't. You've augmented and expanded your brain with supplements, dietary modifications, and drugs so much that there's no going back. Not even k can change that now.

And I reflected then on the subtle, strange state of anhedonia that's bugged me since my last use of amphetamine 3mo ago. And I wondered if that was part of the permanent new brain I'd inadvertently built myself, and whether a powerful tool like k had the power to undo that too.

And I jumped up, very frightened. I couldn't feel my body at all, but my muscles did exactly as I told them. I had the sudden thought that maybe the way the drug mae me feel right now might never wear off, which is never a good thought to have on any drug. No, I shouted in my mind. I shouted out to the drug itself in my head, as well as to those unseen otherworldly beings that the drug always reminds me are there and listening. And I emplored anyone and anything, all the forces of the universe, to mend and restore my ability to feel ecstatic pleasure, and to be a man of faith.

And my prayer was answered. I knew it when the movie suddenly featured a high-ranking Buddhist monk and scholar distilling the message of the Buddha into a few pithy phrases. Each time he spoke, I felt like I knew exactly what he was going to say a moment before he said it, and I repeated aloud each simple but powerful precept. When I said them aloud, something in my head went, But of course! You've know and said this a million times!

And when the movie changed scenes, all of a sudden my mind felt all aglow with subtle but rich pleasure. I had a vision of standing in a cherry orchard and watching the springtime buds open slowly. But their beauty was only beginning to bloom, and I'd have to be patient. I likened this in my mind to my dopamine receptors that k is known to upregulate, and wondered, astonished, if I'd really just willed this neurological effect into being.

From that moment on, I couldn't sit back down. I watched the rest of the movie standing, pacing, dancing, and grooving ecstatically like someone at a church where people speak in tongues. Except I couldn't feel my body. All the while, I had the familiar k sensation of the inside of my mind having been cleaned vigorously, as if it had been blasted with a fire hose and then the small crevices all detailed with a Q-tip.

At this point it seemed appropriate for me to liken ketamine to a multi-layered drug. The lasagna of the drug world, if you will; a symphony of several distinct movements. The different phases of the drug experience are each pretty distinct in terms of their overall feel. It struck me that the peak of ketamine is not my favorite part while I'm experiencing it, and that the slow post-peak descent and afterglow are far more euphoric and easy on the mind. But like a scary roller coaster ride, you need the ungrounding part to appreciate the joy of coming back down to earth.

I definitely now understand why the US medical establishment's unanimous opinion on ketamine is that it's second line because it causes frightening mental effects on many people. I'm still considering being willing to administer it in the future to select patients who have PTSD, intractable depression, grief that's pathologically long, and fibromyalgia. But I'd definitely warn them that the peak might be a little weird to handle, and have them sign off that they understood this risk.

I think that anyone who has only used this drug during/following MDMA, amphetamines, or psychedelics ought to use it by itself before making an assessment of it. It's a rich and complicated, and unbelievably useful, mental tool. But without an intrinsically euphoric drug to accompany it, it can feel like one of those really good teachers who was kind of a cold hardass.

I smoked the oney after the movie was finished. This brought back a good bit of the k feeling, and also added a bit of a light, playful twist to the drug. But it also dried out my numb mouth something terrible. I reflected that marijuana definitely belongs in the comedown of k, not the peak. I put on some downtempo lounge music and grooved as I washed dishes with hands that I could feel, but muscles I couldn't and that worked seemingly without effort. An hour or so later, I had some absolutely mindblowing sex. My pleasure is coming back, slowly but surely.

Could it be that Maya, for me, is the temptation to be worldly, selfish, and reckless? And could it be that the immortal words of the Buddha -- nay, many, many Buddhas since before time began -- restored my faith in the need to keep my base instincts under control and reach for something higher? Perhaps. Or was it all just a drug and a brain? I'll never know, and perhaps it doesn't even matter.

I feel refreshed today. I feel more motivated, and more appreciative of the simple joys around me. I find myself stopping to smell the roses more, and willing to comment on things using big words and profound observations. I'm glad I got to perform this winter cleansing, and prepare myself a warm, dry, cleanly swept mind to hole up in during this cold dark days to come.

Happy winter solstice to one and all. May you surround yourself this Yule with many lights, that remind you of that light that glows within.

Tagged by White Rose
substancecode_ketamine
substancecode_achs
substancecode_dissociatives
explevel_experienced
exptype_neutral
exptype_spiritual
roacode_nasal

 

[psood0nym]

This time, what caught my attention first were the really strange and arbitrarily loose associations I was making with things in the movie. The movie used shots of Buddhist art from all around Asia to tell the story of his life, and I'd have thoughts like, of course the sick and dying man is wearing yellow, because that's the color his flesh will have when it rots.

I've been experiencing a similar phenomena during the time I use it and in the days after ketamine: I'll look at something like my sweatshirt and get a vivid rush of memories from random times in my life. But like you observed about your rationalizations about the film, they often seem arbitrary, or at least whatever principle seems to be guiding the rush of memories is inconsistent. Seeing my sweatshirt, for example might evoke a memory of being sweaty - in this example, part of the phonetics and meaning of a word that describes the object, "sweat," is seemingly the principle that organizes the subsequent memories. But other times maybe I'll look at the sweatshirt's zipper and recall the press of a sleeping bag zipper against my skin during nap time in kindergarten -- so it's a sensation I associate with the sweatshirt's zipper that seems to be helping to guide the memories. Other times, I think and think and can't come up with any simple or logical possibilities to make any sense out of the pattern of associations, like a spark arced up out of my skull from one semantantic network's neurological substrate in my brain and fell down randomly and lit up a new and totally disparate network.

The phenomena has given me some insight into how the subliminal features of the immediate environment, as well as antecedent inner thoughts, shape the mental events that follow in their wake. It makes me stop when an image or idea pops in my head seemingly out of nowhere and makes me ask "where did that come from and by what route?" And I get some answers occasionally -- simple defensible answers. (For example, I start thinking about buying Adderall out of nowhere and look up to see the girl that offered to sell me some the last time I talked to her -- i.e. I saw and recognized her in the periphery of my vision unconsciously and that consciously evoked the pattern of associations surrounding her in my mind that are of immediate interest to me (buying Adderall)).

But getting a real handle on the complexity and breadth of the guiding principles that explain the emergence of particular mental events, if there are any at all, in a way that helps me gain a more powerful, more predictive, understanding of the intersection of my conscious and unconscious mind is daunting. Of course even the failures are thrilling, that's the beauty of the recreational drug route to self-understanding.

 

[jhjhsdi]

Nice report

 

[Jamshyd]

I will tell you what I told you in your last report: if my experience is of any value, then I'd share with you one thing I have learnt: you cannot, cannot, cannot pass a judgement on Ketamine from two or three or even twenty experiences. Unlike the total randomness of psychedelics, Ketamine is a drug that actually can be learnt and applied in more ways than one. Once this learning curve is passed, the drug can help unravel ongoing themes in one's life through repeated (but not necessarily habitual) use.

You've been critical about K for as long as I'd known you, yet it seems to be the one drug you are most fascinated with . I, for one, am happy to see this, and hope your coming experiences will shed light on how this difficult one can be integrated.

Thank you.

ps. I disagree with you about why K is stigmatized in medicine. It is not because the medical community at large are as reasonable as you are - they are not, you are an exception, not the rule. It is because Ketamine, like LSD, has the power to deconstruct the medical establishment, and is therefore feared, yet no one can deny its value as an anaesthetic.

 

[cabooser]

I put on the documentary about the Buddha directed by Richard Gere. 2 hours long, and good stuff to think about while k'd up. Boy was I glad I did (see below). I almost picked Heavy Metal.

Ten or so years ago I took 3 hits of Green Monster LSD (in Boston) and watched Heavy Metal. The room circumnavigated around the TV screen and a good night was had by all.