i think brushing dissociatives off as purely escapist is a bit of an overreaction to the admittedly embarrassing spectacle that is sudden introduction of psychoactive drugs in a top-down psychiatric paradigm.
Dissociatives can offer a broadening of perspectives by virtue of the sheer intensity of psychoactive effects
Fair point, let me just clarify my own hyperbole, lest I be perceived as having lost all objectivity here. I don't think dissociatives are
purely escapist - I think they are escapist (and therapeutic) in much the same way that benzodiazepines are (with some caveats, which I'll try to address). First caveat - physical dangers, let's just disregard that (dissociatives are obviously more dangerous, on the whole, I'd venture to say even outside the fairly overrepresented and known-to-be-physically-toxic arylcyclohexylamines) since it's not really relevant to the escapist/something-more-than-escapist dichotomy.
Second caveat - addictivity/reinforcement - huh, this is a tricky one, I'm tempted to say benzos might actually win out here since it mostly does take a lot longer for dissociative addiction to develop... although this is also not really relevant to the escapism thing, apologies, I better stop or I'll just get lost in my own caveats... although an important difference here is that (for the most part) people who are addicted to benzodiazepines understand what is happening even if (as is almost unavoidable, fallible humans as we are) there is a little bit of bias and temptation to judge one's own use and capacity for self-control as just a little bit less dysfunctional and just a little bit greater (respectively) than either of those things actually are. Ketamine on the other hand (for example) stretches that delusion of sanity so far over the dials of self-awareness-and-substance-use that even when the frequency of use is significantly less than (for example) the average benzo or, indeed, opiate habit, it appears to me that the bias towards judging either one's habit, or even the utility of a single, isolated experience becomes so disproportionately skewed so early that it's really quite difficult to judge how much of one's intrigue, fond memories, general web of thoughts and feelings, conscious and unconscious, but generally
leaning towards one day doing some more ketamine comes from something actually positive about the substance, something valuable that an experience has imparted, or left you with, and so forth... versus just a blunt, garden-variety but thoroughly obscured rewiring of part of our brain's reward circuitry that really has nothing to do with anything positive.
There are probably a few more caveats I could mention but that brings me pretty neatly to the main point I wanted to make. Benzodiazepines could be said to be escapist substances (without for a moment, disregarding their therapeutic value). This seems almost intrinsic to GABA-agonists, almost by definition, given that GABA is the brain's primary
inhibitory neurotransmitter and "GABAergics" for the most part loosen that inhibition, apologies, I've realised that by trying to lean too far into neurochemistry-lingo I'm risking getting far too specific with the point I'm trying to make and weakening it... maybe I should have started with "I think that ketamine is escapist (and therapeutic) in much the same way as alcohol is" rather than trying to generalise across entire classes... Anyway in the interest of authenticity I'll continue and hope the general point I'm making remains clear enough.
With benzodiazepines though, again, it is mostly understood that they can mute unpleasant dimensions of being alive (anxiety, fear, etc). Some people do need these muted, of course, hence their therapeutic value, having had their own inner dials of these unpleasant edges of conscious experience turned up way too high by some cruel and complicated twist of fate. For those who don't develop a problematic habit, this simple muting or
temporary escape from these cognitive dysfunctions can be enough to work towards lasting change - but with benzodiazepines, it's fairly transparent what's happening. There is not the temptation to overcomplicate it by imagining something intangible that is
more than this and warrants returning to the substance again and again - even in the face of
very unclear actual benefits given that dissociatives on the whole are far
less functional than any given benzodiazepine.
A few times in this thread I've thought about a certain OG Bluelighter who did 3-MeO-PCP every day for, I think, over a year, for, seemingly, pretty sustainable mood-and-life-enhancing effects, as an obvious counterpoint to the idea that dissociatives are "just" escapist, or just anything - although this kind of usage seems to be not the norm, unless there is some massive negative-reporting-bias that, of course, is vaguely possible given that none of this stuff has really been properly studied. Most people (it would appear, to me) who are tempted to use 3-MeO-PCP everyday (for example) rapidly escalate doses and experience increasingly profound and obviously dysfunctional (to any external observer) personality changes as a result.
Urgh god I've typed so much words, am I ever gonna make my point, OK here goes, while some of what I said might indeed be somewhat hyperbolic I am really specifically attacking the idea that the dissociative state has much inherent usefulness beyond just intoxication, because "broadening of perspectives" can happen on almost any mind-altering drug, and in a vacuum, can be profound and life-changing. But intoxication such as that offered by classic sedatives, GABAergics, opiates, alcohol, and whatnot, while most people with any experience of these substances can remember a time they felt like they just saw everything in a new light and had some experience they would not have had otherwise within those states, they are, for the most part, easily recognized for what they are. On the other hand there is a (IMO) dangerous tendency to romanticize the dissociative state as being something more than it actually is. I mean, maybe there is a kind of dark beauty in them, for sure, I can see it... maybe Hole Space is just psychedelia viewed through a different cognitive window, but
even if this is the case, IMO/E - the window is so distorted that almost anything that one might come back with from that place is tainted in a way that is just uniquely poisonous to the human mind. And, the other perspective, of course, is that Hole Space is just another windowless cavern of intoxication in the labyrinths of conscious experience but with some added effect that induces the cognitive hallucination of psychedelic magic where none actually exists, in the same way people see imaginary oases in barren deserts, and chase down that illusion until their deaths.
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