• Find All Reports by Search Term
    Find Reports
    Find Tagged Reports by Substance
    Substance Category
    Specific Substance
    Find Reports
  • Trip Reports Moderator: Xorkoth

(Ketamine / 350mg) - experienced - I want another chance!

MyDoorsAreOpen

Bluelight Crew
Joined
Aug 20, 2003
Messages
8,549
Of all the kids' movies I watched repeatedly growing up, the one that has always stuck with me most poignantly was Mickey's Christmas Carol. The climactic scene at the end where Scrooge MacDuck is clinging with dear life to the edge of his grave and pleading with the Ghost of Christmas Future, "No, please, Spirit. I didn't want it to end this way. I'll change my ways. I'll change!" He then, of course, as in the original novel, awakens in his chamber to a bright Christmas morning. He's just bubbling over with exuberance and a new lease on life as he flings open his shutters. "I want another chance!" is one of the things he exclaims.

I actually had to keep from crying when typing the last paragraph, so powerful a symbol this scene has always been to me, and especially in light of the drug experience I've just had. The climactic final scene of The Game with Michael Douglas has been the only other movie that has provoked a similar reaction. Both stories, of course, are classic examples of symbolic death and rebirth as a changed person, which are the necessary steps to finding true redemption. The ketamine experience fits this archetype uncannily well, and I find this drug is a great way to experience this beautifully traumatic process firsthand.

Over the past few weeks, I've been heading down a dangerous road. I don't want to go into detail about it, but suffice to say it's not a drug addiction, but rather a pattern of thinking and behaving that isn't helpful to me at this stage in life. I almost said 'just' a pattern of thinking and behaving, but those can be as destructive as drug habits. I'd gone out to a rave last night with only one intent in mind, and that was finding ketamine. Clearly I succeeded. In the process, though, I ended up taking LSD and getting myself into a couple of situations that left a bad taste in my mouth, and on LSD that's never a good thing. I can't say as I've ever had a full-blown bad trip, but I've definitely had to deal with negative moods and mindstates on LSD. It's very doable to the experienced, but not a chore I'd wish upon the immature, poorly grounded, or deeply troubled mind.

So I sat down back at home with a baggie of K in front of me, still slightly tripping and agitated. It's funny how, similar to MDMA, I fear and mistrust K right before I do it, almost as much as I love and embrace it once the experience is over. I was afraid, especially, that my experience would be sullied by nausea and vomiting. I've done ketamine maybe 20~30 times, and so far 250mg was the highest dose I'd done. So I decided I'd not try so hard this time to snort it deeply, so that there'd be minimal drip. I threw caution to the wind, crushed up the whole 350mg bag, formed it into two lines, and hooted it all in short order.

I always put on a streaming video when I use K. I can't say as I'm always able to remember much of the video, no matter what its contents. But it always colors the experience significantly, and as such, I always make the choice of videos wisely. I've always found Joseph Campbell a source of inspiration, and some old videos of his talks have been great companions to past K experiences. So I put on an episode of Mythos that dealt with the origin of Asian spiritual traditions.

The trepidation fades away the second the first alerts hit. That happened while Susan Sarandon was doing the introduction to the video. By the time Joseph Campbell himself appeared before me, he might as well have been Morpheus, because it was clear to me that his floating image was my guide as I descended into deeper and deeper levels of reality. The room around me was now gone, as was my body. I passed through some familiar levels of sensation that I remember from past K trips, such as ripples spreading through my whole consciousness, and my conscious mind stretching out infinitely in all directions to envelop all that existed. Throughout all this, Joseph Campbell lectured to me about the development of the notion of karma. It felt as though he was right there (well, out there somehere!) in front of me, speaking directly to me and my life, rather than on a pre-recorded video. I was struck that I'd been in all of these places before, most of them during the depths of dreams that I didn't remember after waking.

Once again, the familiar and haunting process of Stripping Away began. As things got stranger and stranger, I'd reach out for some landmark, something to ground me and connect me to the familiar life I usually live. But in this strange world I was given an orientation to by Prof. Campbell, each of these things I reached for I soon found untenable and absent. Lower doses of K sometimes allow me to keep a few of these familiar things, like my knowledge that I have a body or have taken a drug. But not this time. The final thing that was stripped from me was my knowledge of large and small. I reached a point where I could no longer tell whether I was as big as the universe or as tiny as a particle, and began to doubt if "size" even mattered anymore, or would ever matter to me again.

Nothing can prepare me for the experience of "hacking into the bios of reality" that high doses of K impart. Like a bizarrely profound dream, it's a hard experience to commit to memory and re-anticipate the next time I use the drug. As I'm writing this, I need to stare off into space at a blank wall and think really hard to recreate a wisp of the experience. This part of the K trip is all about acceptance. Once again, the knowledge that before I was human (and probably after), this is all there is. And there was nothing left to do but accept that. Somehow, someway, maybe I'd be lucky enough to once again have a comfortable existence like the one I had until recently taken as real. But until that day, I'd just have to accept that I was nothing more than...

What was I? As best as I could ascertain, I was a packet of information traveling through the wires and circuit boards of a great computer which was all that existed. Or maybe something did exist beyond it, but I'd never know, because this computer was, and would always be, my entire reality. This computer "felt" and "looked" (I use these terms loosely) very cyberpunk, like something out of The Matrix. There was much stretching and shifting of the world and my incorporeal self within it, and I remember often trying in vain to gauge the size and shape of things in this world. The floating and surreal image of Joseph Campbell poked his head in and out, but by this time none of his words were reaching me. Instead, the messages I got were, "You have an important decision to make; do you want this switch to be a one or a zero, because switching between ones and zeroes is all you can do." I had a strong sense that from this point on, my responsibilities and actions would be much different from ever before. At times I wanted to scream in horror and wake up, but then I realized it was futile -- there was nothing to wake up to. This was reality, and my old existence (whatever it was) was the dream. And besides, I had no physiological means of screaming. So I'd better just accept.

The comedown from K happens very rapidly for me. It reminds me of another favorite children's story: Where the Wild Things Are. Just like Max's jungle kingdom quickly but in an oddly sensible way transforms itself back into his bedroom over the course of a few pages, so do the strange and unfamiliar mindscapes of the k-hole form themselves into shapes most familiar. Soon I was back in my room, just as Joseph Campbell finished his talk. Unsteady on my feet and mentally exhausted, I managed to hobble to the bathroom, expectorate the drip I'd miraculously managed not to swallow, and then collapse on my bed. I was at this point very much of this world, but my mindstate was still decidedly ketty.

I awoke 6 hours later, and I felt like Scrooge MacDuck awakening Christmas morning. I made my way to my kitchen, and just wanted to hug and kiss the world. I tried to come up with words with which to express my joy, but what came out was semi-coherent and reminded me a lot of a manic or schizophrenic rambling. I realized that I'd taken such a high dose that I was still feeling it a bit. I had an idea to express the K experience in poetry, thinking it might be better than prose, but I never followed through with this. All I knew was that I needed to drive to my wife and embrace her with all my heart.

From this point forward, every action I performed felt predestined. It was as if my guardian angel were standing over me saying, "You shall put one foot in front of the other and walk towards the door with great joy." and "It was written that you would happen upon a billboard ad for Special K cereal, and be reminded." Standing in my kitchen before leaving, I had the profoundest sense of deja vu. Indeed, I had stood in this same kitchen exactly 24 hours prior, before going to the rave to find ketamine. I wondered for a second whether the whole day had even happened, or whether it hadn't all been a dream or a drug experience. But no. I was a changed man today. I had another chance to make things right. And that was beautiful.

Because in the end, all things regrow and regenerate. Hope springs eternal. There is always a chance for redemption, a chance to start again. It's not something we're given, though. It's a potential all of us have, but don't dare to allow ourselves to realize. It's not about pushing away the past and trying hard to forget it. It's about making peace with it, and deciding that you will be in control of to what extent your past determines your future.


Tagged by bindingaffinity
substancecode_ketamine
substancecode_dissociatives
explevel_experienced
exptype_positive
exptype_spiritual
exptype_lifechanging
roacode_nasal
 
FANTASTIC report, very beautifully written. I almost got a little misty towards the end myself lol. I think thats something we all need to realize, and take advantage of. I am guilty of getting complacent and feeling like I am stuck, but we do all have the power to change things and give ourselves a second chance. great report.
 
This is the kind of TR that keeps me coming back to this website.

Fantastic read with some great insights... very moving. Thank you so much for writing this.
 
Thank you for your kind words, everybody.

I came up with a way to describe this Stripping Away process a little better. Imagine focusing in very intently on something, like the page of a magazine, for example. Then you're finished looking at it, and want to put the magazine down and 'zoom back out'. But you find it impossible to do this, and when you look around, you realize that there is nothing but this magazine page anymore. It literally occupies your whole world, even though it didn't used to. This is scary, so you instead focus in on one detail on a picture in this magazine page. Soon this cycle repeats, and upon trying to zoom back out to the page, you realize you can't, and this small detail is now your entire world. And so on, and so on. This is essentially what a k-hole feels like.
 
I have never tried k before and it sounds like something worth checking out. I much prefer trying things that not only give you a nice feeling, but also gives you an opportunity to meditate. very nicely written, I truly enjoyed reading it.
 
I have never tried k before and it sounds like something worth checking out. I much prefer trying things that not only give you a nice feeling, but also gives you an opportunity to meditate. very nicely written, I truly enjoyed reading it.
 
Top