DOSE:		smoked	Tobacco - Cigarettes
		insufflated	Ketamine	(powder / crystals)
		insufflated	Ketamine	(powder / crystals)
		insufflated	Ketamine	(powder / crystals)
		insufflated	Ketamine	(powder / crystals)

BODY WEIGHT:

175 lb

I used to be a severe polysubstance user who, by the end, lost all control of use. I would take many different kinds of drugs in extremely high doses, such as 30 mg of alprazolam in a day or up 150-200 mg of oxycodone mixed with large qualities of 80-proof vodka.

I have now been sober for six years. I essentially went from a suicidal alcoholic bumb to a medical student and science researcher. I can not remember much of my time using, but some experiences were unforgettable. One such experience was from ketamine, a drug I did maybe five or six times total.

In the summer of 2010, me and my two friends somehow ended up going to a Broadway play in NYC. One of my friends had just acquired an ounce of ketamine, so he brought maybe a couple grams along. We boarded the train, getting off at every stop for maybe 30 seconds to take a few drags off our cigs. It's a 45 minute ride to city from where we live. We were in good moods and generally happy-go-lucky on this early evening.

We went to the Broadway show, stayed for the whole thing, and then left without incident. We roamed around Times Square afterwards for maybe a couple hours. We found a McDonald's and stopped off in the bathroom to do a small amount of ketamine. We each did maybe 75 mg bumps. No strong effects, though the larger-than-life Times Square lights and action diminished in intensity and seemed two-dimensional. Peoples' faces took on the mask-like quality that I can only describe as being similar to how I felt after long periods of DXM use--people seem like life-size 2D cardboard cutouts with expressionless rubber masks. This was a weird feeling when there are literally hundreds of people everywhere.

Soon we became bored and decided to head back to the train, a twenty-minute walk to Grand Central. All I could see were my legs as I followed the rhythm of my steps. When walking on lower doses of dissociatives, I always feel as if there is 'me,' the mind, and 'the legs,' strange and foreign mechanical transportation tools that carry 'me' from point A to point B but are not actually part of the entity that is experiencing.

On the train, we each did another bump, probably about 50-75 mg each. I was listening to some Gnarles Barkley on the iPod (when iPods were a thing), and the music turned into that flat, infinite expanse characteristic of my experiences with psychedelics/dissociatives (the same feeling I had the first time I smoked really potent marijuana and closed my eyes while listening to an obscure Tiesto mixtape I downloaded from Limewire. ) An Egyptian goddess sent me the unifying truth to all of life's mysteries by painting heiroglyphs on the insides of my eyelids with the power of her mind, and all in sync with the voice of Gnarles Barkley...I could not read them. When I opened my eyes again, we were at our stop. We got off. Later on, when I listened to this song again while not on ketamine, I thought it was utter rubbish! But on ketamine, it conjurs an empathic and all-knowing Egyptian goddess.

It was now about midnight, and we decided to just walk around the town for a little bit. At the time, we all lived in an small, upscale suburb just north of Manhattan and were raised upper-middle class, with all the good and the bad that came with it. The police didn't mess with white kids unless we were obviously damaging property or disturbing others...just the way it was. This was the basis of the mindset that led us to just find a place in the grass on the shoulder of a side street to do a heavier dose of ketamine.

We walked maybe 10 minutes across town and into one of the working-class Hispanic neighborhoods and found a spot. There was the road, a curb, a small grass hill, some forsythia bushes, and then a house that was set back maybe 25 feet from the bushes. We sat on the grass hill, and my friend with the ketamine set up 100 mg lines for each of us. We did the lines at the same time, and I put on that Gnarles Barkley song on my friends iPod. He took one earbud, and I took the other.

The world spun, the three of us laughed, my body disappeared, and I closed my eyes. The omniscient Egyptian goddess reappeared, taking the form of a large, floating head in the vain of one of those ancient Egyptian gold caskets in which royalty were buried. You can see them at the Museums in NYC. She didn't speak, but she sent cosmic heiroglyphs. Alas, I still couldn't read them. But I understood that and felt the unifying truth to all of life's mysteries.

A loud sweeping sound approached and increased intensity. My consciousness was now suspended above and behind my body, and the street lamps glowed very brightly as I watched a street sweeper slowly making its way down the side street. I panicked; I had to get out of the way before the driver saw us and reported us to the police. But then I realized that it was OK. The Egyptian goddess head informed me through feelings that the whole point is that I didn't need to get out of the way. The street sweeper passed, slowly, majestically serene as I watched it gently brush the dust off the curb.

I opened my eyes. I was rolling around on the curb, half in the road, half on the grass. My friends had been swept up, I thought. But then I saw them laying next to me. They came to. I told them, with veiled excitement and modest amazement, that I had seen God but that a street sweeper almost ran us over and probably reported us to the cops and that we should therefore probably get out of there. They asked me what time it was. I checked my phone...hieroglyphics had replaced the time. I checked the iPod, and the Gnarles Barkley song was still playing and was about halfway over. I wondered if it was on repeat. We decided to each do another line.

I came to some time later with no idea of how much time had passed. I was again rolling around on the curb half in the street. I remember getting a phone call, and I remember the street sweeper passing by again. I checked my phone, but it had died. I checked the iPod, and it had died. I don't remember much after this, but I somehow walked the 1.5 miles home with my friend who lived down the street from me.

I awoke the next day feeling completely normal. Whether or not there actually was a street sweeper on that night remains a mystery to me. There is no way for me to ever find out if it was the trip or if it was real. I have seen the exact same sort of street sweeper in town before. Do they do the residential neighborhoods late at night, or was it too late for street sweeping?

As I stated in the beginning, I've been sober now for over six years. This ketamine experience is one of those times from my past the creates within me a strong sense of nostalgia. The powers of hallucinogens remain a mystery to science, and being a scientist now and physician-in-training, I can't help but be saddened that I will probably die long before the mysteries of the brain are fully revealed.

Exp Year: 2010	ExpID: 110811
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 20
Published: Mar 18, 2018	Views: 1,308
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Ketamine (31) : General (1), Glowing Experiences (4), Mystical Experiences (9), Entities / Beings (37), Various (28)