DOSE:

insufflated

Ketamine

(powder / crystals)

BODY WEIGHT:

63 kg

Never have I encountered anything as bizarre as ketamine. The state it produces was and is so confusing and contradictory that it seems you should never come back, and yet an hour or two later I’d be happy driving my car or having a meaningful conversation with my mum. I could see the abyss and be back for tea, which suited me fine.

Background info: I’m a very excitable and quietly strong personality type. I’ve always taken things that I enjoy to excess. I grew up in a good home with loving, albeit separated, parents. I have been experimenting with substances since I was 15, when me and 3 friends (the cool kids of my year) smoked a blunt of some bushwack F found in his dad’s cupboard. I loved it. I loved the social scene and the sensation of freedom, doing things I’d have never considered, being as cautious as I am. We would hang around our nearest town, smoking weed at the abandoned factories and on the common (an open, public-use grassland) with a bottle of cider or some beers.

It all started as so much fun, but went quickly downhill when we moved onto harder drugs as we grew up. When a friend showed me MDMA I couldn’t believe it! I could take drugs and feel amazing, away from the social paranoias and anxieties of weed. I could be the person I wanted to be, and quickly made lots of friends, who I shared it with. I continued to smoke and used MDMA far too often- sometimes up to 3 times a week. My internal state collapsed steadily and I became riddled with confusions and dysphoria. My emotions seemed dark and twisted and existing every day was no longer the bliss it was, though I had been chasing it? When on binges I would draw others in and use them for more drugs or just to keep the session going. I had become something of a fiend and was unstoppable in my circle of friends, as I scared them to the point of not wanting to say anything. My oldest friend got dragged into my spiral when my sexuality became distorted (he’s a guy... since found out that I am bisexual but it was unfair for me to fixate on him like that).

Luckily I met my (still!) girlfriend and she DESPISED drugs and the social scene. Slowly the time I spent with her meant more than getting fucked up and I broke away from it all. I would still use drugs from time to time though and of course mentally and emotionally I was still not right. So for my last sixth form year I avoided almost all drugs and focused on studying. The sixth form I attended had quite a nasty social scene, very cliquey and not my thing at all, so this will have added to my anxieties and neuroses. By the time I left there I had a head full of thoughts and absolutely no peace. My world was so small, so noisy and still dark as hell, and I had no idea what to do. I took a place on a plumbing course at my local college just to fill the next year.

When I was out at a rave club I found a small bag of powder, which my girlfriend absolutely did not want me to take there, so I kept it safe. In fact, another of my friends advised me to leave it there: ‘you can just walk away- it doesn’t have to affect your life at all’. No chance, being a fiend by nature there was no way I was turning down free drugs. I tried a bit of it at home by myself and noticed the wobbly legs. ‘Ah, this must be ketamine then!’ It was sort of enjoyable but didn’t last long. A few days later I bumped into a couple of friends who had been doing k all the while I had been abusing MDMA. One of them was a bit down so we went for a walk, and I remembered I had my k in my pocket (for some reason??), so her and I shared what was left, probably 0.2g each.

As it came on I couldn’t believe it: so alien! So completely new and strange, sort of like nos but further out there and more easy-going. I still have the notes I made on my phone “everything could be plasticine (I could hear music chopping into the soft material) I want to sit on soil not stone. [This is] the hole where no-one went”. The rest of the evening was lovely, I felt refreshed and we caught an amazing sunset. The whole experience had a deeply familiar feeling to it, despite its strange nature. I’d found something new to sink my teeth into.

A short while after this I linked up with another old friend who absolutely abused ketamine, no two ways about it. It was just how k was used in the rave scene he’d involved himself in. One night we walked back to my house from town after purchasing a gram of the stuff, and hitting hooters. I asked him to bash me a small one out, and he did, in relativity to his own! It was probably 0.2g and his 0.3g. The walk was completely psychedelic, in terms of my learning about the nature of consciousness. When I walked over some digger tracks I imagined the digger so intensely I felt crushing on my chest. I would walk at some distance from the canal because I didn’t trust my legs not to just walk into it!

I remember my sense of self feeling very soft, ie I saw my personality as something like a joke, and from very far away. I could feel the gravel under my feet, see every little grain and this somehow linked to my tongue and stomach? I began to have sessions like this with him about once a week, while doing my plumbing course, and this made my world expand massively- before my world had consisted of moaning rich kids and now it was filled with wise tradesmen and a drug that could connect me to space. We would always hit it hard and end up back at my house covered in white, on our sleeves, chest and faces. I couldn’t get enough, especially seeing as I would never wake up feeling bad in the morning, and normally felt better than before. My understanding of life and the universe catapulted.

I began to buy extra off him to use in my own time, at home with music. My course was only 2 days a week so I had lots of time and everyone was at work and college, so I could sit in my front room and listen to Bonobo or Kognitif (a trip-hop producer) on big speakers and zoom away into the k-hole. This was when the drug started to really reveal itself to me. I would shut my eyes and I could perceive myself falling and moving around, always in straight lines, but often feeling like I was transitioning between specific rooms. Colour and geometric shapes would always accompany the music, and I was part of all of it, I could feel the waves and follow them to where they went. The rooms I would see would feel close and warm, like I could feel the whole room at once.

Between my k sessions I would notice that my general outlook was improving and that my head felt much less tangled and scared than before. I began to read up and saw that it was well-known as an anti-depressant. I began to look forward to using it. This is where my inner fiend kicked back in. I would often trade a night with my girlfriend for a messy night out with my old friend. I reached some bizarre places with it, like seeing myself as just another part of the situation, viewing myself as equal to everything else and not more important, in a cold, detached way. I would wonder about my small life, why I had to get drugs and use them and how I was helping others. I would realise that my house was just square walls and various furnishings (I mean obviously, but REALISE it) and that I was just sat on a hill fucked out of my mind. One time I hit a bigger line than my friend, probably doing 0.5g line of some weird k. Immediately I was in a dream, where all of the boys I had known in my village growing up were standing around me and waiting for me to make my decision. So I made it, and took a step forward, and all of it disintegrated. Another time I saw myself as a prostitute in Amsterdam for a day, fell asleep in the bed and suddenly came to in mine!

When using it at home I felt very connected to myself, like I was sharing something very intimate. I would come out of the k-hole and feel like doing something, often dancing or making food but sometimes I would play guitar with a renewed sense of fascination and satisfaction. It also made me feel something like sexy sometimes, god knows why. Sometimes I would come to and realise I was twisting my hands around and moving my body in accordance to what the trip was doing, and I have no idea why that was.

I feel like the whole experience was my mind at that current time and it would help me to process things. Not only did it clear up a lot of my anxieties and decondition my worried mind, it would take me through everything that had happened that day in a very slow and gentle way while reminding me that all of it was small in comparison to this bigger universe. Towards the end the chemical itself became too much to deal with, its bitter taste and inherently toxic effect on my body began to outweigh what I was gaining from each experience. And believe me, I was still learning a lot.

The k would make me really sick sometimes, just randomly, and also affected my digestion and my bladder. Using it for much longer would seriously have affected my health. Probably in total I sniffed about 30g of the stuff, which doesn’t seem like a lot but it’s definitely enough to fully immerse myself in what it’s showing me. There is a lot to this stuff and I’m very glad I looked past the taboo, because my general wellbeing and understanding of life have increased tenfold. Abstract concepts are tangible now. It never gave me any mental problems, and I would always come back to my fully functioning mind within an hour or two. Because of my past use of other substances, I thought that I would always be stuck with obsessive thoughts and anxieties but it seems to have wiped me clean, like a factory reset. I feel raw joy and excitement for existence some days now, in a way I could never have imagined. One thing I will say though, use it for the right reasons. Since I fucked up with MDMA, I’ve been careful to watch myself and ketamine was about as close as I will ever let myself come to an addiction again. It’s very seductive and will take over my head if you let it. If you are someone with a weak resolve, leave it alone.

However, I would say that all in all it is one of the most important things I’ve ever done for myself, alongside my first acid trip and shroom use. Bear in mind that she’s a lovely lady but she likes to hang around.

Exp Year: 2016	ExpID: 111084
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 19
Published: Oct 13, 2017	Views: 1,510
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