DOSE:

insufflated

Ketamine

(powder / crystals)

BODY WEIGHT:

77 kg

A very good friend of mine happens to be heavily addicted to, of all things, Ketamine. We live in a beautiful, up-and-coming, Southeast Asian country where many ultra-high-purity chemicals are produced. The source that my friend uses to get his Ketamine is very reliable and only sells the best possible grade of substances. At first, he was reluctant to share any of his K with me, as he did not want to be responsible for anybody else developing a bad habit with this insane drug. We are both pushing 40 years old, and we have extensive experience with all sorts of drugs, hard and soft. We’re both from Western countries (He’s British, I’m American), we’ve both travelled all over the world, we both have relatively wide perspectives, we’re both open to new experiences, we’re both well-read and relatively intelligent, and we’re both semi-professional musicians and teachers. Here is a brief account of my few tries with my friend’s drug of choice.

Personally, I’m not a big fan of dissociative drugs in general. I’ve had some 3rd Plateau trips with DXM, both positive and negative – Like many American youths, I did the “Robo-Tripping” thing as a teenager as a consequence of lack of access to better materials for psychedelic experiences. In the part of Northeastern USA where I grew up, it was nearly impossible to find LSD, DMT, etc. Mushrooms came around from time to time, and I eventually taught myself how to grow them from spores. At the time when I was in my late teens it was possible to get “research chemicals” legally – this was just before the emergency scheduling of various tryptamines and phenethylamines, Operation Web Tryp, and other oppressive, disgusting government actions against American citizens. I wrote an experience report about 5-meo-MiPT when I was 17 or 18, and it’s still up under the title ‘A Mind-Numbing Psychedelic’. I also tried 2C-I, 2C-E, DiPT, aMT, and LSA. I have never used PCP, but “wet” was extremely popular in the American town where I went to high school – this says a lot for the mindset of the people who live there, in my opinion! In more recent times, a lot of my former classmates have either died or been imprisoned as part of the so-called “opioid epidemic”.

The Southeast Asian country where I currently live has seen a fairly serious amount of drug busts in recent years, at least one of which included a large amount of Ketamine. The illicit drug of choice in this country is methamphetamine, but excellent quality heroin is produced here as well. Marijuana has been decriminalized in this country, and starting in June of 2022 there will be no limit on how many plants will be allowed to be grown, per household. Kratom has also been fully legalized, it grows wild here, and the people love it – I’ve written extensively about the current Kratom situation, as well as drugs in general. These experience reports can be found under my pen-name, “Fleming”, and they are entitled ‘A Klondike Kratom Kristmas’, ‘At the Source’, and ‘Going to Cambodia’.

When my friend finally decided he could trust me to be responsible with Ketamine, he invited me over to his house and we bought a gram to split. At the height of my friend’s addiction, he was using multiple grams per day! I personally cannot understand how one gets to that point, as I did not find Ketamine interesting enough or pleasurable enough to do repeatedly , but everybody’s brain is wired differently. My friend cut up some small lines for me and a very large one for himself. My first line was more like a “bump”, while his resembled a straight-up rockstar line of coke. Interestingly enough, the pure powder Ketamine had a shiny, gleaming look to it, just as good quality “fishscale” cocaine does.

The effects took just a few minutes to kick in, and the first alerts included poor motor coordination, a very slight enhancement of colors, and a noticeable impairment of my speaking ability. I would actually try to focus on keeping on track verbally, the way one does when one is too drunk or high on weed and is trying to hide it from others. My friend told me that I was saying repetitive things, like “I’m Keith Richards and you’re Mick Jagger” over and over again. We walked outside and down the street to the local 7-11 store, to buy some cigarettes, and I felt very vulnerable. We’re both white males, in a country where most people are darker-skinned Asians, so we get stared at on a daily basis and we’re used to it. However, I became somewhat worried that people would catch a glance of us and immediately assume that we were tripping. In reality, I’m sure we looked totally normal. My friend has a very high tolerance, so he was able to go to the shop, buy his smokes and an iced tea, speak to the staff in the local language, and pay with exact change. I personally didn’t feel comfortable in the shop, so I told him I’d wait for him outside. I said to my friend “I’m H-I-G-H…”, spelling out the word in order not to alert the locals, who tend to have relatively poor English skills. They would know what “Dude, I’m fucked up!” means, so I though I was being slick by spelling out words to my friend, the way my parents used to do when I was a kid (“Should we get some S-O-D-A? Can he play N-I-N-T-E-N-D-O?”, etc).

Upon returning to my friend’s house, we proceeded to do some more of the Ketamine. Once again, my friend did a humungous Tony Montana line and I did a small bump (perhaps 1cm long). I tested out my motor coordination by strumming some chords and playing some bluesy solos on my guitar. I was surprised at how easy it was to play, despite the fact that I felt like I was unable to walk straight. I laid back on the bed and put on my headphones. I listened to the full album ‘Selling England by the Pound’ by Genesis, from start to finish. The 1973 progressive rock classic sounded excellent, but then again it sounds excellent any time and I did not notice any significant sonic enhancement relating to the drug. After about an hour, I came down and felt almost totally normal. I was surprised, and a little disappointed, at how short the high lasted. I did not experience any time-dilation, and I did not see any closed-eye or open-eye visuals, aside from a very slight “earthquaking” effect of subtly blurred vision, similar to what I remembered from my youthful DXM experiences. I went home that evening, ate dinner with my wife, and slept perfectly fine.

The next time I experimented with Ketamine was perhaps a week or two after the first try. This time I did a little bit more than before, but still relatively small lines. I then began to understand why the effects of this drug are called “a K-hole”. It literally felt like I was in a hole of some sort. Reality was outside the hole, and I could see normal life, but I was acutely aware of my own temporary disconnection from it. This was amusing, not terrifying by any means. I can understand how some less-experienced users might freak out in this circumstance, but I had no problem reassuring myself that “This is the effect of a drug and it will be over soon enough.”

My friend has had a very difficult struggle with his Ketamine addiction, and he has told me stories about how he would snort it in the toilet at work. He teaches English at the adult / university level and I was amazed at how he was able to not only function, but actually run a class under the effects of a multi-gram-per-day habit. However, when he was on Ketamine and I was sober, I could absolutely detect a change in his voice, even over the telephone. It was totally obvious that he was tripping, but perhaps the students didn’t notice (or pretended not to notice). It must be understood that to non-English-speaking people, our accents are almost completely undetectable. For instance, I’m from New York City originally, but I’ve lived in various different parts of the United States growing up, so my accent is kind of an American hybrid with a Brooklyn base. Students ask me where I’m from and when I tell them “Guess!”, they frequently miss the mark entirely. They’ll ask me if I’m from Australia, even though my accent does not sound even vaguely Australian! So, with that understood, I think it’s possible that the change in my friend’s speech patterns, brought on by Ketamine abuse, could easily go unnoticed. When I was 19 years old, I did about a week in a detox near Philadelphia, PA – an area where PCP is extremely common – and my friend’s Ketamine-affected speech definitely reminded me of the “wet heads” I had met back in the day. This is not a compliment…

My friend attends 12-step meetings online from the comfort and safety of his own home. This is partially because there are no English-language meetings in the city where he lives, and partly a result of the Covid-19 hysteria. He logs on and talks to other NA-bros in Los Angeles, California (where he previously lived). As usual, most of the people in the 12-step programs are addicted to narcotics, alcohol, stimulants, etc. He’s an anomaly among the recovery crew with his unique drug of choice. He, like many hardcore addicts, is very deeply disturbed by his drug problem, and he has made countless attempts to quit cold turkey, taper off, etc. He has relapsed many, many times, but he remains confident that he can eventually quit for good. I try to give him a dose of “tough love” by explaining to him that he looks like a straight-up junkie when he’s on a Ketamine binge. His eyes get all blacked out, he’s skinny and emaciated, he falls into depressions, and his speech patterns are all messed up. When he gets off the K for a few days, he immediately starts to look a lot healthier.

I basically told my friend that I’m going to act as the “evil version” of his NA sponsor. If I find drugs or notice that he’s obviously high, I’m not gonna be the one to tell him to repent to Jesus and I sure as shit ain’t gonna flush his stash down the toilet. Once, after he had delivered a heartfelt monologue to me about how he’s “Finished with that shite – On a different path.”, we went up to his home office and I saw a significant amount of residue on the desk. “Oh yeah, what’s this Mr. Sober?” I said, and began to scrape it all up into a decent-sized line. He uses a specific banknote for snorting his Ketamine, a 1989 United States dollar bill. I took the dollar, rolled it up, and got ready to sniff his shit. My friend looked at me in horror – not because I was stealing his drugs, but because I was about to do a line that was much too big for my low tolerance. “Noooooo”, he said as I snorted half of the line up my nose, “Fuck! Dude, save the rest of that! Do NOT snort the whole thing, or you’re gonna be way too fucked up!”, “Hahahaha!!” I started mocking him with cartoonish-demonic laughter. I heeded his advice and shoveled the rest of the residue line into a small baggie, shoved it into my pocket, and went home.

My wife knows that I love to smoke weed, drink some relatively small quantities of extremely high-quality booze, and that I take tramadol, codeine, and kratom for my chronic scoliosis pain. She doesn’t know what Ketamine is, so when I walked in the door, rather than try to explain to her that I’d just snorted a bunch of cat tranquilizer, I just said “I’m pretty drunk, I think I’d better take a shower”. Once in the bathroom, I opened up a fresh email and addressed it to my best friend from high school (who also happens to be a musician and somewhat experienced drug enthusiast). He and I have had a great relationship over the years, unlike most of the people I knew from back then. I honestly don’t even remember the names of most of my classmates, teachers, etc. It was a negative time in my life and frankly, I believe that I should have been allowed to skip high school altogether and go straight to a full-time job, a serious girlfriend, and my own home. My mother had multiple sclerosis and cancer, so I had a lot of adult responsibility at a young age, caring for her. The silly teenage girls I was trying to ask out on dates, couldn’t relate to me and just thought I was “coming on too strong”. It was inappropriate for a guy in my position to be forced to endure a worthless four years in an American public school, and the experience did way more harm than good. The latter half of my teens was when I picked up all sorts of very negative, self-destructive drug habits. As I have previously explained in my writings, I do not believe for a second that addiction is a “disease”. Maybe some people are genetically predisposed to substance abuse, but personally I only did drugs recklessly when I felt like there was no good reason to respect myself or my life. By age 20, I honestly did not expect to live past 25 – and I was totally okay with that.

Had I been exposed to more worthwhile opportunities at that age, instead of the disgusting environment of dead-end-jobs, abusive high school teachers and faculty, and selfish, uncaring women, there is a good chance that I would have skipped the drug abuse and saved myself a lot of time. As I mentioned, a very high percentage of my peers from high school ended up dead or in jail as a result of depression, suicide, fentanyl abuse, and even a couple murders. I have nothing in common with most of those people, and by my mid-20’s it became totally obvious that I would have to move on to better countries if I wanted to build a positive future for myself, establish a stable domestic life, start a family of my own, etc. The few good people who are still in touch with me from my teenage years until today tend to view me and my decisions as a form of inspiration.

So, with all that in mind, I sat down on the toilet with the water running in the shower next to me, snorted the remaining Ketamine from the baggie, and attempted to write a letter to my old-school blood-brother. What came out was worse than nothing! To paraphrase the Paul Rosenberg skit from Eminem’s first couple albums: “It would have been better if you’d given me nothing at all!” I didn’t end up sending the email, as it was basically unintelligible. I had hoped to write a real-time report about the Ketamine effects, but my motor coordination was totally out the window… That was the last time I ever used Ketamine. After the very short-lived K-hole effect dissipated, I felt totally normal again, took my shower, and went to bed with my wife.

Overall, Ketamine is really nothing special. I found the effects to be a novelty at best, and I see no reason to ever try it again. The trip was not particularly interesting, the body load was annoying, the enhancement of visual and auditory senses was minimal, and there was no euphoria to speak of. The very short duration of the effect was disappointing, the K-hole was neither here nor there – it wasn’t much fun but it wasn’t scary either. My friend continues to work on his sobriety and attend his 12-step meetings. I personally cannot understand how people become addicted to dissociative anesthetics such as DXM, PCP, and Special K. If I gained nothing else from my experience with Ketamine, I at least got a small glimpse into a world that is highly attractive, even heavily addictive, to some. The experiment reaffirmed my understanding of how differently everybody’s brains react to different substances, and added further evidence to the age-old concept of “What’s right for you ain’t right for everyone!” Some people like smoking crack, some people like skydiving, some people like being whipped by a dominatrix, and some people like Ketamine. I am not personally turned on by any of those things – my desires are relatively simple, and mostly consist of weed, wine, and natural pain medicine – but hey, as with anything in this weird world of ours: Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it…

Exp Year: 2021	ExpID: 116342
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 38
Published: May 17, 2022	Views: 1,075
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Ketamine (31) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Retrospective / Summary (11), First Times (2)