DOSE:	30 ml		Morphine	(liquid)
	10 mg	oral	Oxycodone	(pill / tablet)
	260 mg	IV	Ketamine	(liquid)

BODY WEIGHT:

132 lb

Pre trip:
Recently I had broken my arm skateboarding. I thought I had been ok, but I picked up my arm and it was flopping everywhere as if there were no bone at all, and my bone was popping out. It was an incredibly horrible break, one of the worst the doctor had seen. I had completely destroyed my radius and ulna. I was rushed to the nyu hospital in nyc, where I had to sit for half an hour before even being acknowledged. At this point, I was in agonizing pain, and I called over an nurse to ask her if I was going to be treated ( i did not scream or cry at all, I’m one of those weirdos who embrace pain, but I’m not emo). She proceeded to give me 30 ml of morphine and two 5 mg tablets of oxycodone, before taking me to xrays to see the break. They realized that the bone cut through my muscles, and had to do an emergency operation to try to replace the bone without internal surgery (which didn’t work, which renders the whole thing pointless). The cut off my shirt, injected the i.v., and told me to think happy thoughts. I was totally psyched to have a crazy awesome trip about phish, but as the ketamine was working it’s charm, the only thing I could hear was the loud beeping of the E.R. equipment.

For the sake of giving the best possible story and not confusing anyone, I will explain how my story is told. Since the ketamine trip was so realistic, I find it proper to explain it the way it felt, like it was actually happening. There will be no “it felt like” or “it was like.” If I feel it is necessary to make a commentary, which I often will, I will put it in parentheses (like this). Remember: no ( ) is tripping guy talking, ( ) is me talking. Sorry to be pushy, but I just want you to get the closest idea of my trip possible.

Trip: Phase one
There’s no real way to say how it starts, but I first remember being in the stretcher. The thing is, while I was in it, I didn’t have a body to see, as if I was just a set of eyeballs. It started screeching me around the hospital, at more than two million miles an heartbeat. My stretcher was anchored to the floor, but years and years of life and the people in the hospital went by. It felt like I was perfectly still, but pure life was passing before my eyes.

Phase two:
I was still going two million miles in fractions of a second, but instead of actually seeing the hospital as a whole, all the faces of the patients going by in milliseconds. Now you would think I wouldn’t even have the time to make out there face in the tiny amount of time that I saw them, but for every single face, there whole lives broke down in front of me, and I would see their whole lives pass before me. And may I remind you that billions upon billions of faces passed by in fractions of seconds.

Phase three:
Phase three is similar to phase two as in it has to do with millions of people passing by in very short amount of time. Except this time I wasn’t watching there lives. I was living it. I would be watching the people (in my floating set of eyeballs, out of body state) pass by, and the breakdown would happen, and in some weird transfer, I would be sitting in a hospital bed. I was tripping so hard that once I fell into peoples lives, I genuinely believed I was whoever persons life I took over at the time. (Imagine me walking up to you, you’re completely sober, and I tell you you’re not really whoever you are. If you were a character in my trip and told me I wasn’t who I was, I’d think you were the one who was tripping not me.)

But anyway I would become this person and live every moment of their lives. I lived the life of an woman who went to the hospital and was diagnosed with breast cancer. I remember feeling what it was like to hear those words, to feel those feelings. Then I was Richard, who started getting bumps on his nut sac. I was reading The Children of Men by P.D. James when the doctor came in and diagnosed me with AIDS. I looked back on my life (not my real one, the one I lived as Richard in the trip). There was a half empty glass of water on the bedside desk next to me, and it had a cloth embroided with different flowers. (Yeah it was that specific, just as specific as my real life) I was living all sorts of lives like these, and they all revolved around the hospital. I experienced what it was like to be told that I had all these fatal medical problems.

Phase four:
Suddenly I was back were I was in phase one, being the eyeballs on the stretcher. I finally thought that the nightmare was over. But then suddenly it starts up again, life going a million miles an hour. Except this time I was un anchored, and I felt like someone strapped me to a rocket ship headed to outer space. Although life was taking me on a million mph ride these two doctors were standing over me, doing doctor stuff on me, oblivious to their ever changing surroundings. But I wasn’t normally seeing them. It was like my eyes were cameras and it took snapshots of what they were doing. Each time I looked it was something completely different. This was only the beginning of the climax.

The rushing moving feeling started getting much much worse, like the coming up of your first acid trip times 100. it was horrifyingly exhilarating, I thought I would have a heart attack any moment. My vision started getting worse. It wasn’t just the snapshots were the same doctors would just be doing different things every time I looked. It would be like that, with the rushing feeling and everything, and the doctors would be doing there thing, and then bam, I would fall diagonally out of life itself, through time and space, like a 3D image popping out of the frame it’s supposed to stay in. this would happen one after the other, but it still got worse.

I started falling out of life itself, while I was still in the process of falling out of life itself. While this nightmare was going on, the doctors started to talk. The thing is, they were speaking english, and I realized that through all these horrible things, but I had no clue what they were saying. It’s like they were speaking english and alien languages at the same time. I got really nervous because they were telling me how I have to take care of my arm, but I couldn’t catch up with their words. I knew what they were talking about, but I didn’t know what they were saying. It all started to climax worse and worse and worse. I would fall out of life itself going a billion miles an hour while they alien sounding doctors were trying to talk to me. Then all the sudden one of the doctors got straight in my face, grabbed me by the shoulders and said “You’re going to die” then that rush feeling stopped but life was still going by. My life stopped right there. I started falling into a pitch black hole, and everything in my vision started getting smaller and blurrier. I was reaching out towards life, wanting it to pull me back in, but it wouldn’t. My vision went black.

Post trip:
When I woke up, I was extremely groggy and forgot the most simple of things. I can’t stress that enough. When I first woke up, I forgot I had a body, forgot what was going on, and forgot that I was a human being. My nurse came over and said “Hi I’m Joe. I’m you’re nurse good to see you’re awake.” I said Joe about 4 times, not knowing what that was supposed to mean. I tried looking at him, but through my tired eyes he and everything else in my vision wouldn’t stop shaking. I fell asleep for about 15 minutes (there was a clock so I could tell) so that I could knock off this extremely groggy feeling where I didn’t even understand english. Joe told me not to because the post climax effects stay with you longer if you’re sleeping, but I had no idea what he meant. But anyway, I wake up and my mother is there to visit me. I still had the groggy feeling, but the world stopped spinning and I could understand. I said some stupid things to my mother though, like I’m so sorry for what I did to you Leslie. Pretty cool feeling if my mom wasn’t there seeing me in that state.

Three hours after this life changing episode I’m being helped into my bed. I’m in pain but I’m being given enormous amounts of morphine so I feel pretty good and chilled out. The relaxing state of mind from the morphine combined with the fact that the whole trip was over made for one of the best sleeps of my entire existence.


Authors note: the dose they gave me was far larger than an recreational dose. They needed to give me enough so I would be completely unaware to them cut raw muscle and nerves and moving snapped bones. As terrifying as the trip was, I am fascinated at how much it changed my perspective on things, and I would hope to try it again, recreationally. Hopefully the next trip will not being as terrifying.

Exp Year: 2009	ExpID: 80000
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Sep 30, 2009	Views: 28,413
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Ketamine (31) : General (1), First Times (2), Combinations (3), Mystical Experiences (9), Medical Use (47), Therapeutic Intent or Outcome (49), Hospital (36)