Late one evening at home I decided to do an experiment. I'd wanted to trip all day, but none of my options had felt quite right. Around 3:00 a.m. it occurred to me that I still had a small amount of Ketamine. Since the K trip was only an hour or two I thought this was something that might fit the bill.

My first Ketamine only trip hadn't impressed me much. Several people I had discussed it with had indicated that the problem was very probably dosage related. In other words, if I did more I would get more out of it. This seemed reasonable so I decided to do a substantially higher dosage to see if I could get more impressive results.

I retrieved my material and a small jeweler's balance I use for measurements. It isn't particularly accurate for small measurements, but it is what I have so I make do. The person who had given me the K said I would get full effects probably between 200 and 300 mg. I used the balance to weigh out approximately 230 mg, easily half again what I had done the first time. It was a large pile, but I figured if I were going to do it I would do it right.

I cut up the Ketamine into six large lines on a mirror and prepared to snort them. Before I started I got my surroundings ready. I retrieved a vessel to vomit into if it became necessary. I turned off all the lights except a small lamp next to where I was lying. I got a pillow and made a spot on the floor to lie down in. Finally I put a nice ambient collection into the stereo, ready to start at the touch of a button.

With all the preparations made I began insufflating the material. As usual it was only mildly unpleasant, much less so than almost anything else I have ever snorted. All six lines went up my nose in short order. I started to feel it almost immediately as a sort of wobbly sensation. I did have plenty of time to turn off the light, start the music and lie down in a comfortable position

I closed my eyes in the darkness and waited to see what would happen. I began to feel it more and more, but I still thought it wasn't going to remove me from normal awareness as much as I had hoped. The space behind my eyes began to change. It became deeper and darker at first. Then it became split by very faint twisting bands. I still felt strangely sober even though I knew I wasn't.

The darkness behind my eyes continued to change. It seemed to be folding in upon itself and twisting into strange shapes. Finally it began pulsing with light and sort of exploded. When this happened I felt like I had been thrown outside of myself into a strange new level of reality.

From this point on recollection is fuzzy. Ketamine is supposed to create experiences very similar to near death experiences and my trip seemed to confirm that. What I do remember was experiencing many different scenes from throughout my life as a sort of catalog of who and what I have been. I felt emotions at all these scenes, both joyful and sad, but I seemed a bit removed from all the emotions.

My life unfolded before me as I visited my loved ones, felt regrets at missed opportunity, considered friends I haven't spent time with in years and much, much more. I marveled at the strangeness of my life and personality and wondered what it all meant.

My thoughts went into some strange areas that they do not usually visit. Politics and paranoid thoughts of persecution were both at the forefront of my brain for part of the trip. I remembered my strange thoughts of police breaking into my home to arrest me during my last K trip and felt something similar this time as well. I think it may have to do with the fact that I am basically useless and helpless while under the influence of K, as I am dissociated from my body, unable to move or respond to threats.

Although I compare it to a near death experience I knew I wasn't dying, I knew that I was going to return to some other state of consciousness at some point. But I was not sure what that state might be. I wasn't sure I would reintegrate into my "normal" form or even what that form was. Dozens of personalities and people were spinning though my consciousness and I wasn't at all sure which of those people/personalities I was going to become.

My thoughts were centered on the nature of reality and what this experience was revealing about it. I felt like I grasped things in a way that I never had before. It seemed that everything was malleable and plastic, something I could change at will. While I was in the trip I felt I understood the operations of the manifest universe in a new and nearly complete way. I remembered my 5-MeO-DMT trips of the previous two days and felt that they had somehow primed me for this new and nearly complete understanding. I felt a sense of great peace and well being.

My contemplation of my place in the universe seemed timeless. Once again I felt as if time flowed backwards and forwards, as if I could access any point in my timeline if I could just manifest the will to do so. As I experienced scenes form my life I wasn't sure if they were things that had happened or things that would happen.

Some time later I began to become aware of the room. This awareness came and went as the drug wound down. The period of awareness of the room and awareness of the K dimension alternated, with the room becoming more and more real and staying around longer until I was basically down. Unfortunately I was also very, very nauseous.

The room seemed to be spinning and I felt very ill. I managed to get to my hands and knees and puke into the bucket I had prepared. I had the worst case of the spins I have ever experienced and I was completely uncoordinated. It reminded me a bit of the feelings of my second and third ayahuasca trip, sick and helpless.

I knew I needed to get to the bathroom and I managed to crawl into that room after several minutes of trying. I used the bathroom, puking several times while I did so. I had nothing in my stomach so I was puking up pure bile, which is always an unpleasant experience.

As I crawled out of the bathroom my fiancée appeared and asked me what was wrong. I managed to slur out that I had taken too much Ketamine and was feeling a bit sick. She helped me get some water in my stomach, clean up the paraphernalia used in my experiment and get into bed. In bed I continued to twitch and feel sick for a while before finally managing to sleep.

The next day I felt much better, but still a little off base. I still had K crusted in my nose and I believe I was still metabolizing it since I felt wobbly, off balance and unfocused the next day. In addition, the details of the trip had all escaped me by that point, leaving me with only a few vivid images and a vague outline of what had occurred.

All in all the trip was good, but I am hesitant to revisit it. While I was in the K Hole I was having a marvelous and revelatory trip. However, once I returned not only was I as sick as a dog, I couldn't remember most of it. I will be using K again, but probably at a lower dosage, around 180 mg. I will also try combining it again with another psychedelic, since this did seem to afford better recall of the trip and a similarly intense experience with less material and less nausea.