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Into the Music for an Hour
Ketamine
Citation:   Kevin S.. "Into the Music for an Hour: An Experience with Ketamine (exp14353)". Erowid.org. Dec 21, 2004. erowid.org/exp/14353

 
DOSE:
1 glass oral Alcohol - Beer/Wine (liquid)
  2 bumps insufflated Ketamine (powder / crystals)
BODY WEIGHT: 180 lb
Earlier that night, I'd had a beer to loosen up. We then went to a friend of a friend's room to chill and play his PlayStation.

About 15 minutes after we get there, another guy comes in with a little bag containing some white powder. I was about to leave, since I thought it was coke (something I will never touch: some things aren't worth my time and money, coke isn't worth my life). He explained that it was ketamine, and I was still turned off to it, but stayed. He gave the guy who lived there a hit of it before the guy went to take his shower, and the guy came back looking for shampoo since he'd been 'shampooing' with hair gel. This was funny, and I wondered what it might be like to try it, but I thought 'it's cat tranquilizer', so I was still skeptical. I'll try almost anything once, though, so I decided to give it a try. I told him that I needed to get up in the morning, and he assured me that I'd be back to normal in about an hour. Good enough for me. He gave me two hits, a hit being a small lump of powder on the end of a straw cut at an angle to make a snorting spoon. I snorted both hits and waited, playing a game of Pong on the PlayStation, before I wondered where everyone else had gone (they'd all left to do various things, most had left before I took my hits to avoid the temptation).

The guy who lived there came back from his shower, and I left the room while he changed, going down the hall to the elevator area, where the friend I'd come with and another friend I'd met at a rave were talking about and demonstrating various self-defense moves from a style called Capoeira. On the walk down the hall, I felt something start to kick in. I'd been feeling something creep up while playing the game, a sort of relaxed, 'up' feeling. As I walked, this intensified. The come-up was fast, but very smooth, not hitting me all at once like a ton of bricks, nor waving up, like DXM does, which is the closest thing I can compare it to. I watched R (my friend) and the other friend practicing, and while I did, I started to feel very fucked up. Sound became clearer, especially human voices. I could keep track of a conversation coming from an open doorway down the hall, even while other people were talking. My eyes were wide open, and I had a slight smile on my face most of the time. I could carry on a conversation, but sometimes the words to describe what I was talking about (mostly music) weren't forthcoming.

At one point, the sensations I was feeling were a little overwhelming, and I had to squat, since it felt more difficult to keep my balance (even though I was leaning against a wall). After a while, the guys finished their demonstrations and headed back top the room. I was definitely feeling the dissociative effects then. It's somewhat hard to explain. It's as though my mind was floating. My body obeyed instantly, but I still felt somewhat detached. I felt as if all my movements were fluid. It's a pretty good feeling. I didn't have to concentrate unduly to track a conversation, but it would also have been easy to zone out.

The PlayStation was started up again, this time with Final Fantasy VII, but the console wasn't working well and the CD was somewhat scratched up, so they gave up on that game and tried another, which also didn't work. I was carrying on the odd conversation, but mostly I was just watching what was going on and feeling slightly floating. My sensations to temperature was becoming affected. My face and ears felt flushed, but this sensation was numbed somewhat. I was also getting a slight draft from the air conditioning on my leg, but this too was easily ignored. It was like my various nerves were no longer sending chemical signals, but conscious thoughts to my brain, like my leg was literally telling me it was cold, as if my leg were some separate entity. I acknowledged it, then moved on to something else, and my leg stopped telling me that. This is a major part of the dissociative effect. The guy who gave me the stuff asked how it was, and I told him it was like a DXM high, but more controllable, and without the nausea.
When I listened to music, I really got into the beat of the music, and started dancing with my hands, doing the fluid motions of one hand chasing the other. It just felt good to move and dance. I know I wasn't doing it as well as I could have been, but it felt good and was fun just doing it.

The effects of the ketamine were less pronounced now, and though I still felt them, I knew I was starting to come out of it. This had never been a concern, though I was curious when I started to come up on it as to how deep I'd go on this stuff. I'd been slightly afraid when coming up that I'd go into a K-hole, since the come-up was more intense than I was prepared for, but I knew that the most intense period had passed, and started to 'wake up' and get more in tune with reality. Not that I'd ever lost touch, it just seemed a little distant.

As I was starting to come out of it, a guy came by with some fruit snacks and tossed me a pack. The smell was quite strong when I first opened it, but disappeared rapidly, again a dissociative effect, like that of my leg. My nose told me what it needed to say, then it stopped talking. The taste of the snacks was somewhat bland, but the texture and the sweetness of the pieces were as normal. I was somewhat hungry, and eating these gave me a slightly warm feeling in my stomach.

About 12:30, almost exactly an hour after I snorted the stuff, I began to feel what I would call normal. I had a slight headache, which a couple of Advil is working on now, and a pleasureable afterglow feeling that lasted for quite a while, which was probably the last traces of the ketamine metabolizing out of my system. The gathering was starting to break up, so I said goodbyes to R and A and headed back to my dorm. The weather was chilly outside, but I didn't mind it, as I was still feeling the afterglow. I made it back to my dorm without incident, went to the bathroom, and came back to my room, where I started writing this account.

All in all, a pleasurable experience, but nothing to write home about (figuratively speaking). This was a free sample, and as such was a pretty good experience, but I probably wouldn't pay money for this. I can see its appeal, however: a smooth come-up, faster than DXM but without any nausea or waves, a short, somewhat intense peak, and a smooth let-down, without any lingering negative effects. I didn't experience what I would call a K-hole, nor can I claim any mind-blowing out-of-body experience, so this was probably a very small dose compared to what K-heads would take for a 'real' experience. More wouldn't necessarily have been a bad thing, but I had no overpowering urge to take more. I don't know what it would have cost had I paid for this, but more than a buck a hit would probably have left me feeling disappointed. Not too bad, not mind-blowingly good, something I might try again, but not if I had to pay for it. It's worth what little time it takes, but probably not the money.

Exp Year: 2002ExpID: 14353
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Dec 21, 2004Views: 22,891
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Ketamine (31) : General (1), First Times (2), Small Group (2-9) (17)

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