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Why Did We Do This?
Ketamine
Citation:   psychonaught. "Why Did We Do This?: An Experience with Ketamine (exp79405)". Erowid.org. Feb 19, 2018. erowid.org/exp/79405

 
DOSE:
3 glasses oral Alcohol - Beer/Wine (liquid)
    smoked Cannabis (plant material)
  2 lines insufflated Ketamine (pill / tablet)
BODY WEIGHT: 170 lb
Ketamine, Alcohol, Cannabis

Substances I have tried: cannabis (daily smoker), nicotine, mushrooms (grew them for a little while, several dozen experiences), LSD (going on a couple hundred now), nitrous (several dozen), DMT (10-15), ayahuasca, K (this reported experience was not my first), opium (handful of occasions), oxycodone (~20), hydrocodone (~20), codeine (~10), diluadid (2 or 3), DXM, MDMA (powder and pressed pills; 30-40 experiences), seroquel (couple of times), alprazolam/xanax (roughly twenty occasions); diazepam/valium (just a handful of times), amphetamines (usually adderall; twenty occasions), crystal meth (twice), cocaine (few dozen times), GHB (few times), 1,4-butanediol (30-40 times), methadone (about 10 times), morphine (5 or 6 times), clonazepam (just once or twice), and salvia (few times)

As of this reported experience I had tried almost everything else on the list except Ketamine, but I knew a lot about it and was curious. A friend of mine is a long-time head and gets all kinds of crazy drugs, literally anything you could think of (mostly psychedelics, that is - no heroin or crank or any of that bullshit). He'd mentioned several times recently having gotten some K so I knew I would end up getting into it at some point. We ended up doing it three or four times, culminating in this experience. The first couple of times I did maybe 75-125mg, enough to feel effects but not reach a K-hole. I felt noticable-to-strong dissociation, had trouble walking, and experienced distinctly psychedlic effects of a different character than the tryptamines (which is how I trip most often). Effects lasted about 45 minutes and I didn't experience any aftereffects. I never experienced nausea.

Strangly enough this friend had several questionable to outright bad experiences with the stuff that he had told me about. On a number of occassions he was alone at his house and basically bored and so he did a couple lines of K. He never reported enjoying it much - he just felt weird and out of it each time. He had reported these experiences to me before the one in question. It definitely changed my opinion of K and made me a little more wary, but not drastically so. I had read enough experience reports and talked to enough users that I had an idea that this was a common theme with K - the compulsion to go back to it even in the absence of enjoyment or any benefit from its use. But I had never had bad effects and was still interested in exploring a little further.

On this occasion, I had gone out for food/drinks with my wife and several friends one evening. We had a couple pitchers and W, the holder of the Ketamine and a frequent but responsible drug user, suggested continuing the party at his house. At least a couple other people were receptive so we all reconvened there. He pulled out the K and divided up some lines. There were six of us - me, my wife (Q), the owner of the house and the ketamine (W), another couple (R & L), and another male friend (Y). We smoked a couple of joints and a couple people opened beers.

All of us did amounts ranging from ~100mg to ~300mg. I probably did about 250mg in two lines. I have read reports of Ketamine burning but honestly felt nothing from it. Having sniffed a lot of other drugs before, but not enough to affect my nose's pain response, I am tempted to say that people who complain of burn with ketamine are just wussies. In my previous, lower dose, experiences, the effects had taken hold over several minutes. This time, it hit me nearly immediately - within a few seconds. I remember recalling someone else's description of 'being kicked in the face' and this seemed quite appropriate. Pretty much all I could do was stumble to W's couch and collapse over the back of it. After maybe thirty seconds, Y (who had just done his lines) stumbled over and said something I don't remember (presumably something about K), to which I responded with something about how acid is my favorite drug. For a minute we both seemed to think 'What are we talking about' before we just laid back, closed our eyes, and more or less passed out.

I was conscious the whole time but wildly dissociated. It was all I could do to stand up and walk a few feet into the kitchen for water, even as the effects were tailing off. I felt like I overshot dosage-wise: on previous occasions, with a pretty good bit less, I had experienced psychedelic effects, but this time I basically just felt anesthatized. I think there was music playing, but I was detached from my sensory apparatus, numb to most stimulus. I had the strong feeling, for most of the time, of being squeezed through old school washing machine rollers - it was not necessarily pleasurable, but sort of cool for the novelty value. I never had any real visuals to speak of (though I had on previous occasions), or insight, or new kinds of cosmic awareness (which I have frequently seen reported with K and at these dose levels). The dominant feeling was of numbness, though there were strange body effects (felt a couple of times that my limbs were being rearranged, etc.)

Two or three people vomited. I never had any nausea and the drip never bothered me. But I have an iron stomach with drugs and in general - my first ever trip was on ayahuasca and I avoided the purge despite having a mind-blowingly intense trip. Effects lasted the same time or a little longer - maybe closer to an hour. Afterwords, there were no bad feelings for W (though he had redosed several times, gotten really high, and acted sorta dumb-drunk for a while). There was a lingering feeling of 'Why did we do that?' No one reported having fun or enjoying more than just isolated aspects of the experience. None of us repeated a desire to try it again.

Since then I haven't taken K again. It's just not fun. Don't mistake me on this point - I think there's a lot more than fun to drug use. In general, my goals are knowledge and personal development and I think such powerful tools should not be abused. But to me the spiritual side of such drugs as LSD and MDMA is part of the fun of doing them. To be sure, the experiences can be serious (especially with LSD and other psychedelics) but almost always still have recreational value - I almost always (98%+) enjoy the experience immensely. There was little enjoyment with Ketamine. Perhaps this reflects the numbing of emotion as well as of the body. These effects do not interest me very much - I appreciate drugs that enhance, not subdue, consciousness.

I am well aware of much more rich and meaningful experiences with K reported in the literature - quite a lot, in fact. Perhaps drugs affect people differently. But I have also heard almost nothing but stories, in my direct experience, of feeling 'weird' and 'out of it'. I'm not quite sure what to make of K but I don't plan to do it again anytime soon. But I feel some potential that I might not yet have tapped fully so if the chance arises at some point I won't rule the idea out (perhaps this makes me another one of those people that report not enjoying K but keep doing it- though this experience was several months ago and I have not once had any lingering desire to do so more K). Though I thought I was still under/within K-hole range in terms of dosage, I felt that I might have shot myself past this point into anesthesia effects. The dose wasn't measured so it's hard to say.
The dose wasn't measured so it's hard to say.
Always measure your doses. In the future I'll probably do closer to my original doses, if I do go back to it. Perhaps IM administration is more suitable for this substance though my friends that have tried it have reported similar 'weird' experiences.

The experience was not 'bad' - just shaded slightly on the 'bad' side of neutral, mostly because it seemed a waste of time. But I could DEFINITELY see how it could turn bad or be interpreted as majorly unpleasant for someone less experienced with altered states or without some knowledge of what the effects would be. One should be careful because one can definitely fuck oneself up or kill oneself with this one (think DM Turner and the bathtub incident. I could see how someone could easily fall down stairs or otherwise majorly injure or kill themselves on K).

Have fun and be responsible. Take care of your friends and yourself and your community and your planet. Seek knowledge and peace - we can live in harmony with ourselves and our planet if we collectively choose to do so. Peace...

Exp Year: 2008ExpID: 79405
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Feb 19, 2018Views: 1,977
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Ketamine (31) : General (1), Retrospective / Summary (11), Small Group (2-9) (17)

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