DOSE:	repeated	oral	Alcohol
		insufflated	Ketamine
			Cannabis

This is an account of one of the most intense entheogenic experiences I have ever had, which took place at St. Paul’s Carnival in Bristol in early July 2010. I was already quite drunk when I was offered the unknown amount of ketamine to take off the back of my hand. A was also given a bump and was in a similar state to me beforehand but did not have the kind of experience that I did, so this may well be personal metabolism or the midget may have given me more ket- very hard to tell in the dark, in the middle of a crowd while Logistics is playing.

Anyway, shortly after doing the bump, everything started to become increasingly surreal. While still trying to enjoy the ambience of the rave, I became more and more disconnected from what was actually going on and sort of felt like I was just a character in a film or that none of the vast array of sensory stimulation was actually happening in real life, just some kind of intense dream. I was too fucked to even really formulate these observations as thoughts I just became aware of something not being right. Me and A left the main bulk of the crowd and stumbled towards the back and at this point we both became aware of losing bodily coordination. I stood there for a while staring at my hands, moving them towards and away from my face. They felt like someone else’s hands. Not being able to stand properly I leant against the stone wall at the back, my arms gripping the railings. This is when everything became very very real. I was still aware, to some extent, of the party going on around me, but at the same time was very much ‘lost’ in another area of perception. The few times I was roused from this state before we left all I could see was a crowd of people moving past me on the other side of the railings and I remembered that I was in Bristol but thought I was in a totally different area of the city.

While standing/leaning there, my sense of ego-self dissolved away almost totally and I was left with no idea of dreams or desires- real/imagined, physical/emotional, short/long term. My ‘self’ and its conditioned perceptions was no longer functioning so the spark of consciousness within me was free to experience the raw data of the universe. I became very aware of not just the unity of all human beings, but of everything in the universe. I had accepted this in theory before, but retrospectively realised that this was just my ego paying lip-service to a concept which it could not actually fully accept without being destroyed. I felt as if I could perceive the entire world and all the actions and experiences of all the people of earth were melding to form this urgent cacophony, this tremendous and powerful energy which was the energy of the universe itself, flowing through a particular manifestation of its own matter as human forms. This seemed extremely obvious in this state to the extent where it felt more like this truth was being forced on me by the drug rather than one that I chose to accept . But it felt like there was not choice to accept it, like an a priori truth.

I did not feel alone in this state, I knew that this knowledge had been revealed to many people and that all of our subconscious’ were aware of it, to varying degrees, and that this was the reason behind things like the current state of the UK festival culture- a recognition of the unity of all things and an attempt to capture that state by getting as many people in the same place at once and get them all on the same ‘wavelength’ through music or drugs or dancing or chanting or drumming ect. I was totally and brutally aware of the ‘is-ness’ of reality and how we are mostly sleeping while awake and discussing spiritual realms as if they were somehow ‘other’, when in actual fact the physical realm is itself a ‘spiritual’ residence- that is, a realm of perception for the overmind, which has split itself into many billions of ‘separate’ entities so as to see itself from all possible angles. Again I want to reiterate the feelings of total unity between us and our environment, to the extent where the use of the word ‘unity’ has no meaning but is necessitated by our self imposed lack of enlightenment. When I came to a couple of times I could not properly move at all, like I was underwater or something, at one point I remember being sick on the wall in front of me. Towards the end some paramedics came to help a sleeping man right next to me as everyone was being moved on and I was walked back to where we were staying by my friends, to whom I am very grateful.

As the drug was wearing off I remember feeling that I would not be able to go back to living a normal human life after this. Would not be able to pretend that that workings of my ego-self (or anyone else’s) were in any way important, having been shown what I now knew. Inevitably though, my stupid ignorant self took control of my body once more, and started trying to integrate this ‘amazing drug experience’ into the supposed narrative of its enclosed life. I have since realised that the ketamine experience is more like a being shown the intricate workings behind something and as such does not diminish the reality or meaning of the thing itself but shows it to be part of a greater order. Like having a geometry lesson so you come to understand how a bridge or a building stays standing, or a physics lesson on, say, gravity. That is, being shown a universal principal behind all phenomenal things which informs their nature and actions. This is ketamine. To use the same analogy, drugs like LSD or psilocybin would be more like a textual analysis class, where the ‘text’ of the day is one’s own psyche- as such these drugs are better for healing or therapy whereas ket is more of an impersonal, ego-shattering experience.

Exp Year: 2010	ExpID: 87357
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 20
Published: Apr 17, 2026	Views: Not Supported
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Ketamine (31) : Combinations (3), General (1), Festival / Lg. Crowd (24)