DOSE:	repeated	insufflated	Ketamine	(powder / crystals)
		smoked	Cannabis

BODY WEIGHT:

155 lb

I am 20, and have been using drugs of all kinds since the age of 14, with particular enthusiasm since the age of 18. I have tried many, many compounds, and I say that with no conceit. From every single category: psyches, opiates, depressants, stims, dissociatives, you name it. From the popular and widely distributed, to the obscure and progressive research chemicals, my curiosity is insatiable, and I am grateful to the wonderful internet (and darknet) for providing accessibility to everything one could possibly fathom.

I have somewhat of a narrative in my explorations of the mind-altering: a tale both sad and wonderful. I began with marijuana and alcohol as a teenager, and then began to go out clubbing, using MDMA, Mephedrone, and Ketamine. I discovered the convenience of Benzodiazepines to eliminate comedowns. I began smoking weed everyday once I finished school. I moved to St Petersburg for a year in between High-school and University, and continued to smoke hash there.

In the summer of 2011, we turned our luscious riverside apartment into a hippie commune, and frequently took LSD, a variety of 2c-s, MDMA, MDA, and things I can not name to this day. I went to University in the United States and discovered that drugs there were astronomically expensive, and often not very pure. I began purchasing marijuana in quantities of quarter and half-pounds, as the economics of scale were excellent. I distributed weed across the dorms, and then began to do the same thing with rarer, more exciting (and lucrative) compounds. I became known as a one-stop-shop. I became 'Red' from The Shawshank Redemption, the man who could get anything. I loved the social currency this title afforded me, the thousands of dollars to spare in my dorm room, Michelin-star restaurants, casual travel, the charming business relationships on all sides of the globe, and any quantity of any drug that I wanted at any time. I bought large quantities of Cocaine, MDMA, and Ketamine, myself consuming the latter two with particular frequency.

I stumbled across a classmate who's mother had recently died of Cancer. He told me that he had left a stockpile of unconsumed Oxycodone. I had only read about this stuff: an exotic, delightful and highly addictive opioid narcotic that was completely unavailable in other parts of the world. I bought almost 100 30mg 'Roxis' for just $400 and felt like a don because of it. I began using these small little blue pills to shape the evening in the precise way I wanted it to be. First I would drink and use Cocaine, moving from party to party in order to supply all that required it, this was my job, my immaculate customer service of course. I would then take a 30mg Roxi with my last line, and when I began to feel it, take a large line of ketamine. I would be transformed from one bliss to another. I mention this particular combination as it became a much-used sort of holy grail for me. When I felt uninspired I would take mushrooms or acid, When I needed calm I took opiates or benzos, when I was bored I smoked weed and took Ketamine, and when I had to write an essay for the next day, I took Adderall. In short, I had a solution to every possible feeling, and as a result became less able to tolerate such feelings. So began my journey down the path of addiction.

When I returned to the UK over the summer, I brought my business with me. This occupation of mine was enmeshed into my identity. I felt socially insecure, inadequate, and bored without substances on hand at every given time. So my old friend and I began to attend festivals and sell our innumerable wares to anyone that cared for them. I felt that drugs should not be illegal, and since I was on a cocktail of drugs myself everyday, I felt indestructible, invincible and untouchable. At the 5th festival, my companion and I were arrested and found with an inordinate amount of substances, enough to put us in prison for a reasonable amount of time. After I was released on bail, my use of opiates in particular began to increase. I wanted to escape from the nightmare that faced me. Purchasing oxycodone was out of the question in the UK so I began to use heroin as it was readily available. I knew the road I was going down so I moderated my use: never more than 2 days in a row, only in the evenings. I have been using heroin regularly for a little over 2 months.

Now, the reason I give this background- my drugs history, is that its narrative was the focal point of my recent experience here. Now, on the deep end of the internet, I saw an opportunity arise about 3 days prior to this. Old-school Oxy 80s were being sold in the UK, and I could not resist. I purchased one and kept it in my wallet throughout the earlier part of the day. A few months back, as I could not return to University in the States due to the legal ramifications of my arrest, and various court dates, I decided to take up a job as a charity fundraiser. This means I go knocking on people's doors, and using sales tactics, try and get them to sign up to donate regularly to whatever charity it is that I'm assigned to. It is tough and rewarding work, and after a particularly tough and rewarding day, I received a phone call from a friend (who shall be called O) who asked me whether I'd like to come over to his apartment. I asked, in an impulsive way if he knew where I could pick up a gram of Ketamine. He said, 'Oh, it's funny you should say that, I was thinking of picking up earlier today..'. So, skip 45 minutes and I was across town, meeting a punk girl with a number of piercings, a friend of O's whom he had met in Asia. I get 2 grams and head to the apartment. I am buzzed and energetic, as I usually am in the interim between the acquiring and using period, a natural high, similar to the one described by Lou Reed when, after hours of waiting, his 'man' emerges from the horizon and immediately all in the world is put right. So we decide to recook the K, making it fluffier, more voluminous and appealing. It is also easier on the nose this way. We don't waste much time and rack up the lines. It has been a while since I have had a satisfying K experience. In the summer, my tolerance had risen to a point where the negatives began to outweigh the positives, but after a period of abstinence from K, it had sunk to a pleasant default level, and could be overpowered.

I have little fear or anxiety regarding almost all drugs. I feel about them like I feel about old, familiar friends. I always seek uncompromised and immersive experiences.

So at 11pm I snort 2 large lines, totalling around 150mgs, and O does slightly less. We listen to some excellent sound-art on vinyl, Andy Stott in particular. O has a beautiful hi-fi which belonged once to his parents. It was old, from the 90's, but blew me away on a regular basis that evening, more-so than any new sound systems I had encountered in domestic environments. It was a focal point for the duration of the experience. I floated around the apartment but felt I was only halfway into the K otherworldyness that I craved. I took another 150mgs.

After 20 minutes past, I was certainly at the place. However, there was a crucial difference in what I wanted then to that which I did 20 minutes prior. As I listened to a new and exciting producer on the glorious speakers, I thought of the ways in which I could and should cultivate my talents. I am an aspiring musician, one that was constantly praised as a child, a piano-prodigy I was. My approach to musicianship was now more relaxed, and warped by the constant and exotic stream of drugs I had been taking over the last few years. I thought of what had happened, the dissipation of ambition via everyday weed-smoking, the self-disappointment, the sadness, the tragedy of my self-betrayal. Once I had such high-respect for myself, and now I ran away from responsibility. My life recently seemed like one insincere apology after another. I thought of the horrendous spiral of addiction, and was able then to view my actions, my drug-using as self-mutilation. My greatest fear was to fizzle and to become boring, and at University the fact I carried at least 5 different substances at all times made me in character the very opposite. But at that moment, while the walls flashed with that white, neutral and enchanting light so familiar, I felt that my life was becoming mechanical, alienated, and boring.

For those of you that have experimented with Ketamine or psychedelics, you may know the momentous and lofty feelings that days and moments of your life so far, ignorant and unaware, have been leading up to this one, epiphany-filled moment of realization. I felt that not only I was viewing my self in that room from the 3rd person, but I was looking upon my entire life, history, identity and trajectory from a metaphysical platform a great distance away, able to analyze and reflect with greater perspective than I could remember. Resigning myself to the recreation of dancing or talking felt a waste, meaningless. I went alone to the bathroom and began to cry with regret. I was crying out to myself, lamenting my losses and urging a turnaround, but it felt more real and more rewarding than any music, dance or conversation. In that moment, I did what I felt to be a noble gesture of redemption.

I took from my wallet the large green pill of Oxycodone, an object that I then assigned as a symbol of my apathy, escape, and impending misery, and dramatically flung it into the toilet bowl and flushed it away. Although immersed in the intoxication of the K, I felt at that moment more sober and clear-headed than at any moment in recent memory. I stared at myself in the mirror and became tranquil and very still, similar to how I feel to be after a session of meditation.

I returned downstairs and rejoined the scene with a new optimism: a sense that I would return to be the switched-on and ambitious young man I once was. I did not need the primitive and undeserved contentedness of opiates to swallow me. I consumed, parting from any coherent thoughts, around 300-400mg of ketamine in one line, and immediately after a hit from a gravity bong. Time slowed, the room slowed, I slowed and so bid my farewell from consciousness. I moved through a white tunnel, surrounded by the dark cosmos, seeing geometric flashes, faces of old friends and twirls. The music on occasion would engage me; I thought of it as a foreign entity which I observed before it moved away again, blurred by white noise and white light.

After what seemed like hours, I returned to consciousness to see that my friend had disappeared into his bed. I lay on the couch, pensive and grateful to be alive, until reflective thoughts brought me gently to sleep.

Exp Year: 2013	ExpID: 98958
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 20
Published: Apr 14, 2018	Views: 3,186
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Ketamine (31) : Retrospective / Summary (11), Addiction & Habituation (10), General (1), Small Group (2-9) (17)