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Face to Face With My Soul
Ketamine
Citation:   Alanster Monster. "Face to Face With My Soul: An Experience with Ketamine (exp9278)". Erowid.org. Jul 14, 2002. erowid.org/exp/9278

 
DOSE:
    Ketamine
BODY WEIGHT: 150 lb
After reading various experience reports with ketamine it seems to me that many people are completely unaware of what it is exactly that they are dealing with. As was I, before my first experience with this increadibly powerful drug. This is not a report on a single experience, rather my complete experience with ketamine from begining to end.

I first learned of ketamine after reading a paper on how a 'near death experience' could be reached via ketamine. This was about five years ago in highschool. Fascinated, I continued research on this and eventually came to the conclusion that I wanted to try this. My first problem would be actually obtaining ketamine in pure form, I wasn't about to go looking for some crap off the street. Luckily enough, I discovered it was sold in veterinary clinics in Mexico over the counter, and I happen to live in a city right on the US/Mexican border. Lucky me. So I was off to Mexico, a trip I make often, in search of veterinarians. After trying a few different clinics, which all offered it at varying prices, ($60 at one place, ouch) I settled on a place that charged $30 for a 10cc vial. So I bought one with no problem and went straight home.

Now, I feel the need to stress that what I did was very, VERY stupid. I had no idea what I was doing or how to prepare for this and I recommend that anyone thinking of doing this DO YOUR RESEARCH!! And if at all possible, have a person experienced with ketamine around AND a sitter. Ketamine is not something to mess around with. Anyway, when I got home I continued to gently boil my ketamine until I got a nice white crystalized powder. Easier than I thought, although I advise on using a pot with a non-stick surface, it helps. Scraped it up and put it in a baggie and that was that. I gathered up three willing friends and we went to an isolated area of the city where we each proceeded to snort about 200 mg each. I had previous experience with cocaine so this didn't seem like much at all...BIG MISTAKE!!

We were all sitting in my car and about 1.5 to 2 minutes later it hit, hard. It took about 2 minutes to completely take over and all hell broke loose. I started trying to talk to my sweater which looked like a face and then the car started moving, or at least I thought it was. Don't get me wrong, this wasn't confusion or anything, for all my mind and body knew, this car was moving and I had to keep it from crashing. Needless to say this was a tramatic experience for everyone, there was not much there in content however. I had never felt anything like that before, nor thought it was even possible.

Well NONE of my friends ever wanted to do that again and I was unsure I wanted to either. But nevertheless I went back and got another vial from the same vet about 2 weeks later. This time, I decided that I would stay home for this experience and lay in my bed, which turned out to be much better. Being stubborn I repeated the same dosage and snorted it in much smaller multiple lines this time, it burns pretty bad if you take big lines. I had the lights off with just a strong candle burning and Pink Floyd playing slightly in the background.

This time was COMPLETELY different. I got the first of what would be my typical experience. As I layed back in my bed, I focused on allowing whatever happens to take its course and not try to fight it. When it first comes on, about 1-2 minutes after snorting, it's like your mind starts tuning into a different frequency than normal. First I hear sounds that I don't think are imagened but not normally picked up by our ears, kind of like the static on the radio with a quick rattling sound. Then I start getting 'sucked in' to this new world which exhists simultaneously with this world, but on another plane. While on ketamine, I would completely forget who I was, or rather that I even existed. It was a complete seperation from my body and I only existed as the mind, without a physical body. Reality as I knew it seemed like just a faded dream or memory, and all aspects of that reality were completely absurd to me. The idea of driving a car didn't make sense, or money, or family, and many other everyday things. Not only are these things going on in my head, but I can see everything I think with such realism that it becomes my new reality.

I continued using ketamine to a seriously dangerous level, at least three times a week and even several times in one day, for a period of about six to seven months. I don't believe that ketamine is physically addictive, but I STRONGLY believe that it is psycologically addictive...for some. I began to have trouble making sense of my reality as I knew it. Strong feelings of confusion about how things are what they are and why they are persisted day after day. Not only was I questioning my reality but I was questioning my own existance. The reality created by ketamine was so real that it made me doubt my other reality. I continually returned to ketamine in the search for answers.

Now my tolerance was growing very strongly throughout this time until I was taking about 500 mg every time. The last time I did it, was the single most difficult experience I have ever endured. I was at the peak of my confussion of realities and one night I did a very small dose for me at the time of 200 mg. I had more but was saving that for the next day, I wasn't even supposed to do it this time but I couldn't waite. As I suspected, it wasn't enough to get me to the k-hole(I'm skeptical whether many people who claim to have been there actually have, I think the term 'k-hole' is used too loosely), but it was enough to get me really disoriented and upset.

It was in this state that I decided that this wasn't the reality I wanted to exist in, I wanted to exist in the ketamine reality, which I thought was the true reality. So I went into my stash and pulled out all my ketamine, 1000 mg. I thought that if I took all of it, I would stay in my other reality forever, and that's what I wanted. I knew I wouldn't be able to snort all of it so I mixed half with a cup of orange juice and proceeded to snort the other 500 mg. I somehow made it to my bed and what happened next was beyond imagination.

I went deeper into the k-hole than I had ever been. This time I actually got what had initially attracted me to the drug, I died. Maybe this wouldn't be considered a 'near' death experience, rather a 'death' experience because as far as my mind was concerned, I was dead. I saw my mom crying over my body as I was lifted up over it, then suddenly I was pulled down at an incredible speed for what seemed like an eternity, literally. I ended up in what I at first though to be Hell. I was being pulled at my feet laying down by this demon-like creature floating through strange caverns that had no floor or no ceiling, just eternity, towards what I though was the devil. All around me were others being pulled just like me.

I was scared, but not scared at the same time. When I got to where I was going, I was confronted by an entity, not the devil, I didn't know who it was. I looked into this mass of light and energy and I realized that it was me. I was looking at my soul, nothing told me, I just knew. I stood in awe and a million realizations came to me at once too fast to process, but the one realization that was completely clear to me was that I wasn't in a different reality at all, I was inside myself. Not my physical self, but in my subconscious mind, yet I was conscious at the same time. A little after that I slipped back into reality and it took me about 30 minutes to look at the clock and be able to read the time. It was 3:35 am, I started at 11:00 pm, and took the large dose at about 11:30 so I estimated I was gone for about 3.5 hours, MUCH longer than I had ever been out(usually it was about 30-45 minutes).

That was the last time I took ketamine. It's been almost four years now. I feel that I learned what I had to about myself and no longer saw a need to return. The moral of the story? Ketamine cannot be taken with the intention of just getting 'fucked up', or the whole content or meaning behind the experience will be lost. The ketamine experience is best left to those wishing to see themselves and the world from a completely different perspective. It is not for the weak minded. There was much that I learned and I feel that it has positively influenced my life and the way I look at everything. Be CAREFULL, it can change the way you look at the entire concept of existance, be sure you are ready for that.

Exp Year: 2001ExpID: 9278
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jul 14, 2002Views: 56,485
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Ketamine (31) : Difficult Experiences (5), Addiction & Habituation (10), Glowing Experiences (4), Retrospective / Summary (11), Various (28)

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