3rd round, 2nd day experience
I’ve been on and off K, this is my 3rd time of being on it again. I had an interesting experience this time.
I’ve done ketamine before, a bunch really, with two different providers. They give different advice and instruction, so it’s hard to tell what’s best. Usually, I try to find the happy medium when taking it. I don’t want to ever see my walls flowing like liquid again and I don’t want to be trapped in geometry. If you’ve tripped before, you know what I’m talking about. At least with ketamine, everything can start to sound like industrial equipment working away. A quiet ceiling fan will start to sound overwhelmingly loud, like I’m sitting on the other side of a wall that has a gas generator running or something. Or maybe a huge water pump, without the water sounds.
This go around I started with a conservative dose of 100mg. Nothing unexpected happened, but it didn’t seem to help much. A few days later anxiety overtook me and I went crazy. The ketamine helped me realize what I am depressed about. I mean, I knew, but it brought a level of clarity to the issues that are causing me pain. Maybe it’s a bit backwards, but I thought it’s for the better. Honing in on my problems was the opposite of what I have been doing. I’ve been trying to escape or dilute them, pushing them as far back in my brain as possible really. It’s a helpful approach when coping with something short term, but my issues are ongoing. So did ketamine hurt at first? Kind of. But I’m confident it will help in the long run.
My second dose was 150 mg, 50% more. My doctor wants to get me to 300, which I don’t know if I can handle, but I moved towards that goal regardless. This time I felt it was working better. I was in a good place and was writing my friend about it when it became overwhelming. I tried calling, but he didn’t pick up. So I asked AI who I can call and it really only gave me 988, which… usually isn’t too helpful. They want to make sure you’re not about to kill yourself, mostly. So I didn’t call.
I started to freak out a bit. I didn’t want to k-hole again. I usually try to stop it by staying alert and present, but it’s hard, very hard. I did just voluntarily take a larger dose of horse tranquilizer after all. I remembered that the doctor said they have YouTube videos that can guide me, so I looked. I couldn’t find anything useful, so I put on one from their integration specialist about the stages of the journey. It wasn’t very helpful. So I put on another that is a guided meditation about building gratitude. It started as a grounding exercise, and admittedly, I didn’t follow the instructions very well.
The video encouraged me to relax nonetheless. The instructive voice told me to close my eyes, which I was desperate to avoid, but my doctor also gave me this advice. So I did and I started to relax. I could tell my breathing was much more calm and productive.
Then I leaned into it.
I pulled my covers over my head and just watched what my brain was projecting on to the back of my eyelids. If you do this when you’re falling asleep you will see blobs and shapes and things moving around in a very liquid-type fashion. I saw purple. They weren’t just blobs, but I could make out details. I saw animals and buildings. I saw small cities being built and destroyed. It was a bit choppy, like a video with a very low frame rate — far less lofty than when not on ketamine. There were other colors too, some green some red, but they were infrequent.
I can’t say the images carried any significance to my somewhat conscious mind, but I noticed a few things. One was that I could see out of my eyes with all of their imperfections. The lines, the squiggles, the imperfections or texture was visible to me. And in a way, it mapped to the universe. Not literally, it wasn’t a recreation of it, but it was a universe nonetheless. The purple images I saw would often lead me to the universe again. A few animations would play and I’d find myself looking at stars from the middle of space, essentially. I’m not all that into space, so it probably would have been cooler for someone else who is.
I continued to embrace it and just observe, while trying to take note of what was going on and any patterns. Surprisingly, it was calming. I thought about some of my problems and they felt meaningless to a degree. It wasn’t like they washed away and I felt a wave of relief, it was very gentile. I’d notice the light that was let in from my blanket interfered with the experience to a degree, so I shifted and adjusted a few times. I wanted darkness, so I could see.
During all of this I felt I had an exit plan for my situation, which was completely valid, but it faded away as time went on. I felt a very basic psychological need for shelter, but it disappeared. I no longer felt like I needed to seek shelter, despite my attempts to burry myself under my covers. The covers were superficial, the bigger desire or desperation to seek shelter had vanished.
Eventually, the visual effects started to wear off, even though I was still high. I tried to find the purple images again, but there wasn’t much to be seen. I checked if I was ready to resume life, but I was still too disoriented, so I waited. There was no boredom or rush; I was just waiting and being present.
That brings me to my last observation. As I stopped trying to fight it and started to embrace it, I couldn’t help to think I was practicing mindfulness — the same thing apps like Headspace and Calm teach you to do. And when I was waiting, just being present as it wore off, it felt very similar as well. You can still be present when hiding on covers to block out all light it seems. So maybe mindfulness is what I need to start practicing again.
I think I’m a surviver and fighter at heart, so it makes it difficult for me to let myself go. I do not like losing control, at all. Somehow I was able to let go today though. The relaxation helped me experience ketamine totally differently than I ever have and with it I didn’t have to experience the k-hole type side effects, somehow.