More Ketamine Info – Addiction

Here is some exerpts and clippings I’ve dug up on Ketamine addiction and its causes (I’ve italicized the most relevant sections)…

From The Ketamine Conundrum by James Kent

If you have any lack of personal restraint when it comes to substance use, and you have fairly easy Ketamine access, then Ketamine is a big no-no. Tolerance builds up only very slowly, sometimes taking weeks. There is an extremely high potential for abuse. It can be a very “escapist” drug.

I recently had a full bottle of pharmaceutical Ketamine – about 15-20 injections worth. At my worst, I shot about once a week for 4 or 5 weeks. Sometimes when I got angry or depressed, I felt like I just “had to” shoot to work out whatever it was that was troubling me. Because Ketamine is so process oriented, it ALWAYS worked. This is both comforting a frightening at the same time.

I managed to stretch the bottle out for about 9 months. When I tell this to anyone who is familiar with the substance, they usually drop their jaw. Many people can go through a bottle in under a week – easily! The trip only lasts 45 to 75 minutes, and that’s one of the main reasons I enjoy it – in and out quick with no cryptic baggage. As I said before, it is all business. However, I’ve seen people take three, four, five shots in one night – booster after booster – just trying to get higher and higher and higher, sure that there was another “breakthrough” right around the next K wave. This is, in my opinion, bad news. If you have any lack of personal restraint when it comes to substance use, and you have fairly easy Ketamine access, then Ketamine is a big no-no. Tolerance builds up only very slowly, sometimes taking weeks. There is an extremely high potential for abuse. It can be a very “escapist” drug.

I recently had a full bottle of pharmaceutical Ketamine – about 15-20 injections worth. At my worst, I shot about once a week for 4 or 5 weeks. Sometimes when I got angry or depressed, I felt like I just “had to” shoot to work out whatever it was that was troubling me. Because Ketamine is so process oriented, it ALWAYS worked. This is both comforting a frightening at the same time.

I managed to stretch the bottle out for about 9 months. When I tell this to anyone who is familiar with the substance, they usually drop their jaw. Many people can go through a bottle in under a week – easily! The trip only lasts 45 to 75 minutes, and that’s one of the main reasons I enjoy it – in and out quick with no cryptic baggage. As I said before, it is all business. However, I’ve seen people take three, four, five shots in one night – booster after booster – just trying to get higher and higher and higher, sure that there was another “breakthrough” right around the next K wave. This is, in my opinion, bad news.

From Erowid

Effects

Unpracticed trippers may be overpowered by the awesome revelations of Ketamine and may be somewhat overwhelmed, although in general fear seems to be unable to compound here (unlike LSD trip and other drug paranoias) and will probably be only episodic. Food should not be consumed within an hour and one-half before the trip, and should be avoided for longer periods of time if possible. Nausea is likely and more pronounced if you try to get up and move around within the first 90minutes after injection. A peculiar sort of loneliness can occur over the line, so it is a good idea to stay in close quarters with people you are close with, and best to have a sober monitor or experienced Ketter at hand.

Habituation & Addiction

Also.. be careful with this stuff.. if you have a steady supply or a large pile of it, many many people have a habituation problem.. one Ketamine user friend recommends that you set yourself limits *before* you ever try it so you can have a benchmark against which you can judge your usage. Write down the limits.. What do you think a reasonable maximum usage would be? once per month? once per week? twice per day? Check in with your pre-K usage limits and (if possible) have someone close to you that you can confide in about your use so they can act as an external sanity check.

I know several people who have started out using K and have fallen into patterns of use much higher than they expected.. John Lilly is a good example of someone who ended up using A LOT, but there are many others. Using once per day or more may also cause long term “damage” to your brain. One person I know was using once to twice per day for six months and now (1.5 years later) feels that he has done permanent damage to himself.. he gets flashes and streaks in his vision :\ Mostly the dangers are more subtle – a type of psychic dependence on K, paranoia, ego centricism, etc.

Also, be aware that many people who use K see a new perspective on the world which seems to be quite ego-centric and conspiratorial. K can increase one’s sense of connection between events, synchronicities, etc. This, when interpreted in certain common ways, can lead one to believe that events are working out in ways which focus on the self (“if that happened that way, and this happened this way, both of these things must be about me”) and then, further, that people and events are working in some heretofore unseen concert which may be either sinister or just novel. Pay special attention to these kinds of thought patterns and ask the question: “what is most likely true” instead of “what can be true.”

Be careful with this stuff.


One thought on “More Ketamine Info – Addiction

  • I think that the part in the Erowid clipping where they recommend setting limits for yourself before starting to even use K, so you can easily benchmark your usage, would be an especially good thing to add to the new Ketamine info.

    Rob

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