DOSE:
180 mg
insufflated
Ketamine
(powder / crystals)
BODY WEIGHT:
82 kg
My previous knowledge regarding the effects of ketamine came from reading about John C. Lilly�s experiences and speculations, and from the trip reports. My intention was to experience the K-hole and see whether I would experience something similar to an out-of-body-experience and immersion into strange other realities. As this was my first time with the substance, I made some preparations. I meditated the previous evening to be as serene as possible, as I find that regular meditation helps me with that. Prior to taking it, I had let three hours pass since the last meal, I listened to some tracks from the Timothy Leary�s Dead album, which usually puts me in a �transcendental� mood, I took a relaxing bath and did a couple of relaxation breathing techniques. I was in an apartment with T and her dog, A, where I felt secure and at ease.
After I insufflated the ketamine, approximately 180 mg, I lay down on the blanket and pillow prepared on the floor. I felt an urge to continue talking with T, probably due to the rush of excitement and anxiety in anticipation of the effects. They began between five and ten minutes later. The first sign was that my perception had changed slightly, nothing that one could put a finger on, but my conscious awareness of myself and my surroundings had undergone a subtle shift. The second sign was an increasing numbness and tiredness in my body. I was lying on my back and T suggested it might be better to lie on the side. I did so, rolled over on my side and put my arm beneath the pillow, and my body already felt heavy, like immediately prior to falling asleep after a very exhausting day. I nevertheless decided to lie on my back. I felt numbness spreading outward from the burning chemical taste of ketamine in the back of my mouth and from my nose. It was spreading rapidly across the entire body. I felt as if my body was becoming soft, sinking like a jelly-filled bag to the floor. My hands began to tingle, a sensation like an electric current running through them, and they also felt cold, like they were made of ice. Sounds had become distant, stretched out in time, thundering, like a shockwave or tidal wave that washed over me. As I later learned, most of the sounds were T turning the pages of a magazine and pulling the magazine off the table into her lap. For a time I could still see the room if I opened my eyes, the white ceiling slightly distorted, as if seen through clear glass. I had taken my glasses off, so my sight was already a bit misty.
I heard a roaring, deep ringing in my head, and soon a cacophony of sounds and sensation ensued, overwhelming me. I no longer knew whether my eyes were open or closed. I felt my body changing, and feelings, sounds, visuals and other sensations were now inextricably intertwined into whole, unified �packets�. I had the feeling of floating, still tied to the remains of my heavy body, but floating nonetheless. I rocked and moved, at times as if on a liquid, undulating surface, at other times rising upwards, like a helium-filled flat container. I was aware of breathing deeply, and each breath changed my body, my unified packets of perception. I felt like a giant bulbous flower blossom, inflating and deflating with each breath, like a giant dome of a mouth, opening, extending, closing.
Then, almost completely detached from my body, I entered the other spaces. Most were like infinite corridors. One was like a sunk-in path in the woods with flowing water at the bottom (similar to a path I had walked on in the woods a day ago) and I floated along it (upward), transformed into a gas-filled flat balloon-creature. I started speaking words from the Timothy Leary�s Dead album, something like �soft crystal patterns�, �now I die before I wake in silent void�, and each word provoked new sensations, new spaces, new transformations. At times I felt my changed, stretched-out body more acutely again, felt as if it was pulled and pushed, stretched and compressed. At one time I felt as if my limbs, my arms must break, but remembering that I must relax, breathe, flow, let go, it passed. There were a couple of instances when I felt as if things will turn bad, unpleasant, but each time the feeling quickly faded with breath and relaxation. I also had companions, John C. Lilly, smiling benevolently and looking extremely thin and tall, stretched out along the vertical, sometimes almost to infinity. And there was also Timothy Leary, floating cross-legged, just like on the poster for Timothy Leary�s Dead, looking into the distance, eager, anticipating the awesomeness. He was in a space or dimension that was golden, filled with dark golden radiance. I repeated their names, word for word. I could often taste, feel the words that I spoke during this part of the experience. I knew that with Leary and Lilly accompanying me everything would be all right, nothing could go wrong or bad. They reappeared often, as I called them, they reassured me, embraced me, took me to new places and spaces.
Then I entered an orange-brown-black space occupied by a giant inflated kiwi-bird with ruffled, long tassel-like feathers and a long curved slim black beak, and the beak curved off into infinity. The space was like a corridor, with undulating grasses at the top and bottom, and the kiwi somehow inside it, but the sides were open and the corridor stretched off into infinity and I moved toward the kiwi and it felt beautiful, amazing, with loud buzzing, ringing sounds accompanying the journey. In another space was a white ball that lifted off the ground and left a white color trail behind it, and that image changed, and shifted and transformed. I remember calling T�s name a couple of times. And I remember smiling after I said the words, because the sensations they evoked were beautiful and everything was right just the way it was, and incredible. I repeated the words �endless vistasssss�, the stretched out sss felt really good and provoked new images, actual spaces with endless vistas. I remember the dog, A, forming as a unified concept/image/sound when I heard and recognized his movements, and the same happened when I recognized T making some familiar sounds.
At one time a drill sounded somewhere in the building and it was again magnified and stretched out in time, and incorporated into the experience. Later I felt as if my hands had started to liquefy and flow in two long narrow streams off into infinity and I remember thinking I must let go with my entire body and follow. I felt my arms, my entire body vibrating strongly, as if a strong electric current ran through it, and I remembered to breathe and relax and go with it, as it was quite intense to endure. I again felt as if my changed body was moved left and right, again undulating as if on a rough sea. At one time it felt as if I was immersed in a liquid, in a gelatinous sea, looking upwards towards the surface and the liquid was speckled with dots of light, with brilliant stars, and I moved, floated upwards through it and it felt beautiful and I repeated the word �beautiful�. I remember seeing Philip K. Dick�s doorway in the wall (which he describes in one of his experiences) at one time and saying how he saw it but couldn�t/didn�t go through it, and I peered through it and it felt beautiful and right. I remember trying to fly and couldn�t, I pictured the wing on a bee, thought what�s it like to be a bee, and I could not fly because I had no wings, but could float, because I was a flat balloon creature. T went to have a cigarette at the window close to where I was lying (she told me that later) and I could sense the smoke as large, fluffy snow settling down, I also though I said �nicotine�. All the experiences in other realms had the feel of endless space and infinite time duration. I often felt the presence of someone/something with me, and I asked �Who are you?� a couple of times. The presence felt neutral, even benign at times. There were also many sensations of softness, warmth, as if I was immersed in a warm sea or liquid, and of furriness and featheriness. At one time I said �infinite chain of remembrance� and it provoked new feelings of tunnels and floating and flowing movement. I often had images and sensations of floating to the ceiling, to the top of strange spaces, always floating up. All the visuals were strongly entwined with feelings/sensations, so the visual description I can recall is just one part of those unified packets, and is much impoverished without the other components, incomplete.
As I started to return to reality, it was like returning in layers and I started to talk, trying to convey some snippets of the experience to T, though I drifted back into some kind of waking dream space at least three times, repeating the words from the album again. It felt as if my full conscious everyday awareness was returning in parts, in layers. First the mind, in distinct pieces, as if various parts of the brain were only now resuming their normal waking operation, then the body solidifying back out of the jelly-filled bag stretched out on the floor, taking shape again, then returning sensation in the limbs, which still felt giant, incredibly long, at one time I felt like a bee with kilometer-long limbs. When feeling and control of the limbs returned, they felt very relaxed as I moved and stretched them, just like after a relaxation session. My entire body felt quite relaxed, except for a bit of soreness in my behind. For another hour I had to be careful when standing and moving, as I felt uncoordinated, jerky, lurching.
T later said she couldn�t understand which language the words I was saying were in, and that they were very softly spoken, hard to understand. Later she could make out most of the English words I said, and she told me I breathed really deeply and loudly. She made a list of the words, they were almost all from the Timothy Leary�s Dead album. Though the experience had lasted less than an hour, subjectively it felt as if an eternity had gone by, thousands of years, but it was not unpleasant or stretched out so as to be dull, or so that I had wished it would end. Throughout I had strong sensations of the infinite and of eternity. A couple of times I had felt that things had changed completely, beyond my control, my body transformed, my perception of the world completely altered, the entire state of my being become something else entirely, and such a state of being was a little scary for some short moments. It was a full blown out-of-body-experience for much of the time, and it had actually felt like the mind had left the body behind and went somewhere else, into entirely different dimensions, then returning to the transformed body at times, only to leave again.
I think that my expectations had played a large role in shaping the experience. Listening to the Timothy Leary�s Dead album, which usually provokes strong emotions in me, also formed an integral part, as did my walk down that path in the forest while it was raining. I later realized that part of the kiwi-space might have been inspired by a black and brown ornamental pattern on the blanket I was lying on. I also found it interesting that I had spoken various words from the album, which in turn took me to new spaces and sensations, because I was not doing it intentionally.
Although it was very intense at times, the experience is something that I still treasure. In my mind, I had been in those strange and beautiful spaces, and have left my body to roam through other realities. I had even experienced profound changes in the perception of time and space. Afterwards, I felt elated for a couple of days, having experienced such otherworldly wonders, and I still feel like that when remembering now.
Exp Year: 2010ExpID: 90988 Gender: Male Age at time of experience: 32 Published: Nov 26, 2011Views: Not Supported [ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
Ketamine (31) : Alone (16), Personal Preparation (45), Music Discussion (22), First Times (2), General (1) -->