DOSE:
smoked
DET
(freebase)
150 mg
oral
MDMA
(powder / crystals)
insufflated
Ketamine
(powder / crystals)
3 hits
smoked
5-MeO-DMT
(powder / crystals)
3 lines
insufflated
Ketamine
(powder / crystals)
BODY WEIGHT:
175 lb
I was with a rather rowdy group of friends, all of them very close, in a wonderful loft space that afforded lots of opportunities for finding nooks and crannies in which to hang out. I was pleased to be there for many reasons, not the least of which was that it's rare for me to find a group so intrepid; it seems like these days, the most intrepid individuals I know are too busy with other things to really push any boundaries - or rather, the way my appetite works is that I am always ready for some intrepid adventurism, whereas other people seem to have to schedule it far in advance.
But this crowd was good to go, and we warmed up by hanging out in the living room, chatting amiably for a while as everyone arrived. My friend A had a pipe which contained the remnants of some DET, a substance I'd never tried before. There wasn't enough inside for a threshold dose, but we figured we'd do whatever was left, just in case. In TIHKAL, one of the reports mentions that at 40mg smoked, the effects were 'euphoric and empathogenic, and there was an immediate camaraderie with the group I was with.' Well, at first I could swear I wasn't able to feel a damn thing, and I shrugged it off, assuming that there wasn't enough substance in the pipe. But over the next half hour, I noticed I was remarkably good about myself and about hanging out with these freaks. I didn't immediately attribute it to the drug, of course, but soon I started to wonder - was I feeling that good because I managed to get a bit of the drug, or was I just feeling good because I was in a great environment? A noticed the same sort of extremely subtle phase change, and I giggled a bit - the notion that something so subtle would even show up on my radar cracked me up, since it usually takes something marginally more exciting before I even notice it.
We proceeded to the MDMA experience as a group, each of us taking what we felt was a standard dose - in my case, 150mg. So much has been written about MDMA that I feel vividly reluctant to add additional text to the pile, but as long as we're here, I may as well point that I have a distinct cynicism about MDMA as I see many people use it. I'm rather protective of my relationship to MDMA; the last thing I want is to take it for granted such that it eventually stops working, as happens to some. The sense of warmth and openness that accompanies MDMA is undeniably valuable, but it seems that over time, the 'insights' gained have a tendency to feel false if they are not fortified by additional contact once the MDMA is over. For that matter, there are also those individuals who forget entirely what they discussed on MDMA, and that fact alone is enough to warrant my caution.
At any rate... the MDMA experience that night was absolutely lovely, but mostly unremarkable if you do not happen to be one of us who were there. We boosted a few hours in with a smaller amount of MDMA, and continued enjoying ourselves. At some point, ketamine became available. I was not at the time particularly experienced with ketamine; I had only a couple serious experiences under my belt, both of them with ketamine administered intramuscularly. The one time I had tried insufflating ketamine had been problematic in a physical sense; I became so nauseated that I was convinced I would never try it again. However, as anyone who knows me will attest, I will try virtually anything once, and I will usually try it twice just to be sure. So - I approached the ketamine that night with interest, especially considering the fact that I was in the presence of a top notch squadron of ketamine engineers, who had a vast amount of experience behind them.
As the effects of the MDMA began to taper, small 'bumps' of ketamine were provided, which we insufflated at our leisure over the course of a couple hours. I did perhaps three during that time. These bumps were essentially small lines, eyeballed amounts rather than measured amounts, which we took to enhance the MDMA. Instead of heading straight into the so-called 'k hole,' the idea is to get just enough that a synergy takes place between the ketamine and the MDMA, allowing one to extend the MDMA. It was a nice, nice feeling, especially nice as one rarely enjoys seeing MDMA come to an end, and yet continually adding MDMA is a very non-productive tactic after a point. The ketamine provides a certain 'mushy' quality as well, due to its anaesthetic properties, thus dulling the edge on the amphetamine-like side effects that the MDMA produces.
After a point, it was clear that the empathogenic portion of the evening was drawing to a close, and a few of us decided to progress to 5-meo-DMT. We took turns smoking it in the living room. When it was my turn, I took three solid hits before managing to tell my partner, 'Get that thing away from me!' He took the pipe, and I sank back into the couch, into what can only be called a mindblowing experience. I happen to love 5-meo-DMT with a distinct passion, and the empathogenic residue from earlier in the evening was clearly present in this 5-meo-DMT experience. Whereas occasionally I find 5-meo-DMT to be almost terrifying, this was a fantastic and lovely experience. I was swimming in sensation, connected with some kind of universal energy source that defies description. My body seemed transformed into this energy, and it was with great amazement that, as the drug first began to wear off, I realized I still even had a body.
The first sign for me, usually, that 5-meo-DMT is wearing off is a great sense of relief, expressed in laughter. I laughed loudly as I started to come out of the flash, only to be greeted by one of my friends, who had been sober all evening. He picked that moment to begin making a completely absurd series of faces and noises, which had the effect of causing me to laugh hysterically for quite some time. The general 'I can't believe I survived that!' hilarity that often accompanies the end of a 5-meo-DMT experience for me was completely exacerbated by my friend's antics.
I had been the last to smoke the 5-meo-DMT, and as I was coming down, I realized that a couple of my friends were now ready to progress to a large dose of ketamine. Indeed, a small back room had already been prepared with three individual CD players with headphones, one for each of us. The other two had already come down from their 5-meo-DMT, but I was still experiencing some effects as I chose music to lay down. There were three large lines of ketamine ready, again unmeasured, eyeballed by the experts. I insufflated two of them, leaving the third for a boost which would happen perhaps a half hour in. Another one of our friends stayed in the room with us without taking ketamine, in order to watch over us and ensure nothing problematic occurred.
That ketamine experience - on the tail end of a 5-meo-DMT trip that had itself been preceded by MDMA - was one of the most intensely bizarre experiences of my life. To this day, it is still the case that no other drug fucks with my frequency the way ketamine does, and that experience was my first full introduction to it.
The chronology of the 'events' which transpired within that experience are lost to me, but I can recount some of the general sensations. As the experience took hold of me, it became slowly apparent to me that this was no ordinary drug trip; I had the distinct feeling that reality itself was transforming in very real ways around me. I was taken to strange chambers of reality, communicated with any number of strange individuals who lived in these chambers. I had the clear realization that this transformation was affecting everyone around me; I could converse with any of my friends, all throughout reality, because this was affecting them too, this cascading river of transformation. I realized that from this point on, my life as I knew it before had no literal meaning; I was now inherently a part of this new reality, where the power of thought could manipulate the environment directly instead of via tools or words.
At some point, the ground control figure sat next to me and held my hand; it was clear to her that I was anxious, and I think at the beginning of the experience, I was actually quite terrified. It was unclear to me that I was going to survive what was happening. At one point, she walked me to the bathroom, and it was a treacherous journey. The dissociative effects of the drug made it nearly impossible to control or understand my body, which simply added to the overall sense that I was now part of some alien realm.
It took forever to come down from that. The other, more experienced ketamine voyagers came down well before me and trundled off to bed, leaving me alone for some time to sort out my thoughts. I felt marginally disturbed by what I perceived to be the level of sheer delusion that I had experienced; as each alien event popped like a soap bubble, more of my old reality creeped back in, to my clear relief. To this day, I wonder about the 'utility' of the ketamine experience; I wonder how valuable it is to visit a state like that and bring virtually nothing back except the realization that on some level, reality is mutable to some extent depending upon how your brain is interacting with it.
The next day, I felt spacey and slightly 'off' for most of the day. One of my friends suggested that the potency of my ketamine experience could definitely be attributed, at least in part, to synergy with the 5-meo-DMT.
I'm not precisely sure what draws people to the ketamine experience on a regular basis; for me, it is too strong to feel drawn to except very occasionally, as is 5-meo-DMT for that matter. But that night was a remarkable night, and I'm sure if given the opportunity and the right set and setting, I'd repeat the experiment.
Exp Year: 1999ExpID: 1832 Gender: Male Age at time of experience: Not Given Published: Jun 14, 2000Views: Not Supported [ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
DET (16), MDMA (3), 5-MeO-DMT (58), Ketamine (31) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Difficult Experiences (5), Combinations (3) -->