The Ketamine Diaries

29 January 2021

Ketamine was discovered in 1956 and was used as an anesthetic during the war in Viet Nam. It’s been used to relieve refractory pain in hospital patients, and more recently, for chronic pain. It’s also been used to treat suicidal thoughts, and in the past few years, has begun to be used to relieve treatment-resistant depression.

That’s where I come in. I’ve been depressed, on and off, since I was a pre-teen. When I began to read about ketamine in August of 2020, I was encouraged by the idea that it might break my persistent depression, which had become worse over the past few years. I read that it was believed to shake up the brain’s negative patterns and allow you to reform new patterns—to reset.

I took my first infusion November 4, 2020, and my final one December 4, eight infusions over five weeks. Since then, I’ve been integrating the experience and considering whether it was helpful (Yes) and how helpful it was (I’m not suicidal but I’m not feeling more engaged with the world). I may take troches going forward, if they seem to help, or I may take an infusion every couple of months. I was reluctant, hoping that the initial series would do what I needed, but now I think, if a little maintenance would help, why not?

For now, I want to provide a first person account for anyone else taking ketamine. I planned to post all my journal entries here, but on looking over them, I realize the personal stuff is pretty boring. Instead, I’ll post excerpts that provide the most insight into the process. I’ll post my Guide to Ketamine separately for those who like to worry about all the little things.

If you want to ask me questions, post them here or email me at mikah257@gmail.com.

My Spirituality is Chemical

19 October 2020

As a nano-shaman (that’s a shamanic practitioner who’s been studying for over ten years, but doesn’t have a community), I know that plants—and mountains, trees, fire, ice, maybe even metals and other naturally occurring substances—are purported to have a spirit. The literature is vague and various: perhaps there is just one spirit for each substance, or maybe each tree had its own spirit, or there is only one spirit and we are meeting it where we are. In other words, I am part of the universal spirit, and when I talk to a tree, this is just one aspect of the Great All having a chat with another.

I am a fan of the latter concept, but it doesn’t have any explanatory power and it doesn’t make communication in spiritual reality any easier. It’s much easier to give each spirit its own identity.

That’s where plant spirits fit in, such as ayahuasca, mushrooms and marijuana. People say you can communicate with plant spirits on some level, and that they help you by seeking out what in you needs healing and supplying the experience that would most benefit you. I’ve heard psilocybin users say that the mushrooms are communicating with them, even before they are consumed, telling them how to grow or prepare them. Plant medicine people say that you should prepare for a trip by making yourself ready for the plant spirit, showing that you are worthy and making yourself open to the experience.

There has been some talk that dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a chemical component of some plants, is a ‘spirit molecule’ that helps us connect—or manufacture—god. DMT is found in one of the two plants that go into ayahuasca, and is perhaps produced in the pineal gland in the brain.

As far as I can tell, though, no one has suggested that ketamine, a substance that has been used for fifty years as an anesthetic, twenty years as a treatment for chronic pain, and the last ten for depression, has a soul.

Is it too artificial to have a spirit? Or is the experience less mystical?

Right now, I have no first hand knowledge of taking ketamine to inform my opinion. What I noticed, though, is that every time I research ketamine for my depression, I find the close muffling of long-term depression lifts for a few hours.

I could put it down to the placebo effect, but I know that I am not taking anything. I could say that it is because, A) I am feeling hope, or B) There is nothing wrong with me, I’m just a lazy bitch.

I throw out the lazy bitch label, leaving me with these two possibilities: Hope makes me feel better, or ketamine has a spirit, and it is telling me that it will be able to help me out of the decades of depression that have kept me from getting anywhere near fulfilling my potential.

I don’t know. I’d like to think ketamine has a spirit, and it is counseling me to try it. I want to think there is a path out of this dark tunnel of negative thoughts and enduring hopelessness. I want to believe that I can become the person I vaguely remember from the past who gets excited about new projects and has the drive to complete them.

Numbing Agent

3 November 2020

…what I worry most about is that this will not help at all. Or that it will damage me in some way. Or that it will help, but then stop helping. Or that it will help, but I will just go back to my old way of thinking because I’m so old I can’t change–or worst of all, it won’t help, but I’ll think it’s because I’m not trying hard enough.

Ev said (eruditely) that the reason no one is saying how exactly Ketamine helped them with their depression is that people do not have language for subtle internal states. I think they are right—but it is interesting that people have found words for the state of depression. Why haven’t we found language to describe being relieved of depression?

Ketamine Ocean

4 November 2020

They didn’t have music ready, so I decided to listen to my Binaural Beats playlist. That was awesome. The ketamine blended with the bell tones, ocean waves, bird calls, and isochronic tones to produce a feeling that the sound was part of the ketamine experience. (David reminds me that the playlist is isochronic not binaural.)

According to the nurse, I wasn’t very deep, (I didn’t see pretty colors or have an out of body experience), but it felt perfectly fit for what I wanted.

For most of the time, I had my eyes open, and I was very aware of whether I was interacting with David and with the nurses. I mostly watched the ceiling, with its concentric squares and lights, and the lights from car reflections moving across. I folded the sound of waves from the music into the squares, finally coming up with the words, ‘ketamine ocean,’ which was the only way I knew how to communicate the synesthesia I was experiencing.

As I become more embedded in the trip, I held an image of myself resting inside ketamine, in a space that’s much more expansive than consensus reality. David and I talked about it being like a bag of holding or a portable hole. I had the feeling that inside this place, I was safe and that there was room for me. I felt the place was always there, like another layer of reality, but I can only access it when I am under the influence of ketamine or shamanic journey.

I felt myself get very large, though kind of cube shaped, like I was swollen to the size of a house. This is just an image of myself, and a sensation related to how I could perceive the mask and the chair, but even though I could feel sensation very well, I wasn’t uncomfortable. I had an image of myself behind the mask, almost as if I was crouching inside my body looking out. I was hiding my huge bulk inside the ketamine pocket universe, and I knew I did not want to come out.

I felt determined to get as much from the experience as I could, and I really wanted to remember everything I did, said, and thought to write about later. I felt sure I would lose my memory of it, but in fact I seem to remember fairly well. The waves of the ketamine ocean went on for a long time, with me just floating along, but that wasn’t bad. The squares on the ceiling looked a bit like they were covered in very clear water, with the distortions that brings.

I thought that the only thing that might reasonably convey the changes in my mind on the trip was poetry, though I have no idea if I will write any.

When my blood pressure went up and the CRNA and David buzzed around me, I noticed and heard them about how high it was. I told them it wasn’t bothering me, though I was aware that that isn’t the only issue. 215/105? maybe. It just seemed irrelevant.

When David took his call, I closed my eyes. I noticed that it deepened the trip, but I also realized that looking at the room, having David talk to me, acted as a container for my experience that might be reassuring, especially under the anxious circumstances.

I just kept returning to how the binaural beats music was extraordinarily helpful. I thought maybe the ketamine was making the sounds rather than the music. Until I took off my headset, I still felt embedded in the trip.

Grown to my true size, I don’t want to stuff myself back into reality. In this dimension, even though I retain the restricted shape of the box I was in, I am able to attain my true dimensions.

My mind seemed completely normal. As if I am watching the scenery from within my human vehicle.

I just realized that the pocket dimension is inside me. The ketamine gives me a door to it. Maybe I’m naturally supposed to access this place, but I’ve cut myself off from it.

Binaural beats are supposed to be able to simulate ketamine. Wouldn’t that be awesome!

Trippingly

8 November 2020

Dreams are more numerous, but have lots of day residue. Maybe some lucidity? Less pain in my shoulder, better sleep. No more creative or energetic. No happier. … Perhaps better sense of will to do. But no interest in writing, no intellectual wake up.

The treatment on Friday used more ketamine, which is supposed to draw you deeper, and I certainly have less memory. I thought about consciousness and afterlife theories, and basically just watched my brain on ketamine. I could feel myself going through phases of the dose.

I think I was in a dissociative state, which I need to tell them. Maybe I need some dose between .5 and .75. I want to remember the experience.

It may be the same each time. Going through the same door. I did feel I was inside a dimension where it’s more expansive than the outer world. I think that place is me. Would my internal life always be the same? It’s an awesome feeling, but maybe it will be repetitive. I hoped for it to be more profound the second time, but it felt good, but less meaningful without the memory.

Rediscovery

9 November 2020

My mind is open, able to take in new information easily right now. I watched a new show, and realized that it made an impression—too much of an impression. I could remember every scene, every ugly minute of it, in sharp color. I only realized that after I read a series of blog posts by a woman who wrote about her ketamine experience—her experience colored my own, made me feel as if I was not depressed enough to be helped by this, or that I am not doing it right in some way, that my experience is inferior. To be clear, she did not say anything that made me feel that way, just that I felt that way.

One thing she said was helpful to me and added to the notion that I am very vulnerable to suggestion right now—I need to be very careful what I do with my brain while I am being exposed to ketamine. She implied that it’s important to think in the way that you want to go on.

I think that no one has told me this: on ketamine, you don’t want to engage your brain in things that reinforce negative patterns or introduce new negative concepts. You want to use the openness and reset that ketamine offers to think about new ideas or revisit what you love with a new perspective. It’s like my brain is a glacier, and ketamine is the spring thaw. I can change the landscape now, but if I let anyone throw trash around, it will refreeze and I will not be able to clear it from the landscape.

It might be better if someone taking ketamine did a retreat for the month or so, carefully selecting what they are exposed to.

Instinctively, I didn’t expose myself to opinions or ideas that would upset me before I started the ketamine. But after I took it, I felt better, so I thought I could expand my playlist a little.

That’s not a good idea.

Should I talk to a therapist at some point in this process? Or should I let my own intuition guide me in what to do? Right now, I’m tempted to trust my intuition. A new therapist might seriously warp my integration, in the same way as the wrong reading materials or the wrong shows.

I Wanna Be Sedated

10 November 2020

Tomorrow is ketamine dose #3. I so much want this to help me with my depression, and a part of me thinks it’s helping….

I hope that my experience tomorrow will be more like the first time, where I could remember my trip and I felt that I had interesting insights. I need to tell the CRNA that I may have been too deep last time.

Mental Vacation

11 November 2020

Today I feel anxious, with very little hope for the future or for the ketamine treatment. I worry that I will react badly today, or that it will do nothing for me. Last time, I had some mental experience but I don’t remember it well enough to feel it was useful. Today could be the same, or even less meaningful. Is it just a door, the same door each time? Am I doing something wrong, or was I not sufficiently depressed to warrant this treatment?

Is the way I feel the way it is normal to feel at my age, and therefore I will be flat, down, and uninspired forever? This is why I decided to try ketamine in the first place. If I had to feel this way for the rest of my life, being down myself and not inspiring others to feel happier and more hopeful, it is not worth continuing. I know why ***** killed himself. I wouldn’t do that, because it’s so devastating to others, but I know why. If this is the way I will feel, then I would be happy to slip out unnoticed any time.

I am taking a hot bath before we leave for the clinic, to help with my blood pressure, so I better get on that.

At least I’ll have an hour’s mental vacation today.

And I think it gives me a couple of days of relief from the joylessness of my not-depression.

Oh, I think reading some chapters of books on healing the brain and a new book by David Burns insisting that people who don’t get better using cognitive therapy are (obviously) resistant because they don’t want to let go of the good things that depression/anxiety/addition expresses about them made me feel worse. David Burns’s original book was a life saver. His insistence that all mental difficulties can be solved by controlling your thoughts is a little overboard.

CBT is like field medicine. It helps, it can save your life, but it doesn’t touch the underlying problems. After you get out of the immediate difficulty, you need to take off the field dressing and do some real mental and emotional healing. I think that’s why I’m still so depressed at this age. If I’d done my work early on, I would be healthier now.

*****

The treatment was amazing today. I can sit on two sides of the fence about this: on the one hand, I can be all cerebral and notice how it affects me and why, on the other, I can gush about the way being inside ketamine makes me feel. Are these the two sides of my personality, INTP and INFP? Or is ketamine a particular kind of drug for the brain that allows me to stay in an intellectual point of view?

I don’t believe I am making contact with god, or with other spirits, or with ancestors. Instead, it feels like I’m exploring the underlying reality, the sinew of the body of consciousness. (But I did think I might be on the verge of understanding something about god or the tao, or reality—but I forgot that part until today, Nov 12.)

I don’t get a sense of the numinous… I wonder if a different drug, an entheogen, would give me that? Did I choose ketamine on purpose to give me a specific type of mental/physical experience that allows me a glimpse into the fabric of the universe? Is this dark matter? (I’m only kidding a little.)

I don’t know whether I believe that the ketamine experience is a reflection of how consciousness works, but it feels unequivocally true when I am in the experience. Not that I don’t question, I do, but I also just accept that what seems true, is: I am separated from everything that connects me to the physical world (not completely, because I can still feel my body if I try), but to all practical purposes; and while separated, I experience a reality that feels more real and more meaningful than life as I know it in consensus reality. I don’t remember much that I sensed, but I remember some of my thoughts, and how I judged the place. I feel outside of reality, or really, I believe I am inside reality.

On a practical basis, I imagine that this place is actually inside me, inside my thoughts if not my actual brain, but I get the impression that my consciousness is unlimited and unending, mostly in the sense that time is irrelevant here. I also get the feeling that the physical world is just an epiphenomenon of reality.

I thought about how I could be dying in CR, and it wouldn’t matter. I would be in KR (ketamine reality) sloshing about with all the other parts of myself. I didn’t feel myself to be alone, but also not with others. I just kept realizing that where I was, the laws of CR didn’t apply. There were clearly many more dimensions than just 3, 4, or 5. Could be 11 or 16, or more. From CR, I could not understand or recognize the others. It was just so obvious. In KR, I couldn’t understand what I saw or felt, but I wasn’t upset about it.

Sometimes I felt distress and wondered if I was coming out of it, or if bad things could happen in KR. I decided that they could, but that I would move on endlessly, so the bad experiences would soon be overtaken by the ever-flowing now.

I compared the visuals I saw to the Matrix, but it was more like endless bolts of plaid cloth, or nubby plastic. Colors were irrelevant, but when I was coming out of it, I noticed I was seeing a color, maybe two. Purple, I thought to myself, pleased. Purple. But it was more like a nubby purple and pink neon fabric. Reminds me of the texture of yoga mats.

Watching a kettle of birds on my way home, they were diving through an obscuring cloud, making them look like they were glitching in the matrix. Threw me for a loop. It was so beautiful and strange, very evocative of KR. Patterns flowing and developing.

Two things I did and said as I was coming out of the trip:

My hand is in reality, but I’m not yet. (I could see it in my mind’s eye, waving around out in CR, while I still stayed in KR.)
I’m landing in my body like I’m slipping on a glove.
Now I know why Daddy sounded the way he did when he was dying.

Differently than the first time, I didn’t feel like I was hiding in the ketamine. I was in a different dimension (though I never called it that), and I felt that I always am in that other dimension, and this CR is simply a costume I’m wearing. As if a giant, multi-limbed creature lifted up into a world-shaped puppet and began acting out a show.

Open, Open, Open

12 November 2020

Open, open, open… that’s what I said, ultimately. I keep remembering and then forgetting that I felt like I was trying to take the best, most evolved path within KR. I pursued a promising pattern, thinking that if I reacted to the experience in the purest, most spiritually adult way, I would be rewarded with an understanding of god, of reality. I knew I needed to always take the loving, thoughtful path, the path of freedom and unguardedness. I had to be courageous, to allow myself to open up to the possibilities.

I felt that I did that. I trusted the experience and always went in the direction that called me, without second-guessing my instincts. I abjured myself, “Open, open, open,” as I followed the pattern.

I don’t know why I feel so calm and thoughtful after the trip, but then later the next day, I feel so down and hopeless about the future and about myself.

I don’t feel more loving or happy than before. I don’t feel more like writing. I guess I read before I started that they were finding that ketamine did not improve anhedonia. But I think that is the most notable feature of depression. If it doesn’t solve that, what does it do?

Would it be helpful to talk to the counselor about my experience? Would she be able to draw out my experience so that I could make more meaning from it?

Tomorrow is ketamine dose #4. I have no strong feelings that this will go well or badly. Maybe the experience will be meaningful and memorable, or maybe it will seem flat and uninteresting. Maybe it will be different than any of the experiences I’ve had so far, but three times I’ve noticed patterns and flow, and thought about consciousness and understanding the underlying reality of the universe. It doesn’t seem like that will change, but what does that have to do with feeling well, not being depressed?

It is what I’m interested in, and I suppose if I knew that what I understood to be true was actually true, it might give me a better outlook on my life.

What is true of the underlying reality?

Consensus reality is not the only place I am, and it isn’t the most important aspect.
In the reality underlying this one, I am well and ever-changing. I don’t feel pain, I’m not worried, I don’t need anything else to be happy.
I have an undying curiosity to understand the underlying reality, and I feel like if I prove myself to be pure of heart, innocent and open, I will discover the nature of that reality. I will be rewarded.
I am safe in the other reality.
I am a lot bigger, HUGE. I have compressed myself into this tiny self in consensus reality, and that isn’t healthy for me. I need to remember how big I really am.
The inner reality is another dimension. It is much larger than consensus reality. There are more than four dimensions, maybe a dozen of them. In KR, I can vaguely perceive these dimensions, though I can’t quite make sense of them.
My job in consensus reality is as a catalyst.

I don’t want the underlying reality, All There Is, to be an everlasting flow of pattern in which I do not have or make any meaning. If that’s heaven, it seems awfully uninteresting. But was it? I felt wonderful while I was there.

Boss Me Around

15 November 2020

Dose #4 was bit of a bummer. I told the CRNA when he asked (not Hugh this time) that it felt like the drug was pushing me around, bossing me. My blood pressure shot up, and didn’t come down until I took the bp med he gave me at 8:30, after I got home. The bp drug made me feel like crap all day the next day and a little today. My bp is back to normal.

Next time, I don’t take the stupid bp med, and maybe I should back down to a lower dose. I did not like the way I felt.

I can’t remember the trip very well, but it felt like I was being rushed from room to room, and I was trying to listen to the advice I was hearing, the way I did before. Questions that I think I was asking were, Is this the real underlying reality? Can I be hurt inside this experience, frightened? I did feel frightened, mildly—I felt like the experience was bullying me, thrashing me into acknowledging the non-essential nature of consensus reality. If this place is what really is, and I am inside reality, then the consensus reality is simply an epiphenomenon.

But I’m not sure what I was really thinking about, the experience was gone from my mind too thoroughly. I just didn’t like it, and was willing to stop the treatments at that point. Who needs more of that? It made me feel out of control and hopeless about my life and the afterlife. My life is unimportant, the people I know are gone and there is no afterlife where I will meet them, as the underlying fabric of the universe is an endless now where only I exist, even if I am basically everything. Blegh. It was ok in KR, but not great, and pretty negative once I was out.

Better Things

16 November 2020

I want to write down the things I think are actually better since ketamine. I want this to work, I don’t want it to be a bust; just because I don’t have the experience other people have maybe doesn’t mean I am not getting something out of it.

Sleep. I haven’t stayed awake past 1:00 am. Before, twice a week I was staying awake, sometimes until dawn. (Nov 17. ok, last night I was awake til 3.) (read that deep sleep may protect against Alzheimer’s. Also talked to mike about how poor sleep might trigger depression and anxiety.)
Suicide. I’ve only thought that I should die a few times, not every morning.
Dreams. I often remember more than two dreams a night. Some of them are interesting.
Catalyst. I recognize my role is as a catalyst.
Work. I feel better about not working, and I also feel better about the idea of doing work that I like. This is a bit tenuous.
House. I would be willing to move, even to another state. (I worry about taking on more debt and living farther from the ocean.)
Earth. I feel less horrible about the destruction of the earth. I can’t help it, and we are, after all, very much like an asteroid or runaway greenhouse gases. The earth will shake us off and rebuild, which is sad, but inevitable.

Dreamers Awake

18 November 2020

Things I said while in ketamine reality:

Silly, Surface, Floating underneath the water, Pink and purple, I felt happy, Poetry

Thoughts coming out of ketamine reality:

Words are the communication from under reality, I realized I was here on purpose, I still felt like this was a representation of the underlying subterraneous fluid of reality, I would move from one experience to another over and over. I remembered my body, But mostly taste and pain and fear, But I felt ok. It seems like I’m being taught something about the nature of reality, There’s some tension between feeling authentic and feeling like a shallow, fluffy being. Things just feel like I’m part of the whole shaping and extruding myself into life. I don’t think of others I just feel like one expanding self. Poetry – open – best – love. I wanted to be the being that moved us toward the good. I didn’t have any idea that the experience would be helpful to others, but I really wanted to bring back some wisdom.

As I returned to consciousness, I saw myself under a water’s surface, floating just beneath. I knew by that that I was coming back from the trip. The image shifted, and I felt part of a crackled glaze, like peeling paint. Now I am the surface!

I was thinking today (in response to the idea that ketamine gets you to work on what you need to work on) that what ketamine is persistently working on with me is reality vs consensus reality, surface vs depth, ersatz vs authentic, silly vs serious.

This dose felt more like a game. I still wanted very much to remember the images and thoughts I had, but I knew I would have trouble. Yet, it seemed fun and playful, like I was being led toward some kind of understanding. I also thought I was supposed to follow the unfolding to the end, as if I was participating in the universe, and that my responsibility was to keep choosing the best, highest, most evolved path. I would try to come up with a word that would express that openness—best, playful, open, love. I would have my sense of humor or my sense of the ridiculous, or even my undermining sarcasm show up, making me say something funny or transgressive, but ultimately, I would get on with following the unfolding, responding the best way I could think of. Sometimes I thought I would find myself at the end of the universe, having completed the course of learning. I really sensed that this ketamine reality is the same at consensus reality, just seen from underneath. Even though at some point, I knew I was taking ketamine. I am sometimes surprised how I can remember the word ketamine even when I have forgotten everything else.

The title of this piece, Dreamers Awake, was the last phrase I thought of while I was coming out of the ketamine.

Useful Things the Therapist Said

18 November 2020

Set an intention for ketamine trip.
Psychedelic experiences work on the problems that you have (not a quote. I would say, “Ketamine works on what you bring to it.”

Useless Things the Therapist Said

You went from a 4 to a 7, ketamine is obviously helping you. (What, are you a ketamine dealer? It’s not like I don’t know how to count, or that one might randomly feel better over a several-week period, or feel better on the day that you’re getting an intervention. I think they are way too focused on ‘proving’ that ketamine works, and not focused enough on the actual experience. However, I like Hugh, and I think his bedside manner is making this experience a good one. He made me feel like things could go well today, and he doesn’t talk to me like I’m an emotional cripple.)
Mindfulness is an excellent tool. Have you heard of the mindfulness tool?
We need to get you where you can cope with hardship.

Meaning Machines

20 November 2020

It’s much harder to make meaning out of ketamine induced psychedelia. Dreams present images and tastes, so I can assemble that into a story.

I could question the insights I get in KR, or I can think of them as deep wisdom from my subconscious.

I can also think that the confusion comes out of the truth that I am both an individual among many and a part of the One. When I’m getting messages from myself, they are also from the One.

Ultimate Origami

24 November 2020

I’ve been letting the ketamine experience integrate, as we say in yoga. I’m beginning to think that it is making a difference. This time, I didn’t experience a dramatic downturn in mood the next day, and I’m beginning to consider some work and writing. My view of life is feeling longer, more future focused—which is an important aspect of my personality. If I’m not thinking about the future, I’m not ME.

…

I am not broken. I am refolded.

Maybe this time, my form will include wings.

Intermission

I felt bad a lot during the Thanksgiving break from taking ketamine, but I’m not posting my entries about it. It’s important to realize that after stopping ketamine, you might go through some ups and downs. After my last dose, I felt bad for a while again, but in a few weeks, I reached some equilibrium. I’m writing this after almost two months.

This is Awesome

3 December 2020

Yesterday’s ketamine trip was a friendly, cheerful event—still all about how the trip is putting me inside reality, and my goal is to be the best person I can (more repetition of ‘best’ and ‘love’ and such). I don’t remember what they were, and I remember thinking that I wouldn’t, but many of the things I saw were new and different according to my memory. I also never felt that my throat was closed up, or that I suddenly moved my head from one side to another without trying to. I always felt that before. I didn’t hear a lot of chit-chat, either in the room or in KR. There were more free-flowing images and fewer straight lines. The nurse asked me if I saw colors or disassociated from my body, and while I don’t think I see colors the way they talk about, I believe that I was fully disconnected from my body. I felt like a point in space, I thought about how the whole universe exists only from my own point of view.

But things were much lighter. I felt like I could just go along for the ride.

Wise Fruit

26 December 2020

Three weeks after my last dose, I’m integrating my experience. This entry is all about reality, so skip it if that’s not your thing.

—

I understood that it would be unimaginably difficult for a single being who was all and everything to imagine the experience of being more than one; of having some experiences which are hidden from itself, and some which are known; of hurting itself and being hurt by itself. To accomplish this, a being would need to divide, and yet remain inside itself, because it is still everything. It’s like if I declared my skin another person, and refused to acknowledge that my skin bleeds the blood my heart has pumped.

It was awe inspiring.

Skating Away

I realized I might at any moment come to the end of the journey, pop out of the wheel and into the light of knowing if I followed the correct path. This was some kind of sleigh ride that wouldn’t stop until I slid home.

At first I thought that the goal was to do the moral thing, to be good, to embody love. Later, I realized that evil might really be as much a part of the All as good, not because it’s a yin/yang, balance, or god vs devil thing, but because this is how the Totality made itself a Multiplicity. Split existence into light and dark, day and night, good and evil. At first, there’s just hydrogen, then there’s helium, and then We really get going, with stars and black holes, paramecium and panthers.

Continually Becoming

The Never Beginning is always the same but always evolving. Everything happens all at once and yet it has endless stories. There is no time (time is one of the Endless One’s smartest moves), it is only a construct. This is so hard for me to understand I simply must accept it.

Wise Fruit

The Tripartite Tractate talks about the child of the third generation from the beginning being a wise fruit; however, it continues by saying that this wise fruit tried to teach on its own, without the full wisdom of the First Tree.

This is me. This is anyone who attempts to describe or explain the nature of the universe, of reality. Even if I was smarter, wiser, more knowledgeable, even if I was a genius, I would be no more than a ‘wise fruit.’ I can never understand the whole immensity, and even should I understand it, I would be unable to pass on my knowledge. It is in the nature of the Totality that no part of it can comprehend or explain the whole. The ones who stood closer to the One did not attempt to explain, were content to see their part, but the third (and more) generations want to comprehend the whole. They were given wisdom, but they use it foolishly.

The No Trip Trip

31 December 2020

My first and so far only ketamine lozenge.

—

Took a ketamine lozenge 30 minutes ago. Except for a mild sense of gravity defiance, it gave me no sensation. Plus side, also didn’t raise my bp.

I’ve had more mind altering cough drops.

I wasn’t even able to journey. Does the journey happen on a completely different level? I think so.

My intention was, “Reconnect my power,” with an Image of my solar plexus chakra seating properly into my heart chakra. Also thought of opening the chakra gates. Wondered if that might explain my hypertension along with low pulse.

Now I just feel a little dizzy if I move my head too fast. Great, negative effects without the positive ones.

Lozenges made my tongue numb.

An hour in, I feel a little disconnected, like I’m drunk. Maybe the idea of taking these before bed isn’t so bad: it feels like I could sleep pretty easily.

Mini Trip

27 February 2021

One troche (lozenge) did nothing for me back in December, so I decided to try two troches, and it produced a tiny mini-trip. I had realized that my insomnia was connected to pain – the way I experience pain, which is just anger and discomfort. When I took ibuprofen, I could sleep for a few hours, but I had to keep taking it, and the effect got less and less. Plus, bad for my blood pressure, and acetaminophen has even less effect. I am considering either taking the troches every week or two, to see whether that helps, or to take an infusion every month or two. The cost would be $250 a month either way, which seems doable. This is more about pain and insomnia than depression, but I think the two are related. Good sleep would help with depression.

Taste the Ketamine Rainbow

29 March 2021

Intention: Connect my power.

I admit, I got a little too confident. I decided to take three troches instead of the two that had given me such a mild but pleasant mini-trip last month. I also, crucially, waited only three hours instead of four after eating, starting at 11:19 pm.

Oh, this did not go well. But I’ll just share what I got from it.

…

My lower chakras were operational when I was younger, and my heart was intermittently in relationship with them, but not with my upper chakras. I could desire, but it wasn’t a two-way connection with my heart, and my heart worked, but wasn’t in good communication with my throat, 3rd eye, or crown chakra. Intuiting this, the flow of energy was stymied at my heart. I had spiritual connection, I had physical desire and energy, but instead of the energy passing through my heart, it flowed into my heart from above and below, drowning the poor fellow.

So maybe the connection I need is to replace the check valve I made of my heart with a through-valve.

The reason for this as I see it is that I have spent my adult life denying my feelings, suppressing my emotional reactions and reasoning in favor of pretending to be a thinker. I am validly an INF/TP, I think that’s native to me, but instead of celebrating it, I use the introverted Thinking aspect to belittle and constrict the introverted Feeling side.

I don’t think others see me this way. My friends think I’m an emotional mess, but what I see myself doing is stepping back from my feelings to tell others what they are, like Wild Kingdom, only for my internal states. This is because I think my feelings are a specimen to be dissected or a problem to be fixed or eliminated.

I notice myself distancing my emotions, my feelings, still making them into the bad guy.

But I want to look back and see my relationships, my jobs, my desperate seeking after some kind of shelter from fear and loneliness as a success, as a beautiful part of who I am now. I don’t want to deny it, or distance it, or be ashamed of it.

Tripless

26 April 2021

Just to round out this series of diary entries–

I haven’t taken any more infusions or troches. I am still having problems with anhedonia and lack of energy, but I’m not deeply depressed. I may try ketamine again in the future, but right now I don’t feel I need to. I’ve been able to write some (just RPG stories, but they were fun), and I’m beginning to feel better about my novels. Not enough to get a book, website or cover done, but hey–better is better.