I found my first keatmine very recently. I was searching for it because after a car accident, I ended up with post concussion syndrome. Being someone who has struggled with severe mono-polar depression for most of my life, the effects of the concussion were devastating in the months and years that followed. My neurologist calls me a textbook case. After two plus years, my depression had sunk to new and frightening lows. New features were also added. Most frightening was the seeming loss of executive control. I started feeling like the depression was poisonous. I could feel it as a physical presence, more than ever before. The thoughts of suicide progressed to plans for the first time in my life. And it felt like I would have no say, if my brain decided it was time for me to kill my self.

I looked into ketamine clinics, but they were beyond my financial reach. I had stopped taking psilocybin, which had previously kept my depression and anxiety in check. I was just to depressed to bear it. Microdosing made it worse.
Luckily, ketamine appeared at just the right time. It flipped a switch, and I no longer want to kill myself. BUT.... I wanted to explore the ketamine. So I did. It was amazing and wonderful. 100mg IM, in bed. I told myself I would just do it a few times and put it away. but it ended up being every few days or every other day.


This is what I said to myself today:
"I'm just going to try this ketamine one more time, before I give it to my wife to put away, with instructions to only give it to me when I'm severely depressed. It truly works to turn me away from being suicidal. But it's also seductive and I probably shouldn't have easy access to it. This exploration is interesting, especially when I add DMT after the peak.
I may have messed up the injection yesterday.
Or maybe I've already developed a tolerance.
I've gone through almost two grams since I got my hands on it for the first time a month and a half ago.
Let me try a higher dose today. Maybe that's it.
It must be tolerance."

I walk upstairs toward the bed. I see my wife. "Here. Keep this for me. Only give it to me when I become obviously, severely depressed again and I'm talking about suicide."
"Are you sure?" She asks. " I thought you were in exploration mode."
" I was, but this molecule is not safe for me to use as an exploratory tool. Also: It makes vaporizing DMT way too easy."

I prepare. I inject into my thigh.

Desolation, darkness and confusion, in a TV static eternity follow. An absolute certainty that each moment is discrete, but can be unravelled and rearranged into any form. Each form would constitute an equally valid universe. No matter how seemingly meaningless and chaotic, or regimented and obviously profound it seemed to any sentient being.

We are cut off in this universe, trapped and there is no escape from this solid state/fluid dynamic system. Consciousness in an endless parade of rearrangements, that cascade endlessly into frozen eternities. It continues after we die. Branching off in all possible and impossible directions. Joy and it's most wretched opposite, rub against each other in a bristling, itchy, friction dance that radiates nothing, because they aren't miscible with each other after all, and are actually fluids. They slip and slide along side each other, but can never meet. Therefore each state is equally meaningless.

Everything is in here. Nothing is in here. Everything is too clean and too filthy. I am alive, I am being constantly reborn, and fast forwarding through entire lifetimes, with slight variations each time. Until I am every possible person, in all times. In all places. I feel ever moment of every life. I become every possible life form. Including the ones that people insist are inanimate objects.

I am woman, I am rodent, I am man, I am brick. I am an arrangement of bricks that form a solitary confinement cell. I am a vile murderer, rotting in that cell. Thrilling to masturbatory fantasies of ultimate violence and debauchery. I see them as beautiful. I see them as god. And they are, because all of this is real. Knives shine and slide into blood and flesh. I feel those wounds as I inflict them on my victims, because I am those victims. I am the unfound corpses and victims families. I am the other inmates, the guards and the warden. I am dust, as I decay into rain soaked ground.

Simultaneously, I am a proud mother in a sparkling utopia where no one wants for anything. Sunlight gleams off of perfect architecture in measured amounts that never burn skin or cause the slightest discomfort. Marbles fall onto shining floors and the sound is the most beautiful music possible.
My baby suckles at my perfect breast and snuggles in perfect contentment, not yet indoctrinated with the constructs of language that corrupt even the finest utopia.

A friend leans into this scene, from my original universe. I see him, with his beautiful wife, smiling at his side. I see them through a fisheye lens, through the aperture of an open human mouth. they are standing in a finely appointed parlor, with high ceilings and oppressively dark fine antique furniture. There is foul cigar smoke in the air, and sounds reach my ears after reflecting off of fine persian rugs, which partially absorb the sound. They are comfy sounds.

I am a tooth. yellow and brown in an infected gum.

My friend speaks.

"We are glad you could finally visit us. It's been too long. What's going on here?" A dental took swings into view and grows exponentially as it crosses into the full thickness of the fisheye lens. Then it shoots forward. It is a pick. It is pliers. It taps on my surface and it's like a dull gong, struggling to resonate, under a blanket of softening enamel. My friend leans forward and I see a human nostril, in stereo, bristling with brittle greying hairs, amplified in his glasses.

Am I connected to that human?

I'm just a fucking tooth!

The tapping stops and the pick turns to pliers. It's jaws open and grasp my molar torso. I feel pain as my legs, bathing in the gums, snap. They are left behind in the diseased gums and I emerge from the mouth. My friend's wife giggles. I'm suddenly me. In a chair. I feel the leather squeaking beneath me as I turn in my seat to see....

My bedroom ceiling.

And I'm calm.

And I'm human.

And I'm coming down.

And I'm done with ketamine for quite awhile.

Definitely.

Ketamine is only a utility for me. It cannot be used as an exploratory tool, unless heavily regulated. While I think it's a valid substance for spiritual and transpersonal growth, especially with DMT after the peak, it's too seductive for me. I have a history of addiction. I've killed my urge for opiates using psychedelics and I don't want to become a slave again.

Sorry to hear about your concussion, but this is poetry man.

You write beautifully Mister_Niles!

Please keep that up!

May you find Peace.

Thanks, Mister_Niles, for a thoroughly enjoyable read!

(And you've made the right decision of self-discipline.)

Post-concussive depression is news to me. It really adds to the perspective.

Be well

This was fucking brilliant! May you please elaborate as to why the trip seemed to revolve around dentistry, of being a tooth, yellow and brown in an infected gum?

Please Please Please write more and more and more.

Thanks for enjoying my writing everyone. I really appreciate you reading it.

Godsmacker: The tooth thing comes from a bad feedback loop that started early in my childhood. I think. I'm still unpacking and uncovering stuff. I was adopted. I was told I was adopted at eleven. By thirteen, my adoptive mother had started down the path of child abuse with great facility. She was a talented cook, but her natural born talent for mental torture overwhelmed all of her other talents. I remember a few phrases, verbatim, from almost forty years ago. In the order of their occurrence.

"I sure liked you a lot more before you started developing your own personality."
Age twelve. I had started to question social norms. I wanted to spend time with friends who had interesting ideas. They didn't wear the right clothes, listened to rock music and probably didn't go to church. My fascination with science fiction, horror and occult books disturbed her.

" You aren't turning out like we expected you would."
This was also at age twelve. I had started to show deep interest for rock/punk/experimental music and working with electronics. These two pursuits, which were some of my first outings into true autonomy did not please her.

" I wish we'd never adopted you. If you really loved me, you would be what I want you to be."
This was right at thirteen. A delicate and vulnerable age.

Then came a bicycle accident. I flipped over a curb and chipped my two front teeth, in a major way. I walked my damaged bike home, crying and bleeding. Spitting out pieces of sand, blacktop and tooth fragments. I remember the walk. I remember the light of the fading day. I remember the weather. It was one of those summer days that ended with a preview of autumn, and I was shivering from shock, cold and lack of a coat. I remember walking toward the door and accelerating, knowing that I would be received with sympathy and love. I would be cared for and reassured.

I had forgotten the change.

Instead of a supportive parent, I was greeted by a rage filled woman who was immediately consumed by thoughts of the money that would have to be spent on dentistry and how my imperfections would be perceived if the teeth weren't fixed. She spoke these thoughts aloud. She yelled them into my face. She was revealing herself as a monster, fully, for the first time. I was horrified. I was guilty. I was ashamed. I was also in trouble. I was punished for falling victim to gravity, inertia and, just possibly, deceleration trauma. I was actually grounded.
The punishment continued for years.

She developed an obsession with my appearance. Thousands of 1970s dollars were spent, pulling teeth as a precursor for orthodontia. I remember hearing the dentist say: "These extractions aren't necessary." She said: "Pull the teeth anyway. If I'm spending money on braces, I want him to have perfect teeth."

Neglect of my dental hygiene probably got it's start here. The orthodondist's office was an hour away, and chosen because her friend's daughters went to the same doctor. I loved those girls dearly, but rarely saw them. I was denied visits with them on these outings. No stopping at exotic stores that we didn't have in out area. These trips were strictly for torture as far as I could see. I remember this:
Her: "You can tighten them a lot more than you usually would. We live far away."
Doctor: "I can, but he will be in severe pain."
Her: "He can take an aspirin."
Doctor: "That won't touch the pain. I can prescribe..."
Her: "I'm not going to let you turn my son into a drug addict. I don't want him to end up like his mother."

He didn't have to turn me into a drug addict. She as on the case. I was already predisposed, based on the fact that I was conceived in a body, thoroughly bathed in heroin. My first experience in this world was opiate withdrawal.
Addiction and the attending poverty further degraded my dental health, which became a central point in my depression and anxiety, which helped me down the road to dental demise. Every dental issue piled onto my depression and anxiety. It was a cycle that was difficult to escape.

Luckily I ended up with a wife who had great dental insurance. Sobriety and steady dental care helped me along, but nothing lasts forever. I relapsed because of an injury, and my wife lost her insurance. My mouth started to fall apart again. It's condition and other factors drove me to the point of suicide, for real. I thought I knew what depression was all about. I had no idea. that's where ketamine came in.

I am a lot better now, but still struggling. trying to repair my mouth is a lot like making beds in a burning house. What I really need is to win the lottery so I can travel abroad as a dental tourist and get full implants done. We'll see what happens.

I have a thirteen year old child and a wonderful wife who want me around. I have friends. I know the proper use of psychedelics. I may survive until I'm taken naturally. I sure hope so.

Thanks for your interest and thanks for reading this. I do tend to go on and on. I will post a report about MDMA + DMT soon which will probably be more interesting than this minor accounting of childhood trauma. I have a few reports in the works. I'm glad they are enjoyable.