The 3 Stages of a Ketamine Trip - Part 1

Can KET be put into words? Let's find out.

The thing is, making any sense of ketamine is illusive enough in the moment. Attempting to put the experience into words in the clear, understood light of day seems a colossal waste of time. There just might not be a deserving combination of words to put it into. 

With that in mind, let’s begin. 

A key to success

A large part of the fun of a lil’ K is the strange sense of adventure it brings to the ordinary. The world you recently knew takes on a dim, grainy glow, where everything is exactly as confusing as it is pleasant. Those who rank among the ketted can explore their family home as if for the very first time. 

The beauty of Ketamine is that it gives you a whole new perspective on things - like corridors, sconces, and skirting boards. A K-filter applies a curious funhouse geometry to every anything. 

With depth perception on the Fritz, every incoming sight can expand and contract on its own terms. Wobblers can be found peering around doorways at unexpected angles - both hands gripped on the frame to steady their astonishment.

All under the influence enter the same shared universe where they’re all in on the same inside joke. A fluency for each other’s nonsense travels between ketty minds almost telekinetically. Even the most bizarre of premises are transmitted, picked up and run with. Everyone draws from the same bottomless well of gibberish that, horse tranquilisers aside, we all lose access to with age.

Yes, a little line brings a group of people together as a single bundle of silly sausages. When, in truth, there’s little more sombre than a sausage. That’s the kind of silliness that might balloon out of a ketty consciousness, which would have otherwise gone unthought.

For whatever reason, snorting up shards of ket superactivates the brain’s language centre. Words lifetimes outside of your vocabulary find their way to the surface. Sentences take a mouthpiece on unusual twists and turns. Accents flow off the tongue with a native lilt. 

Meanwhile, the ket gives a strange thickness to the atmosphere of your mates’ most lenient mum’s living room. Another heavy-handed probe confirms the air, and its many particles, are now detectable to the human touch. Each step is now a trudge through stodgy porridge. What’s more, each limb expects separate instruction. Lurching about the gaffe, every jerky movement feels like the final throes of a wind-up toy.

A party of indoor alpinists sets up base camp at the foot of the staircase - but turn back, thinking better of summiting in today’s condition.

Circling the drain backwards

Right, let me get my bearings while the getting’s good. 

For better or worse, an inability to stand has never stood between a sedentary K-head and a single line. It is, however, a true testament to the indomitable nature of the human spirit that anyone with quite so little motor function can still rack up drugs. 

A few more rotations of an empty Back to the Future II case and things are getting odder still. Nice that Blu-ray has found renewed purpose later in life though. 

Every word now has the echoes of an alien tongue. On the independent moon-state of Kezzatron, it is customary to propel out the local dialect with overblown expressions. 

At the shifting border between some and enough K, all the wonder and confusion melts away to bewilderment and perplexity. Only, as the language centre has packed up shop, words like ‘bewilderment’ and ‘perplexity’ are no longer on hand to describe it.

Despite losing all command of their body, some might cling on to an unnatural command of the English language. For a little while, at least. Body trapped, mind free - like some generational wit holding court from the confines of a full body cast.  

Are youuu still with us, maaaaaate?

Pah! Dear boy, you never judge a racehorse while its grazing in the paddockkkkkks. Anyone forrrr another trot betwixt the stables?
 

As the indistinct possibility of a K hole opens up before you, any remaining meaning drifts in and out of the situation. The wobbled start to lose a grip on the threads of nonsense that had, apparently, been keeping this whole thing - the conversation, mind, universe - together.

Hang on, where were we?

But with all the gravity of: 

Who are we? 

You’re not only forgetting what you're saying, but forgetting what you're being. 

But all is not necessarily lost. Whoever drew the short line might still be able to reach back and grasp at a recent strand of, what would be unfair to the art to call, conversation.  

Bobbbb… Zemeckis? Wasn’t it? Didn’t you… Zemeckis. Bob Zemeckis. Right? 

Yeahhh, yeah, yeah, yeah! Bob Zemeckis. Back to the future - now that’s a film.

Yeahhhh, Bob Zemeckis!

Bob Zemeckis! Bob Zemeckis! Bob Zemeckis!

A shared awareness of the father of modern special effects, Hollywood’s own Robert Lee Zemeckis, has moored everyone to reality for the time being.

Few, that seems to have earned us another spin counterclockwise ‘round the K hole. But, it’s there, alright, lurking in the periphery of all things.

Right, time for a line, then…..