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Damn. This has me wonder: had you ever done a psychedelic prior to this?

I had ketamine during wakeful surgery.

Loved it. Grateful it was available.

But I had prev. experience w/ psychedelics & had learned/practiced how to: let go, place attention on what's positive & cease to have expectations.

I imagine there's also got to be a difference between getting it for a planned surgery that you can prepare for, vs having it thrust on you suddenly during a traumatic and painful experience. Kind of hard to let go in that situation.

An arrest sound like one of the worst set and settings to get dosed with ketamine. The person being arrested might not know what they were injected with. The person might not trust the police. The person is being detained against their will.

And several doses of morphine usually have at least some effect on the body/mind

Some people are immune, or almost immune: https://partner.sciencenorway.no/forskningno-norway-ntnu/gen...

As other people have said, preparation is a big part of enjoying it. Any hallucinogens without knowing what to expect would be scary.

Regarding place attention on the positive: Check out Sam Harris interview with Francoise Bourzat. She goes into depth about so called negative trips and feels they are just as important and useful as positive ones. I'm not sure I can summarize why, but she suggested that even negative experiences can be mindfully approached and handled well.

Are you experienced with drugs? Because most of my friends think ketamine is one the greatest drugs you can do. It would have probably a lot more fun if you were in a comfortable place, like your house, hanging out with your gf or something.

Some of the most chill and relaxed moments of my entire life have been on ketamine. I only do it occasionally because of the nasty chronic side-effects, though.

Do your friends generally take drugs involuntarily and without informed awareness of the effects and without a trusted trip sitter the first time they do something new and with associated negative circumstances (like a broken bone or an arrest)?

That's GP's point I think: the context of the experience makes all the difference.

Ah, the comment was edited after I replied, oops. Yes.

(Though I don't believe whether it's enjoyable in the right setting has much to do with whether cops should be using it. I get that this is a defense of ketamine as a recreational drug, but e.g. alcohol would probably be un-fun if the first time you experienced it was at a high dose during either surgery or an arrest, and that one's widely accepted as a reasonable recreational drug.)

Nope, not experienced and don't plan to be. I totally believe it could be a nice experience in a different setting, but I doubt that experiencing it in the hospital or mid-arrest would ever be enjoyable.

Accidentally doing too much ketamine and badly k-holing (by snorting) is one of the worst experiences of my life. Maybe the worst. It was exactly as you described, it's like you're being cut off from reality and have no way back. It's like being plunged into the bottom of the ocean, darkness, everything real is distant, you try to move but you can't - it's like someone has unplugged all your sensory organs and limbs.

And it comes in waves -- just when you think you're coming out of it, it pulls you back down.

I swore off ketamine for life after that and don't plan on ever touching it again. I would take a bad comedown from stimulants over that. I would take the feeling of hopelessness, anhedonia, and thorough depression from a bad MDMA comedown any day. To be fair, both things only happen if you do too much, it's avoidable, and it was entirely my fault for not weighing the dose.

And I still think therapeutic ketamine for depression should be studied and trialled and legal. But still, K-holing was an absolutely horrifying experience and I don't recommend it to anyone for any reason.

And it probably was only not even worse because I was also on MDMA.

It can be absolutely wonderful if you're properly prepared though, just lying in your bed with a dim pink light on listening to Carbon Based Lifeforms or something, enjoying escaping your body for a while and floating around in an undefinable sea of warm nothingness.

However, it absolutely sounds like it could be hell if you're not prepared though - especially in police custody, but even just fighting against it in a party situation where you want to exist and be social could be problematic.

> My perception of time went out the window and it felt like I was in an empty void for an eternity when it was only a few minutes.

This was my exact experience with disossiatives as well. I think they can be effectively and safely used, but there's a real danger there. Disossiatives like ketamine and DXM are incredibly powerful.

After my experience in that same eternal void I struggled with a fear that what I'd experienced was the natural state of consciousness, and what would happen to me for eternity after I died. I didn't actually believe it, but the fear was still there and talk. Took a few months for it to wear off.

I had almost exactly the same response the first time I took ketamine. This is despite being experienced with psychedelics (all extremely positive lifechanging experiences), and despite that I was safe at home, knowing what I was taking. The only problem was that I was in a bad state of mind.

It is truly disturbing to imagine going through that during an arrest, with no idea what is happening

I've dislocated my shoulder four times this year. The last three I've asked them to stop knocking me out w/ketamine for the reasons you describe, and just put it back while I scream; which I find quite preferable.

As a youth I did all the drugs and hallucinogens there are and most of them are _nothing_ compared to an anesthetic dose of ketamine. It's the most disassociate experience I've ever had. It feels like you're grasping at your consciousness but can't quite get hold. The hallucinations are incomprehensible. I was told my screaming was heard in the waiting room.

Welcome to the K-Hole.

Yes this is commmonly known as a K-Hole. It's worse than a bad trip from what I've heard.

Ketamine is a party drug especially common among young gay people here in Brazil. It's usually briefly inhaled so I'm guessing very low doses. The 500mg mentioned in the article sounds terrible.

"Yes this is commmonly known as a K-Hole. It's worse than a bad trip from what I've heard."

No, it doesn't have to be bad at all if it's not used in a bad setting and most people enjoy the effects. It wouldn't be a common drug otherwise. See https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/d3dxzq/we-asked-people-ab...

Ah, I stand corrected! Thanks for the info.

Sounds terrible. In a recent surgery in pre op they gave me Versed/Midazolam. I was so spacey it was weird and kinda scary. I can’t imagine what ketamine would be like

Versed is pretty wild, even at preinduction doses. You can learn to be OK with it, but it was a little scary for me too, the first time I had a procedure that involved it.

That procedure also most likely involved ketamine - I don't know for sure, it was a long time ago and nobody told me the names of anything but the Versed and that only because I asked, but I had totally uncharacteristic recurring nightmares and emotional problems for the next little while afterward. When all of that came back up during planning for the surgery I had to have last year, my surgeon noted that that sounded in his experience like ketamine side effects, and that this time I'd be getting propofol, which is not at all a dissociative, instead. And, sure enough, I was just fine after that surgery, despite it being much more invasive and thus painful in its aftereffects.

Based on that, I'll echo what others here have already said: the thought of being given a surprise high dose of ketamine, in the context of a situation that also involves the use of violence against one's person, is horrifying, and complex PTSD is the least severe consequence I can imagine.

SWIM is a tremendous fan of injected ketamine

> Think of the hypnosis scene from "Get Out"

this is EXACTLY right.

> an empty void for an eternity when it was only a few minutes.

if you maintained the ability to interpret audio and visual inputs, then probably 20-30 minutes, if SWIM had to guess.

> the thought that police use it to pacify someone during an arrest is sickening.

this is EXACTLY right.

reminds me of the psychonaught/rapist sex therapist guy who was mega-dosing women with MDMA or 2CB before forcing himself on them.

Yep, I think the empty void feeling was only a few minutes and after that ended it took like 20-30 minutes to be able to open my eyes and regain motor control.

FYI, SWIM means Somebody Who Isn't Me, which is often used on psychedelic enthusiast forums.