The Curious Life and Mind-Altering Death of Justin Clark
nymag.com
nymag.com
I think it’s extremely difficult to become physiologically addicted to most hallucinogens. They don’t induce the severe, profound physical addiction that things like meth or opiates bring.
But as someone who has, I dunno, perhaps dabbled…I can understand how the desire to find those alternate states of mental being, especially for someone who never really found their place in the world, could be very habit-forming.
“Months of testing went by before the New York City medical examiner determined recently that his heart gave out from a fatal combination of ketamine, oxycodone, and 3 HO-PCP, a bespoke hallucinogen.”
Though I think it would be a stretch to really blame the hallucinogens and the dissociatives here, versus the opiate. Forrest for the trees.
Forest for the trees.
You're absolutely spot on, I never had any physical cravings or withdrawal symptoms, as a typical addictive substance does. And when I couldn't get hold of any, or went away and couldn't use it, or something, I wasn't compelled to seek it out.
But at home, it crept into becaming an "every evening" thing, then a "morning" thing, and slowly into an "all day when I could get away with it" thing.
It's very, very easy to binge on ketamine. Especially in illicit powder form, administered nasally. It doesn't take a huge amount of it to render you practically senseless, and your mind is in a totally different "space" almost, a sort of limitless sense of possibility and openness, a secret, esoteric reality of your own making. At the right dose and frequency, it can fill you with a sense of awe and wonder so profound that it really does make life feel magical and wondrous, even while not on the drug.
And when you emerge from that, a couple of lines and you're back there. It's powerfully psychologically addictive for that reason.
Years later I was diagnosed with ADHD, and found out that this kind of substance abuse is quite common for undiagnosed adults. It's not just a quick dopamine fix, but a kind of coping mechanism against a world that you have to otherwise fight against constantly. Something like ketamine just removes that entirely, you can just exit the world for some time and float off into space, where no one can expect you to have ordered executive function.
The article mentions him scoring ADHD medications; I wonder if this had more to do with it than any other factor.
Habits are based on expectations. Hallucinogens seem to require that you lack some expectations, otherwise you might not get what you want at all.
They're NMDA antagonists primarily, the same primary mechanism as ketamine. They're dissociatives
Calling something a hallucinogen, while true a portion of the time, gives people who are unfamiliar the impression that it produces hallucinations most of the time, which it does not.
I would generally agree that calling it (or an analogue of it with a similar profile) a (bespoke) hallucinagen in an article isn't very accurate though. I was fascinated by the hallucinations that ketamine induced in me, and sought them out, but they were actually quite unreliable to attain and seemed to require a very specific dose range and set/setting.
From Wikipedia's definition: "A hallucinogen is a psychoactive agent that often or ordinarily causes hallucinations, perceptual anomalies, and other substantial subjective changes in thought, emotion, and consciousness that are not typically experienced to such degrees with other drug classifications."
The traditional dissociatives definitely would classify as changing your thoughts and consciousness.
This is extremely broad, in that case cigarettes are hallucinogens. Nicotine is a psychoactive substance, it absolutely alters though patterns and consciousness.
>often or ordinarily causes hallucinations, perceptual anomalies, and other substantial subjective changes in thought, emotion, and consciousness that are not typically experienced to such degrees with other drug classifications
I think you left out an important part of the stated definition, this also says "and" rather than "or". I think that "dissociative" is a more accurate classification the the compounds' primary effects seen at the majority of doses.
I mention in another comment in this thread why I think it is a poor classification, please refer to that message for my argument.
Dissociatives (e.g., ketamine, nitrous oxide, xenon, phencyclidine, dextromethorphan in cough syrup) are too addictive, too pleasurable, and reliably produce long-lasting delusional states (e.g., as observed in John C. Lilly and Marcia Moore and Tony Hsieh).
It is disturbing to read Marcia Moore's "Journeys Into the Bright World" (http://pdf.textfiles.com/books/journeysbrightworld.pdf) where she recounts that John C. Lilly warned her to stop using ketamine. She died in the woods not long afterward, hypothermia after injecting ketamine, trying to hide her addiction from her family. John C. Lilly himself went clean after decades of delusion, but never fully recovered, mentally.
For a frank summary of the dangers, see D. M. Turner's "The Essential Psychedelic Guide". Before he died in his bathtub (after injecting ketamine), he wrote the following (https://www.ketamine.co.uk/dmturner/index.html):
"A major concern regarding safe use of Ketamine is its very high potential for psychological addiction. A fairly large percentage of those who try Ketamine will consume it non-stop until their supply is exhausted. I've seen this in friends I've known for many years who are regular psychedelic users and have never before had problems controlling their drug consumption. And I've seen the lives of several people who developed an addiction to Ketamine take downward turns."
"After about two years of once-per-week Ketamine use I even found that I had developed an addiction. Although it was less severe than what I've described above, it took considerable effort to break the cycle of repeatedly using it, even though I was aware of detrimental effects that it was causing. Since that time I've used Ketamine only occasionally, but find that I must continually exercise a high degree of will power to prevent myself from falling into a pattern of regular use. Amongst those I know who use Ketamine, I've seen very few who can use it in a balanced manner if they have access to it."
On the other hand, there are other classes of psychedelics that are unambiguously good: tryptamines (e.g., psilocybin) and phenethylamines (e.g., mescaline). These drugs produce informative, useful, introspective, challenging mental states and are NOT prone to abuse. These are the valuable psychedelics.