Home conscious use became addiction - a cautionary tale

Dear community, that's my first post here, and I want to tell you an extended story I wrote in r/Ketamineaddiction of how my home-administered ketamine therapy (or better say self-medication?) turned into a full-blown dependency that I was luckily able to stop. It's a confession, a warning, and food for thought for those who practice or consider home use.

I had good reasons to start ketamine: I suffered from CPTSD flashbacks, anxiety, and many somatic symptoms. Ketamine was never the only therapy, but it was uniquely valuable for its ability to instantly lift me from any kind of darkness, and especially for being able to untangle my body (that kept the score) from my mind, which struggled to accept the reality of trauma. THAT gave them both pause and was hugely beneficial in my healing journey. I think Ketamine is pretty unique in this ability: to unclench boxers, escort each one to their ring corner, and allow them to recover. The fight doesn't fully stop right after, but it's not a clench anymore.

I was introduced to Ketamine through PubMed, the largest collection of life science publications I was familiar with from my M.Sc. studies. I never tried anything but occasional weed a few times before, and never thought of myself as risking any kind of addiction. Outwardly, I was successful and functional — kids, wife, and running a profitable software company. What else to wish for?

Inside was another matter, of course. Still, my first try was not to fix myself; it was touching the water for my then wife, who was suffering from mental health issues I can't really diagnose, but that included episodes of depression, anxiety, rage, and terrible obsession with an old mate she got into remote romance with.

So I gave it a try: read literature, checked the protocols, weighed, and insufflated. Nice dark room, eyeshades, and made-for-ketamine Jon Hopkins "Music for Psychedelic Therapy" playing in the earphones. It was weird, both bodily and mentally, but felt safe and not frightening. I remember telling my therapist that I didn't enjoy it, and am happy for not having the potential to become a drug addict. Again, that was the first "drug" I ever tried.

I stayed away for a while, but then, inspired by my ex, who was clearly benefitting from regular use, I decided to make it a part of my holistic trauma healing. At first, I clearly gained — I was able to access my "exiled" and suicidal parts and heal them through making them conscious. But then something shifted, and I started doing it more and more.

The setting (conscious administration, ritual, music) stayed the same. What changed was my life circumstances: my ex started seeing someone on the side, denying that this was a romantic involvement. For the first time, I started using ketamine not to deal with my childhood or immediate flashbacks, but to work on something happening in the moment. I was still convinced I was doing the WORK — i.e., sorting through my issues that made me feel jealous and restless every time she was out of the door. Ketamine delivered, I was feeling transcendence and the largeness of being. That, except for a worm in the back of my mind that kind of always knew what was going on for real. A treatment for that? More ketamine, more transcendence.

Soon, I found myself doing it daily, and inviting all my friends to give it a try, be it for self-exploration or as a replacement for SSRIs. I even got myself a "Ketamine" t-shirt with a child's drawing from AliExpress. I turned into a full-blown evangelist.

As you may guess, things between me and my ex were not improving from my inner refuge. If anything, my life was unravelling before my eyes while I was sailing through abandoned, death-star-like structures often presented to me by ketamine.

After some time, me and my ex got to a point where our marriage of 22 years seemed outdone. Still, we decided to take an outing together and try sorting things out. We fought on the way to a cabin and decided that it's over this very night. This was painful as hell. While still there, I decided to take a heroic dose of psychedelic mushrooms; she sat with me.

After a few hours of agony over my childhood and a loss of our life together, something different dawned on me with an unmatched clarity: I am a drug addict. I am, and there's a choice: either give up ketamine on this very moment, once and for all, or continue down the road of addiction the mushrooms were showing me. It was like I was presented with an opportunity to get clean, but the offer won't last: I had to decide. And it was not easy.

As clear as I saw my own pitiful state, I realized that ketamine for me was not a drug or a medicine, but the only person who understood, the only one who cared, the only one who was there for me no matter what and whenever I needed him. My only friend. My only true parent. My everything.

I was devastated. Wrestled with myself for a few moments, sighed, then tapped my left shoulder a few times (it was kind of a ritual I knew was needed) and committed to live my life without (k)him. Got up, found my stash and discarded it. That was so hard and lonely.

2.5 years have passed from this journey, and I missed ketamine badly. I dreamt of it, I thought of it, I wanted it damn hard. And still never touched it again. Now cravings are behind me, but up to a relatively recent time, I felt there's a part of me, or was it a Ketamine, that waits for me in the dark. Waits for me to slip and come home to its safe, loving, transcendent nothingness I know all too well.

Looking back, I think that ketamine is a very dangerous drug. It fucks with your mind in a way we don't understand, changes your personality, making you blind to your own use, and turning you into an advocate that brings others into the fold. Lovingly, lovingly.

If you'd ask me what I think of home use, I'd just say "don't". It's a slippery slope where your judgment is getting impaired in a way that it becomes impossible to feel you're actually falling. And no amount of consciousness, provider oversight, and psychotherapy will change that. It's not you who uses it at home. It's ketamine that uses you.