BY: LILITH
I did my first ever line of ketamine off a cheap wooden patio table at a shitty bar in downtown Toronto. My friend and provider, a seasoned raver, didn’t have any straws on him, so he rolled up a bus transfer after cutting up a thin line of white powder for me.
“Just inhale as hard as you can,” my friend’s significant other, another veteran raver, advised as I leaned over the table and put the makeshift straw up to my nostril. Up until then, I’d only ever swallowed or smoked my poisons, but nonetheless, I wondered how hard someone would have to try to fuck up what appeared to be the relatively simple act of snorting.
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“Perfect…. Good job!” she cheered as the powder flew up the straw and into my bloodstream sans problems.
And a few minutes later, I was amazingly content with the world around me for the first time in a long time. Who knew a couple of hours of bliss was just a quick snort away?
Ketamine, also known as “Special K” or simply “K”, was developed in 1962 as a fast acting anesthetic and has been used as an animal tranquilizer and for the treatment of battlefield injuries. In the late 1970s it also became a staple of the party/raver scene.
Ketamine is usually manufactured in injectable form, but on the streets, illicit producers will evaporate the liquid to form powder. Snorting and pill popping are much more marketable without the sketch bag stigma.
The high is one of my favorites – the best way I can describe it is a sort of chilled-out happiness that’s sort of like being drunk, except your head doesn’t feel heavy. The blissed-out feeling also doesn’t come with the bullshit emotional attachment to everything that comes along with MDMA.
Basically, it can be happiness in powdered form.
It’s not just freaks with drug-addled brains that can get behind the benefits of taking a little K every now and then – Ketamine, delivered intravenously and in small, controlled doses, has proven promising in multiple studies as an effective treatment for depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. The side effects of the treatment are minimal— a little dizziness and standard post-comedown feelings that quickly dissipate.
It’s at this point I feel I should point out that, as with every drug, K isn’t without some pretty crappy catches. If you take a whole lot of it, you’ll probably end up falling into a k-hole, which is basically a semi-catatonic, “out of body” state where you trip balls for a few hours. Depending on how you percieve it, a k-hole can either be an enlightening, blissed-out experience or hell on earth. Heavy K use (yes, K addictions are a thing) can seriously damage the liver, bladder and urinary tract to the point where corrective surgery is needed. The majority of K on the streets comes from stolen shipments overseas meant for actual medical use. And, as with a lot of substances, K is illegal pretty much everywhere so getting caught with it will probably result in some time in the slammer.
So, for all its apparent wonderfulness, you probably shouldn’t try to get K and should just leave it to the researchers. But, when it crossed my path by chance, I couldn’t help but try a little taste of temporary happiness.
