Ketanest (esketamine) 50mg intramuscular injection - Trip report
Basic information about myself: Age: 22, Weight: 81kg
My trip with ketamine yesterday was as spontaneous as it could be. I just decided that I'm bored and I brought up my last ampoule of pharma-grade mind juice - Ketanest (esketamine). 25mg/ml in a 2ml ampoule, so 50mg in total.
I took standard precautions for injecting substances into myself. Grabbed a fresh, sterile syringe and aspiration needle to pull out the mind juice out of the glass ampoule container, a sterile injection needle (23G x 1', blue color), and some alcohol swabs. Disinfected the ampoule, broke off the head, aspirated the insides, switched the needles. I chose to inject it into the m. vastus lateralis, in the lateral middle of my thigh, as I wasn't comfortable with injecting into the deltoid muscle on my shoulder. I estimated the position of the injection, disinfected it with the alcohol swab. Grabbed the muscle so I lifted it off, and pushed the needle inside. It stung a bit at first, but it wasn't so damn uncomfortable despite the quantity of the solution (2ml).
I injected at 22:35, so that will be the T+00:00. I started to feel the tingling throughout my body at around T+00:03. I decided it was time to let it go and stop resisting, as the feeling was getting too intense. I turned off the sounds on my phone, covered myself with a blanket and laid my hands besides my body, with pillows supporting my upper body, so I was in a semi-sitting position on the bed. I closed my eyes.
I must state, that I felt like play-doh the whole trip. My mind was completely cut off from my body. At first, it felt like somebody was pushing a big pipe under my bedsheets, as if it would like to lift me onto my right side. Then, it rolled me onto the left side like an ocean wave so powerful it flushed me into the abyss of open space. My body was melting and turning into dust at the same time, mixing with the matter that flushed me away from reality. The visuals were unrepeatable, despite the fact I had my eyes closed. It felt like I was floating in deep space, with stars around me, the planets as separate globes spinning and travelling besides me, who was travelling throughout the space as a blob of well-heated play-doh. And then suddenly, all the surroundings snapped and closed as a book.
I thought my body was ripped apart, disintegrated and reassembled on a vast red planet of desert and sandstorms. It genuinely looked like the common conception of Mars. I was floating piece by piece throughout the planet, when suddenly everything became shifting like when you mix the Rubik's cube. I found myself again the vast nothingness of deep space, inhabited only by countless stars, shining in the distance. Faintly I could hear my heart beating, so I was reassured I wasn't dead, because I thought that I forgot breathing, so hard was the feeling. Good, life status checked, now back to the travel.
I was reassembled again piece by piece in a mist of foggy colors of the rainbow, when suddenly it started to feel like I was turned upside down, head-first and plunged into the water. Suddenly, I started to segment into four cubes, but wait, where was the fourth cube? Oh shit, it was coming towards me like a freight train at full speed when it hit me: I found myself again in the vast black nothingness of space. I was spinning like a multicolored fidget spinner attached onto a power drill, which landed onto a ledge of a large precipice on Mars. The winds were absolutely packed with stars, like they were so intense they could be blown off by the winds. Suddenly, a tornado formed in the distance, scaring me so I panicked a bit, but I reassured myself that everything is okay and quickly calmed down. The tornado took shape of a hurricane eye, vertically placed onto the surface of the planet I was on, and the middle was pitch black. It was a black hole, sucking all the stars and all matter inside it. I gave in, released the resistance and became a needle-shaped bullet, speeding into the abyss of the blackness.
I found myself wandering throughout the white space. Suddenly, I was in an all white space with lots of people around me, similar to New York streets downtown on a busy day. I walked through the space, ignoring all the people, when I suddenly realized that I know all these people. They were my relatives who passed away, some even before I was born, but their faces were life-like. My grandpa, who died before I was even born, my other grandpa and grandma who I've visited but are already dead and my great-grandparents from my dads and moms side, they were all there, and it was almost cathartic to "meet" them in such way.
Suddenly, I was lifted in the air and crushed by a cube that fell down from the sky as the space disintegrated into cubes, and I was again in the pitch black environment. My right leg got pulled and stretched into the space, like heated play-doh and I was stretched into infinity, until I was clumped into a ball, which was rolling through a red-colored desert of an unknown planet, beneath me was the soft sand, which twirled in the wind which I didn't feel, and above me were countless stars, which were stretched like I was a few moments ago.
I was speeding into infinity when I regained feeling of my body, which contours I hardly visualised. I tried to move my arms, barely succeded to swallow the saliva that accumulated in my mouth. My legs were completely cut off from my nervous system, moving them was impossible. The visualization of my body disappeared again in a wave of imaginary water that was rolling to the left, and blackness appeared once again. I was lifted like the soul would leave my body, I was flying, my whole body I was looking at from above was tingling, but I couldn't see below my waist. Soon also that vision disappeared and the whole picture just slammed in my face, reducing me to nothing. It seemed like I wasn't existing anymore, it felt like I died right there and then. I again checked for the sound of my heartbeat, as I genuinely thought I had stopped breathing. It was there, so I let it go and was engulfed in a sky full of stars which slowly arranged into a circle and started spinning around me. They disintegrated me into tiny particles, which were carried away by the winds I couldn't feel. Those particles of me formed new stars in the blackness that was all around me.
After a period of time which felt like an hour, I slowly opened my eyes. My teeth were tingling, they were feeling stiff. I clenched my teeth, it felt so good. My joints all over the body were stiff, rigid and felt like I haven't moved them for a week. I was in the same pose, semi-sitting on my bed, covered with my blanket as when the trip started. I thought the trip lasted for several hours, but it lasted just under an hour, it was T+00:56 when I looked on my phone.
I decided it was time to go to sleep, but turning around into the fetal position was a struggle, so I remained in the same position, turned my head onto the left side, and my body succumbed to the wave coming from my right side, that took me on the last ride throughout the mix of the vast nothingness of space and the unknown depths of the sea, and then slowly bringing me back to reality after T+01:10. I struggled to sit up and re-trace through what I've been to in the past hour, still feeling the slight tingliness throughout my body. I sat like that for a few minutes, recapping the experience on the verge of crying, which was the result of the rush of happiness from realizing how beautiful, amazing, fascinating and weird the human mind can be when the moment and the substance is right.
I finally rolled to the side, curled into the fetal position, hugged a pillow and fell asleep with tears of joy in my eyes, tingling in my body, feeling happy and content.
This trip taught me to appreciate the human mind and not to underestimate it under any circumstances. Who knows what powers the mind has to offer. Maybe my trip represents what afterlife looks like when we die and our body shuts down, leaving only the mind untouched. If we look at the mechanism of action by which ketamine works, it basically cuts the connection to the sensations of the body. Leaving the mind on its own, allowing it to roam free through the vast possibilities it offers.