Feeling Yourself Disintegrate

Feeling Yourself Disintegrate

I don’t have what I would consider a fear of needles.  I’m covered in tattoos.  I am perfectly willing to sit serenely in one place and be stabbed hundreds of times in a row – it’s an asset.  I deal with the repetitive psychological pain of doing my job every day the same way (civil service, amiright?)

IV placement is another matter altogether.  I seem to attract phlebotomists who forget how veins work.  Something about me says, “Dig under my skin, poke, jab, hurt me.”  After each failed venous expedition, I’m left shaking.  It’s almost like being cold: shivering, gasping, teeth clenching.

I take Ketamine infusions due to Major Depressive Disorder.  12/30/22 was my second Ketamine “booster” (after an initial series of six as close together as possible for maximum benefit, I am now taking infusions longer and longer apart trying to maintain the drug’s therapeutic benefit without being as dependent on frequency.)

This infusion was another bad stick.  Please, I beg the kind woman who runs the clinic when the Vein Abuser is out of the room, please don’t let her poke me again.  Please?  Kind Lady has never missed the target.  Her deft hand sinks the needle in place every time.  No, so assured me.  She will do it next time.

I am wrapped in a blanket, shoes off, feet reclined, giant noise cancelling headphone, padded sleep mask I bought off Amazon.  Usually, I bring lip balm as I have a weird habit of smacking my lips pretty vigorously when down my K-hole.  Today, my only focus is a small baggy of nausea candies and alcohol prep swabs – I saw a video on Facebook suggesting the quick inhalation of alcohol during spell of nausea will sometimes help alleviate the symptoms.  As of treatment seven, the Ketamine suddenly started making me violently sick.

I hate being nauseous.  I won’t even resort to being coy: if you want my secrets, you don’t even have to torture me.  Just spin me around in an office chair for half an hour ‘til I’m sea sick.  No more, coppa, I’ll talk, I’ll talk!

The only reason I was willing to submit to getting sick again is the fact that I truly believe the Ketamine is working.  I’ve been a slave to my depression since I was ten years old.  Even though the Ketamine’s benefit so far has just been a kind of Flowers for Algernon effect (improvement that quickly wears off), the brief, clear windows of hopeful feeling have been indescribably beautiful.

(The only reason I am going in to this kind of detail instead of just saying, “Ketamine, it’s a thing I do.  And then this other stuff happened” is because I know there are people out there stumbling in the darkness that is depression who want to know what it’s like.)

I never did drugs.  People laughed at Bill Clinton when he said he smoked pot, but “did not inhale.”  I feel you, Bubba, I could never really get the hang of it either.  I was high maybe twice in high school.  I’ve done Delta 8 since people swear by CDB and all it’s offshoots for pain relief (I have crippling back pain from degenerative disk disease and spinal arthritis).  So I have a vague idea what getting “high” is, but tripping?  No clue.  I might drink once or twice a year.  For the most part, my mind is one of the few things I truly possess (if just barely), I’ve never liked the idea of using substances that could potentially make me a stranger to my own inner self.  I hate Delta 8, HATE it.  It affects my ability to form short term memories.  I refer to it as “roofie-ing” myself.

Acid, magic mushrooms?  I had no frame of reference.

And if you don’t either, here’s exactly what it’s like:  living in album covers for an hour. 

I actual fed the prompt “Describing the cover of ‘Unknown Pleasures’ to someone who has never seen it before” in to my WONDER AI generator and got some pretty close representations of what I saw.

I was instructed before my first transfusion to just get on Spotify and look for “curated ketamine playlist” to listen to during my trip.  I found the equivalent of “oooohhmmmm” bells and hippy, navel contemplation stuff.  Nothing I read mentioned anything about the vital nature of having good music with you on your journey.

My first trip was a bad needle situation (they learned to give me Clonidine beforehand to get me to calm down enough to submit my arm without hyperventilating.  The first experience being a painful one conditioned me to fear all future experiences there unfortunately.  Like I said, Kind Lady has been just right with the needle, but the other lady who works there… no… not so much).  I didn’t switch to my Ohhhmmm playlist.  I left it on my Salim Nourallah playlist.  Initially, I was just trying to calm myself, but once the IV was started, the trip happened so fast I was already falling before I realized. 

This has made all the difference.

I related this to Kind Lady later and she said there was no way to tell.  She knows a very quiet, unassuming gent (I swear she said he was a doctor or some sort of medical professional) that takes gangster rap on his trips.

My cousin is a Physician’s Assistant.  She said she had seen people come out of Ketamine situations in emergency rooms (used to set bones and such) where people who were unprepared would flip out (have a bad trip.) 

I, personally, have only had pleasant experiences (except for the recent bouts of nausea).  You are responsible for setting the tone for your own experience.  As someone whose depression has been a lifelong companion, my mind isn’t a bright or cheerful place per se, but I know myself.  It’s been a relatively intuitive process.  I don’t watch scary movies beforehand.  I try to just be calm and collected.  Stay peaceful.  The limbic system doesn’t know the difference between watching/listening to emotionally fraught material or experiencing it so I try not to take chances.

Being accompanied in to my first trip by a familiar voice was so deeply comforting.  Salim Nourallah is my favorite singer, but he also happens to be a dear friend and fantastic human being to boot. 

Ketamine (again this is all purely subjective.  Everyone’s experiences will be different) creates any level of dissociative experiences for the user.  I don’t know if it’s just because I don’t have experience with “substances,” I but I disassociate… hard.

Complete dissolution of self.  Out of body.  Soaring.  Flying.  Falling.  Colors. 

Because music is so much part of my psychological make up, it’s sounds, colors and textures interpreted in musical context: album covers.

I have cried a lot.  The feeling returns gradually to my fingers and toes, my eyes stop jittering in their sockets and reach up to feel my sleep mask is wet.  The overwhelming feeling/theme to all my trips has just been overwhelming gratitude.  I feel so much love for those people I have in my life who continue to stand by me no matter how the darkness sometimes affects my mind.

Ketamine for me is half medical treatment, half vision quest.  As I the chemicals wear off and I can feel myself again, I try to listen to anything I was told.  Call it messages from the subconscious, whatever you want.  I’ve come out wanting to reach out to certain people.  I sent a message to someone else I knew of who has severe depression (a voice actor on a podcast I’ve listened to for years).  He let me send him a care package of little, cheerful things.  Another trip, I came out and message someone I used to think of as a friend who hadn’t spoken to me in 12+ years.  I cast the missive out in to the digital sea not expecting anything back… but he responded.

I curated a special playlist of songs I wanted to “disintegrate to” and have emerged and tweaked it each trip.  No song has tilted the trip to the negative, but I have taken one band off (who shall remain nameless) as – under the influence – the singer acquired super human powers of grating annoyance. 

I am allowing myself Flaming Lips songs even though I have been estranged from my fandom in their regard for over a decade now.  But you have to admit:  for tripping, they are kind of perfect.

I return to Salim though.  His voice is consistently silvery blue.  “Miette” became so achingly beautiful I could barely stand it.  There are not words to describe how meaningful it is it have the voice of a friend accompanying me in the darkness.

My playlist: