LSD with Ketamine

The week of Thanksgiving 2015 a friend of mine, Whitey, was returning to the United States for the holiday. Before his flight home he told me and our mutual friend, Burgundy, that he wished to try “dropping acid”. Burgundy was my tripping partner and we felt this was a great idea. Privately, Burgundy and I amused ourselves by asserting Whitey needed “a vision”; a whimsical joke for his psychedelic rite of passage. Whitey had tried Cannabis and alcohol, but never any hallucinogens. Meanwhile, Burgundy and I had been experimenting with a variety, the latest one being Ketamine.

Ketamine is a Dissociative drug. It detaches the user’s mind from their body, dampening physical sensations and interfering with the ability to move. The user loses sense of their environment and at high dosages can lose any awareness the outside world exists. The effects of Ketamine tend to last about an hour, depending on how it is administered and how much is taken. By itself I found Ketamine to be alien and emotionally hollow. I did not consider it to be very interesting whereas LSD was very exciting to me. On this night Burgundy and I decided to combine the two.

Friday night

10:45 PM I walk in Burgundy’s house to greet him and Whitey. The familiar pre-acid trip jitters fill the air. Whitey takes his time finishing a meal from McDonald’s in the living room. In the kitchen I prepare a clean space, unravel the foil, and begin dividing up a strip of LSD with scissors. Whitey will get 200 micrograms, while Burgundy and I will get 300 each.

10:59 PM Whitey is showing Burgundy a few things about his stock market investments on his laptop. I present to him the small bits of blotter paper.

“I don’t want that yet,” he replies, waving his hand at me.

I respond by saying, “The come-up takes an hour and a half. It’ll be a while.”

Burgundy agrees that we should proceed. Whitey doesn’t appear to appreciate the significance of what is about to happen. Nobody does their first trip and that’s part of the beauty. We all place the blotters on our respective tongues. I pull out my laptop, connect it through HDMI to the television, and prepare a playlist of songs along with a collection of images to stare at. I assemble a slide show of psychedelic art, landscapes, exotic animals, and pictures of space. Behind the television hangs a tapestry on the wall and a lava lamp glows on the stand next to it. We light candles and incense. On the coffee table lie water bottles and Jolly Ranchers for everybody.

11:52 PM The acid shows its first signs of kicking in, giving me insuppressible desire for adventure. I could not be more ready for tonight. Burgundy and Whitey are sitting on different couches while I sit on the floor, my back resting against a wall, facing them. We talk about friends and memories, breaking out into frenzied laughter that turns to tears as we howl. The tremendous laughter is so gut-wrenching that I spread out on the floor because I cannot keep it together. Our group euphoria is almost unbearable.

12:25 AM To accompany this vision quest I brought along some sage that was given to me by a family member. Allegedly burning sage in the context of a particular ritual can drive off evil spirits inhabiting the local space. Our ritual was going to be something like this: turn lights off, make assumed shamanic noises about the unenlightened voyager reaching illumination, light sage. Burgundy places the herb in the provided shell, a sea shell, and ignites the flame. Whitey and I stare in amazement. Immediately we discover this was a terrible idea because of the horrific smell filling the room. The odor it emits resembles a sweaty armpit covered in shit and set on fire. Our sinuses completely reject this. We scramble to get ahold of the burning shrub and remove it from the situation; no easy task high on LSD. Careful not to torch the house, Burgundy carries it outside for extinguishing. Whitey and I follow him out there to escape the room’s tainted aroma.

12:38 AM Outside, Whitey offers Burgundy and me a pack of cigarettes he purchased from an airport in Japan. Whitey describes to us the filters carry a ball inside that when crushed makes the cigarette taste fruity, like mango or banana. I don’t smoke cigarettes but any cigarette from Japan with an elephant on the box cover and a fruity filter I’m most certainly trying.

The olfactory devastation has, thankfully, left us when we reappear in the house. Burgundy mentions it is the right moment to put this trip on steroids before pulling out the blowtorch. Eyeballing the size of a dab is tricky when everything you see is warping. No matter; we soldier through it and clear the bong.

1:00 AM The living room is dimly lit and music plays from the television speakers. Trails of smoke radiate off the smoldering incense and flow effortlessly amongst the darkness. Along the incense’ smoke I can see the music in puffy, cloudlike forms. This visual audio starts at the periphery of my vision then soon binds to the melting appearance of anything I look at. I alternate between open and closed eyes as I am blissfully propelled inwards; surfing waves across the internal ocean.

The need to hydrate snaps me out of my trance. “Gonna go pour me some music,” I utter to my friends as I walk to grab a drink. The cherry flavor of juice colors the appearance of the kitchen.

1:55 AM A beckoning call emerges from my intestines. I can tell it is not going to be pleasant and curse whatever I consumed to cause this digestive turmoil. I flee to the bathroom, closing the door and flicking on both the light and fan beside me. I sit down and begin to think about how unique the bathroom is because only you know yourself when it comes to using one. I ponder this for a while until my attention is hijacked by the sound of the fan. It is creating weird noises and my synesthesia is making things very disorienting. I try to focus. As matter erupts from my backside not only am I hit with the insufferable fragrance of human shit, the stench alters the visuals of the trip.

2:01 AM Noxious green hues that morph into light brown encompass my field of vision. I can’t just see the colors, but I can taste the colors. All my senses compound on one another. I see what I smell and taste what I see. This cannot be happening. My stomach contracts as if I were vomiting. I bounce around on the toilet seat and hold my breath, looking for somewhere to hide. My choices are to either submit and wait it out, or jump up and spray watery shit all over the bathroom. Things worsen as the sensory distortions grow stronger, totally clouded by my own waste. Everything I see is rapidly moving and the buzzing of the bathroom fan is not helping. I pray I can still remember how to clean myself.

2:11 AM With no recollection of how long I had been in there, I lumber out of the bathroom. Sweating gloriously, I survived. The amount of relief I feel following that mess makes me suspect I am immortal. Every drop of doubt and fear in my being was purged during that shit. I tell Burgundy and Whitey tales of the horrors that went on. They laugh with me.

2:29 AM Whitey complains that he cannot get comfortable on any piece of furniture, tossing and turning from side to side and cycling between different positions. He keeps mentioning how cold he is between shivers. Burgundy and I are unsure if Whitey is having any fun at all. We attempt to get him to change into warmer clothes to no avail, so finally we just throw blankets on top of him. When Burgundy’s roommate arrives home from work, it is time for the main event.

2:43 AM Burgundy, Burgundy’s roommate, and I gather in Burgundy’s bedroom, leaving Whitey by his lonesome in the living room. Hey, isolation is always part of the spiritual journey. All we need to make this vision quest complete is a sweat lodge. Burgundy is going the intramuscular route so his roommate carefully prepares the needle. Intramuscular is said to be the preferred administration method for Ketamine among many users who favorite the drug. I might have tattoos and piercings, but I don’t do needles. Insufflating, or snorting, is easy and effective, and it works fairly quickly, so that is what I choose.

2:51 AM Face to face with a line of white powder when already intoxicated by LSD and Cannabis, admittedly I am nervous. Nevertheless I apply a finger to one side of my nose, lean down to the dresser, and plunge into oblivion. The burn of 100 milligrams is unpleasant. I’m not excited about the taste of powder dripping down my throat either. I take one more drink of water and sit on the bed, perpendicular to Burgundy. His roommate gives the injection and soon Burgundy’s eyes widen, his facial expression changes, and his arm extends outwards as if he is trying to grab something. Burgundy falls backwards onto the bed. He is gone. I can tell by the look in his eyes that wherever his consciousness is, it’s not in this room anymore. Burgundy’s roommate exits the bedroom, shutting the door behind him.

I’m flustered. I ask myself, “What have I done?”

2:58 AM Within six or seven minutes I feel the effects start coming on. I get warm and tingly. My body goes numb and the room becomes distant. What was previously a hallucinatory collection of swirling colors has become a lattice of squares and triangles. In the distance I see a hole with rays of light beaming from the center that come towards me. It looks like I am peering through some kind of scope at the world. This state is neither pleasing nor displeasing; it has a neutral tone. I think maybe if get up and walk around my attitude might change.

3:17 AM Getting up off the bed is difficult and standing is a struggle. I cling to anything I can to prevent falling down. It takes every bit of effort to pick one foot up and place it in front of the other. In the short distance from bedroom to living room, maybe a ten foot walk, all kinds of negative thoughts flood my head and the neutral emotions turn dark. I had no idea what to expect from this combination but this is more than what I could have predicted. When I reach the living room I spot Whitey zoning out on the couch. I don’t even attempt to speak to him; any communication above grunts and yells right now is futile. I go on to explore different rooms of the house.

3:31 AM I circle back to check if Burgundy has rebounded to this plane of reality. He seems relatively coherent. I’m having profound auditory hallucinations and my inner monologue is fragmented. Inside my head I mumble the words mental chatter to respond to a train of thought that is jumbled and incoherent. Burgundy hears these words. Every idea that appears inside my head, he is aware of. I start having two thoughts in quick succession, one of them being mine and the other being his. A dialogue occurs but there is no verbal exchange. Burgundy and I glance at each other. It is hard not to think Uh, hey…get out of my mind.

Using my thoughts I tell him, “Play something crunchy”. We browse different artists and jam bands. On acid music is all-pervading, as if it were a part of me. On Ketamine it sounds more like there is music playing in the next room. The combination of the two makes songs I’ve heard dozens of times sound foreign.

3:50 AM Once the Ketamine has run its course it takes the entire trip down with it. I feel refreshed, almost as if I had slept. Burgundy and I agree on a cigarette break, but first we must seek out Whitey. We find him lying face down on the floor, headphones blaring, with his shirt off. That alone should reveal his vision was a success. He looks to be immobilized and completely lost in the trip. He makes small sounds and quiet moans every now and again. Eventually Whitey turns his head and notices us walking around. He flaps his arms and tries to get up from the floor. As he is adjusting his body he comments on the tapestry behind the television. In reality the artwork portrayed the scene of a deer standing in a meadow with a mountain in the background. His interpretation of the tapestry was somebody holding a knife to another person and stabbing them repeatedly. Puzzled, I chuckle at this. I’m no Sigmund Freud but I think this could be a signal some psychoanalytic treatment is in order.

4:12 AM Whitey doesn’t want to step outside with us so Burgundy and I do so together. We need to discuss what the fuck just happened anyways. Standing in the garage, as Burgundy’s cigarette gradually dissipates to ash, we attempt to catch ourselves.

We start speaking simultaneously. “Did we just..?” “Did that just..?” We had formed a singular mind. Eerie revelations pour into my headspace.

7:30 AM As the morning sets in Whitey tells Burgundy and me he had stuff to do Saturday night and didn’t know he would be incapacitated. He mentions a meme he once saw about somebody eating cake in the bushes while high and tells us he understands perfectly how that could happen to someone on LSD. All day we lie around and attempt to sleep but it doesn’t come. Eventually we take Whitey back to where he is staying and along the ride talk about friendship, girlfriends, life, the mind, all the usual subjects a person does when they have been tripping.

ToddDeVault.com