What does it feel like to take ketamine?
Let me make one thing clear right away. I have never taken ketamine for fun. Like phencyclidine (PCP), ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic. Though more commonly used by veterinarians, ketamine is easy on the human heart, making it the drug of choice for several of my surgical procedures. In the United States, ketamine is a Schedule Three controlled substance, available by prescription only.
Just waking up after a medical does of ketamine is a chore in itself. None of my body wants to obey my brain, and that includes my eyelids. My head is another problem. It lolls forward or to the side, like an infant’s. My limbs are impossible. My fingers are miles off. My feet are in another time zone. It feels like the real me is sitting in the skull-shaped control tower of a colossal, me-shaped piece of heavy machinery, like one of those giant cranes they use for building skyscrapers or moving shipping containers. The controls are unlabeled, and I’m batting at them with hands swathed in oven mitts.
Moving is a bad idea anyway. There’s always at least one IV in me, and if I catch it on something, I could tear it out without even noticing. William S. Burroughs once wrote about coming down off of heroine and discovering that he had barked his knuckles rather badly at some point. Ketamine doesn’t remove pain, exactly. It’s more like the whole concept of pain has been excised from the brain. Nice as that might sound, when you combine it with muddled thinking and extreme clumsiness, the potential for injury is rather large.
Ketamine also does some strange things to perception. The recovery ward looks like something viewed through a security camera. Shapes seem remote and difficult to categorize. Everything is blurry, distant, and uninvolving. Sounds have a fish tank quality as well. Engaging in conversation is tricky. I answer questions that were asked some time ago, perhaps by a different nurse. Stray thoughts feel just as important as what people are saying. On ketamine, I reflexively correct the grammar of anyone within earshot, my criticisms delivered at random intervals. Once, I interrogated my father about Eugene V. Debs.
I don’t always hallucinate while on ketamine. This is a relief, quite frankly. I’ve been looked after by the same group of doctors since childhood, which means that I generally wake up in a ward full of confused, frightened children in varying degrees of pain. Believe me, this is not where you want to be when you start seeing things.
One incident stands out as being particularly horrible. For very young patients, my hospital uses metal cribs on wheels instead of gurneys. Even without drugs in my system, these always reminded me unpleasantly of circus cages. I remember a surgical team trundling one of these into recovery. There is a boy of three or four inside. I watch as the doctor signs him over to the duty nurse. “This is…” he starts to say. The boy’s name is replaced by the sound of a table saw and the shrieks of wounded animals. “He’s one of our frequent flyers.” I try to focus on the occupant of the cage. Is that a mattress he’s laying on, or straw? It’s hard to tell. But I am certain the grimy flannel sheet covering most of his body is spotted with dried blood. His severed foot rests a few inches from the stump of his leg, the ragged end scorched a deep black.
Not long after this, I found myself in yet another surgical suite with yet another IV being put into my arm. I asked the anesthesiologist what I would be getting this time. When he said ketamine, I groaned. He raised a dubious eyebrow at my displeasure. “A lot of people pay big money to get this stuff,” he said.
“Yeah,” I agreed, “A lot of people are stupid that way.”
Dave Hurwitz
For reliable information on common drugs, see Dr. Andrew Weil’s excellent book From Chocolate to Morphine.
