I’d heard about ketamine online. I’d never tried drugs that gave you hallucinations before. It was an interesting new experience we bought a few grams off the dealer. We’d found that dealer via business cards posted through the letterbox, interestingly enough. I don’t know quite he’s managed but he hasn’t being caught yet. But that’s a very cheeky marketing strategy and he was quite a cheeky guy. Anyway, I bought some ketamine and got two of my friends around and we had an interesting time on it.

And at the same time I bought some drug weights because I was always very cautious about the dosages. I wanted to know how much I was taking so I knew, had an idea what kind of effect I would expect. And again I researched everything very thoroughly online.

When you say interesting experience what do you mean?

I don’t remember exactly what it was like It’s a very disassociative drug. It’s very it makes you feel very free of your body. It’s an anaesthetic so you can’t feel quite as well – you feel quite numb. I’ve very much gone off it now but back then it was an interesting experience because, because you can close your eyes and you get quite intense visual, not quite dreamlike but very intense visual effects which you can learn to control.

And why have you gone off it?

Well basically after that point I. It’s quite, it’s fairly addictive and I ended up buying more and more and when it got to about February, March I was in a relationship which was going wrong and I ended up buying far more of it than I should have and taking a lot more than I should have. So I ended up with. I wouldn’t say I was dependent but it was sort of semi, semi-dependent getting that way towards using it just too regularly and too much.

You were using it because of ?

Well at the time I wasn’t really reflecting on why I was using it. I just was but it seems fairly clear now that I was using it because things, I was using it as an escape rather than anything else. I wasn’t particularly interested in alcohol at that point. Like I’d tried ketamine and alcohol a few times and the mix is really not a pleasant one. I think I was sick twice after that and I never mixed them again. I have friends who do mix them and they are fine with it but I could never deal with that.

I found the negative effects outweighed the positive effects by the end. It’s not a very pleasant drug. You can get quite intense but very, very gripping fear on it because you can sort of lose your sense of self, and you can have very intense and fascinating hallucinations – but the unpleasantness of it and the physical effect is that you have very, very bitter taste at the back of your mouth and tongue which makes me want to retch a little. And I found that wasn’t really what I wanted to take anymore. I didn’t really want to take a drug and then lie down and just not do anything, just look into the back of my eyes.

Well I was afraid, I was afraid. I still I wouldn’t want to go near it [ketamine] again. I could do it every now and again but it’s the case of the effects not really weighing up with the…

What makes you, what is in the addiction that makes you afraid of?

It was the compulsive way I was using it.I was doing it and then watching a DVD or something, or I was doing it and I was just doing small amounts quite, quite frequently in the evenings sometimes and there wasn’t any particularly good reason for doing it. It was just a matter of habit. If you form a habit it’s hard to break, you know? I don’t think, it really isn’t physically addictive but psychologically it’s easy to get drawn into it.My tolerance increased really fast and I needed more and more of it to get similar levels of effect.

Dependent on drugs? yes, definitely at times.

Okay.

If I’d be in a certain mindset I think with ketamine especially, ketamine’s a very addictive drug.

But it seems now like for me out of all the drugs I think cannabis and and ketamine; I can’t really remember why I used to like them. They just, just seems very strange when I see people out who are sort of, I don’t know, sort of smoking like weed and stuff who are still doing it now and then people who are really into ketamine and just like a complete mess on the floor it just seems it’s not a good look, it’s not for me I don’t know why I got into that but that’s just like I said earlier it’s just escapism.

It’s just very much your own self destruct mode, what else can I like how much else can I like how much like can I get it out of my system like it’s like sort of agressional whatever, it is that’s on your mind and then ketamine is that, is definitely that drug. Because like I said a little bit earlier like it’s almost like your dreaming like while you’re awake and sort of detaches your like because your part almost like you can’t really move that or speak that much and like you’re dreaming you’re having all these visual thoughts and it’s like, it’s like very much it’s a very like weird kind of drug and it’s very hard to explain unless you’ve actually taken it. But it’s from an outside perspective looking at someone who’s on it, it looks disgusting because you’re just like you’re just a mess but like the person what they’re seeing is like a dream like the visuals that are going in front of them and like they’re almost like I don’t know I’ve taken that drug and I’ve thought I was on holiday and stuff like that it’s just bizarre like it’s a very weird drug but… And it’s a different drug if you take a tiny bit than if you take a massive amount of it because if you only take a massive amount of it you go into this k hole state and that’s when you’re sort of like dreaming while you’re awake whereas if you take a tiny bit it’s just like bubbly sort of drug and your.

Okay so it’s sort of the quantity?

Yes people like do it on the corner of their credit cards when they’re out or they do lines round a house they do a little corner and then it picks them up and sort of like bit wobbly a bit but not all not like dreaming like not hallucinating that much.

And can you tell me about the sort of side effects of?

Well, I snort ket because I can’t really swallow it I felt like I want to be violently sick afterwards if I accidentally eat it. The main side effect of snorting, though, is the drips down the back of your throat and you’re left with a nose that doesn’t quite work. The drips, well, you end up tasting them, and it’s kind of horrific and highly unpleasant.

Once you’ve started snorting, the taste wears off a bit because you’re anesthetised. But the first few snorts are horrible, horrible! Sometimes I think of taking it again but the idea of that taste totally scares me off. Obviously there’s other reasons, too, like fear of taking it too much, but the taste ew, the taste alone is enough to make me not want to take it again.