If acid makes you feel connected with the universe, ketamine sort of does the opposite - it's a deep dive inward where you forget about the concept of existence entirely. It's isolating because your reality is completely your own, but it doesn't feel lonely because you hardly remember that there was ever a shared reality to begin with. It's comforting and familiar like a womb, yet somehow ordinary things like walking through a doorway into another room feel like a completely novel experience. In between the moments of confusion, you get this tremendous sense of discovery - I'm talking first man on the moon - from even the most mundane activities. If you get the dosage low enough, it is the perfect drug for a bike ride at an empty park in the middle of the day. If you get the dosage high enough, it's sort of like a 30 minute nitrous high followed by a pleasant trippy kind of relaxation. I guess the number one adjective I'd use to describe the feeling is "cozy."
It can also be extremely psychologically addictive for people who crave escapism, though. During that big ketamine revival during the early 2010s, I definitely lost a lot of time to drug use. I was also pretty happy and content and doing well socially and in my career, but like... I was totally disconnected from reality and would come up with all sorts of elaborate pseudo-spiritual conspiracy theories. I stopped spending much time with people who weren't also on ketamine because I got all the social interaction I needed in that liminal space that you visit on ketamine. Hell, I'd practically bought a timeshare there.
I realized what was happening and ditched my stash, but a lot of people I knew didn't have as easy a time with returning to the real world. One of my friends had to move to a country where she didn't have any plugs and start over, another one got heavy into dealing and lost his life to some crypto mob guys, and my partner spiraled into a hidden PCP habit for a while. Most people were fine, but if you're already susceptible to whims of fantasy... just be careful.
If acid makes you feel connected with the universe, ketamine sort of does the opposite - it's a deep dive inward where you forget about the concept of existence entirely. It's isolating because your reality is completely your own, but it doesn't feel lonely because you hardly remember that there was ever a shared reality to begin with. It's comforting and familiar like a womb, yet somehow ordinary things like walking through a doorway into another room feel like a completely novel experience. In between the moments of confusion, you get this tremendous sense of discovery - I'm talking first man on the moon - from even the most mundane activities. If you get the dosage low enough, it is the perfect drug for a bike ride at an empty park in the middle of the day. If you get the dosage high enough, it's sort of like a 30 minute nitrous high followed by a pleasant trippy kind of relaxation. I guess the number one adjective I'd use to describe the feeling is "cozy."
It can also be extremely psychologically addictive for people who crave escapism, though. During that big ketamine revival during the early 2010s, I definitely lost a lot of time to drug use. I was also pretty happy and content and doing well socially and in my career, but like... I was totally disconnected from reality and would come up with all sorts of elaborate pseudo-spiritual conspiracy theories. I stopped spending much time with people who weren't also on ketamine because I got all the social interaction I needed in that liminal space that you visit on ketamine. Hell, I'd practically bought a timeshare there.
I realized what was happening and ditched my stash, but a lot of people I knew didn't have as easy a time with returning to the real world. One of my friends had to move to a country where she didn't have any plugs and start over, another one got heavy into dealing and lost his life to some crypto mob guys, and my partner spiraled into a hidden PCP habit for a while. Most people were fine, but if you're already susceptible to whims of fantasy... just be careful.
That is some serious cyberpunk shit. I'm sorry about your friend.