Health - Addicted to ketamine

[Lotty]

Any one else addicted to k, Swim takes 2 grams a day and cannot stop, tried going cold turkey but within hours of waking in a very anxous mood or stressed until gets some.... would like to talk to like minded others

[rxbandit]

Swim can understand how it would be easy to get addicted to K. He actually did not order more because he was becoming compulsively obsessed with the K-realm. Swims been moderately addicted to other drugs and his advice would be to ration out a taper dosage program when in the right mind set and entrust it to a good friend with instructions to give you the diminishing dosages each day. clear a few days and sleep off the cravings until swiy is clean. swim noticed a twitchy craving for K for almost 2 weeks after he stopped but it was less pronounced after each successive day.

good luck

[Lotty]

thankyou so much for your reply rxbandit, swim has been like this for 18mnths or more..... where swim lives there are no free programs really swim did get an appointment but because swim is so busy just trying to keep down a job and stuff at the same time as dealing with the addiction things got forgotten,

swim has gone past the point of remembering the enjoyment from k experiances, moved onto it just being a way of life, but being constantly in a different world to others isnt so fun.


Swim has managed to stay clean for 5 days before, that was the longest... swim will try getting a good friend to do the taper dose.

Is there anyone else out there who knows someone who has been addicted as long to ket? is swim alone...

[Metomni]

Surely SWIY is not alone, Ketamine is widely known as a very addictive substance. SWIM believes the tapered dose to be a very good idea.

Another idea that could work is to use a sort of conditioning schedule. When SWIY has the urge to have some K, instead of going for it tell yourself no, but instead smoke a bowl. Or if marijuana isn't SWIY's thing find something else as a substitute. Simply make sure the substitute is something SWIY truly enjoys, if it isn't a satisfactory enough substitute it will not work as well.

That could be used as a self-tapering schedule, or in addition to a tapering schedule.

Anyway, good luck to SWIY, hopefully it will be overcame.

[ThirdEyeFloond]

SWIM has himself been under the spell of ketamine. He used it daily for about a year and a half and has just quit two months ago (actually two months and five days, but who's counting heh) so he has some idea of what you're going through. Before SWIM finally quit, he spend the last 4-5 months struggling with his stupid ego over its habits. SWIM had at some point found a good ketamine source and purchased a kilo, this in retrospect turned out not to be the wisest descision ever made by someone with an addictive personality.
The price made it very easy for SWIM to convince himself that he could afford one more hit, and then one, and then one... On some very hazy occasions he was using +10g's a day, but usually SWIM was using 4-5g during the day and early evenings. Each night he promised himself that tomorrow would be different, SWIM would skip the ketamine, and do some studying/shopping/living instead. But each morning that little voice started calling, "Come on, just one little trip to the K-realm before we go about with our day", and each day SWIM would give in. Needless to say, he was a quite unproductive member of society while SWIM was wallowing in his escapism. And let me say that I have the greatest respect for that SWIY manages to keep a job etc while fighting this, it shows SWIY has alot of strength which will come in handy
At some point SWIM got sick of not keeping his own promises and letting himself down each day, so decided something had to change. Quitting from day to day was not an option as SWIM was still quite fond of ketamine, even though his tolerance was steep, and practically none of the effects that originally made him love his substance were present any longer. It seemed SWIM had gotten attached to the habit in itself. He made a tapering schedule, by first handing out a good share of the remaining stash to the neighbourhood cats, leaving SWIM with 24g. He then chose a date a for the last hit (ever?), october 1st, and divided the remaining stash between the days following in between that and the current date. He initially started with 2g pr day, tapering off 200mg each day the following week, the next two weeks tapering of 100mg pr day and so on. Untill SWIM was down to his last 25mg which was hardly worth the effort injecting but was SWIMs goodbye for now to this substance. For the first week SWIM didn't think of much else than K and how he missed it, but he started summing up the pros and cons of continuing his (ab)use, and began realisizing on a deeper level than before what he had been told by his guides in the realm. That it had been an awesome ride, but SWIM had experienced what he was meant to in the realm, he had already been giving the guidelines of what to do, now it was time to put it in action. Yoga and meditation has been an important part of my life since. SWIM discussed this matter a fellow K-hole traveler who had gotten the same message. But this seemingly universal chronology of K experiences is for another thread .
SWIM took a low dose of diazepam (5mg) every day the first week to relieve some of the anxiety and general feeling-like-crap-ness. But as he has always been concerned with benzodiazepine addiction he discontinued that and turned to his old thrusted friend, cannabis. As Metomni mentions finding a substitute can be a good help aswell if one is careful not to substitute one addiction with another, atlest not one harder to quit, and cannabis certainly does the trick for me.
SWIM had trouble sleeping, and woke up several times at night drenched in sweat, he is unsure if it was caused by withdrawals or some infection but after about 3-4 weeks SWIM was feeling pretty much ok, stoned, but ok, and didn't think much about ketamine. Except when he was reminded of it which happen quite often as many people tend to enjoy discussing their ketamine experiences with SWIM. As much as SWIM enjoys this aswell, it caused him some concern because it triggered his craving every time.
There's light at the end of the tunnel though and every day it gets easier, these days SWIM hardly ever thinks of it, so make the descision, stick by it, and before SWIY knows it he will be saying been there - done that - moved on.

Best of luck to SWIY

Reputation Comments on this post:

	interesting read and I'm sure the OP will find it helpful - thx for sharing
	good advice
	awesome advice

[vcdman]

the above sounds helpful, also there his tips to beat addiction (to K) in "Ketamine: Dreams and Realities" by Karl Jansen

[imyourlittlebare]

Critchlow, D.G. (2006). A case of ketamine dependence with discontinuation symptoms. Addiction Aug, Vol. 101 Issue 8, p1212-1213.

read up. its an actual documented disorder. ketamine dependence. Get some valium. Since your inhibiting stuff all the time that would otherwise cause anxiety and memories to consolidate it would be overwhelming to discontinue w/o help. however, youll feel better after a while trust me. smoking pot would make things worse so one if they were going to discontiue use would want to rely on kava, benzos, 5htp (serotonin, kappa opiate receptors, and Nmda receptors all seem to be interlinked somehow in mood. so maybe taking that suppliment could help anxiety?) hope this helps bud. hope your pet nips that in the butt.