Ketamine 6

I finished my final ketamine session. I’m still a bit loopy but I’ll try to be a bit more, uh, less-rambling than usual for these blog entries.

Memory gets really weird when the brain is shut off like this but I remember it always progressing pretty much the same way each time. I start to get hit by a feeling of numbness and tingling all over, and I start to worry that I’ve done something wrong or that my body is decaying or damaged, and then the feeling of calm and peace fills me and I realize that I am a tiny speck in a large infinite plane.

Sometimes the geometry I perceive goes hyperbolic. But everything flattens out, and I always end up in space, and perceiving the whole universe as clumps of matter and energy, fire and ice, hot and cold, entropy and order. Everyone is biological processes doing the best they can, and nothing matters in the long run so it’s important for us to make the best of what we can, which also means making the best for others, for as long as we can.

Picture a wave.

In this particular session there were some pretty strong, recurring themes:

  • Objectively-speaking there’s nothing objective
  • What does it mean to be alive, or dead?
  • What does it mean to be human? Or a critter? I am fine with just being me.
  • Gender is fake, words are fake, pronouns are fake, and it’s silly to segregate bathrooms based on pronouns
  • I am a biological process, and I make my body fit my needs
  • what even are words anyway

Another thing that’s always occurring in these sessions is that my body-self is more or less my critter self, with all of the fun that can be had by it. My fingers and toes always fuse together, I am plaid/paisley/polkadots/stripey, I can be flesh or plastic or rubber or vinyl, solid or inflated or made of gel. It’s an even more intense extension of the exploration of self-as-object that I’ve been undergoing ever since I started MUCKing back in 1996.

What does it mean to be made of matter?

I had questions for God. In the liminal space of my subconscious multivariate manifold, she appeared as Juni[zero] (cf Unity) and convinced me that she didn’t exist, and that she is part of the everything and nothing all at once that keeps us all connected. I am, still, an atheist.

The universe is made of clay, spinning and being shaped by our fingers, or mitts I suppose.

Hands are weird and hard to draw.


After I came out of it, as my brain slowly reassembled itself, bits and pieces flickering back into existence, I had a nice long conversation with the nurse, who enjoyed the conversation. I taught her about Optimistic Nihilism (which fits her own philosophy as well but she hadn’t heard a formal name for it before), we chatted about my fibromyalgia and my stimulant sensitivity and how promising it is that I seem to be able to tolerate caffeine again so maybe Adderall will work for me now. She was very amused by me referring to my dissociated body as the “meat puppet,” and said that the term she uses is “marionette.” I talked about Chris and the trauma around him and how these sessions have helped me to unlock some stuff that I can finally talk about, and how I’m hopeful that this will let me finally heal and reduce my chronic pain and anxiety in the long run.

So far it hasn’t helped my pain much, but maybe it’s gotten me on the path to finally being able to heal.

I’m hopeful.

This weekend I think I’ll try to make some pottery again. I don’t think it’ll succeed but that’s okay.

It’s all just matter.

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