Ketamine: Dreams and Realities
Psyc h e d e l i c H e a l i n g , E P l u r i b u s U n u m
Medicine, University of Cambridge (England).411 The authors’ main interpretation of their positive results was that persons with eating disorders “forgot” their compulsive behaviors after being given ketamine. The authors did not focus on the psychedelic experience through which they were putting these young women. Ketamine may be useful in the treatment of dependence for physical as well as mental reasons. It can be as effective as morphine in preventing withdrawal (“cold turkey”) when opiates are stopped in an addicted person.212, 326, 627 A variety of mental and physical factors were probably at work in the following example:
nique in medicine, dating from the period when the roles of priest and doctor were united in one person (e.g. shaman, tohunga, curandero, etc.) This person was believed to be able to enter realms, sometimes with the help of psychoactive plants, in which they would attempt to communicate with Gods, spirits, and ancestors for the benefit of the people, and they were occasionally believed to take the ill person into these realms with them. Mental health professionals are now sometimes called “secular priests,” their role being likened to the hearing of confessions and ministering to troubled souls. The origins of the word “cure” include both the care of souls and the treatment of disease.193 Mind-altering plants continue to play a role in healing in some cultures. For example, the peyote ritual is currently used as an aid in the treatment of alcohol dependence among American Indians. Hoasca (containing the drugs harmaline and DMT) is also used for this purpose in Brazil. The belief that inducing such states for therapeutic purposes was a misguided idea of the 1960s, now abandoned due to lack of efficacy and unacceptable risks, requires re-assessment.195 Some psychoanalysts continue to make extensive use of dream analysis and may hope that they themselves and the consulting room will become part of the client’s dream space. There are persons in analysis who sometimes find that the sessions can produce mildly altered states of being. The use of psychedelic drugs as an aid to healing by doctors in the United States and Europe was not a minor curiosity of the lunatic fringe. Between 1950 and 1970, there were well over 1,000 peerreviewed publications concerning the clinical use of LSD, in over 40,000 patients. There were more than 30 books published on psychedelic drug-assisted psychotherapy, and numerous international conferences were held. The purposes of such therapy included strengthening the therapeutic alliance, to aid diagnosis, to aid access to memories, and to achieve insight and the relief of symptoms. A wide range of conditions was treated, including anti-social behavior, alcoholism, obsessional neurosis, and the psychological problems of the dying.
I used ketamine to come off crack cocaine. Back in 1994 I found myself neck deep in a 400 pound (Sterling, not weight!) a day crack habit. I was 25 years old…I found myself smoking 7 to 10 grams of crack everyday…I realized that I had to do something about this problem. I kept on seeing myself drowning in a toilet, unable to scramble out. So, I went to India, took a bus to Manali, up in the Himalayan mountains. I locked myself away up there…the cold thin air brought on a lung infection…In desperation, I went to a chemist looking for Valium®, readily available without a prescription. The men in the shop told me about ketamine. “You western hippies love it,” he said…After 3 weeks I was snorting 6-inch lines of pure keti. I don’t remember much about it…the strongest hallucinations I’ve ever had…Then after 4 weeks of use I stopped taking keti. I’d forgotten about crack…I felt recharged and able to leave my bolthole and rejoin the human race…I haven’t smoked crack since 1994. K.U.
The Back Pages Through history, altered states of being have played a role in the healing of mind, body, and spirit. This is probably the oldest tech-
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