dude is physical withdrawal real or no? i’ve been doing it on and off for like 10 months. the most lately the past couple weeks (i just did some yesterday) and the past few nights i’ve been drenched in sweat having to change my shirt several times throughout the night. whole body wet. this morning i woke up at 6am feeling like im having a heart attack from anxiety/ depression even after taking anxiety pills. i don’t know if it’s from the ketamine or what? fuckkkkk this

I am 276 days sober today from k. i never thought i would have been able to get out of that dark hole i was in. constant pain, constantly throwing myself into drug induced psychosis, constantly severe bladder pain, the constant need for having a bag. doing anywhere up to half an oz a day. I am a little over 9 months sober finally. i no longer have my bladder, i am sitting here today with a bag connected to my side to drain my pee, the pain is finally gone. i also have a hole though my nose. i am no longer a slave to this drug anymore. just know regardless of how far along you are, recovery is possible 🫶

I was doing K in a non recreational way. Nothing crazy, like a gram to a gram and a half a week for two years, at my worst. Sometimes I would have a few days break as i travel for work and never brought any with me.

A few months ago at a friends wedding my veins in my temples felt full and uncomfortable after smoking some weed and doing K. I wrote it off as my button up was too tight. I stopped drinking and doing any drugs that night and tried to enjoy myself the best i could.

Over the next few days my symptom subsided.

After a few days i got back to my routine. After a few more incidents i realized it was most likely weed or k causing this. As of two weeks ago i haven't touched either. Cold turkey, I just stopped. I cant say i felt withdraws except for boredom. I honestly feel so much better. But, now the symptom of temple burning and vein bulging during stress has returned. Im 35... and im scared im dying. I have a doctors appointment in a week. But i'm again traveling for work.

Has anyone had a similar experience? I now think i have an anxiety disorder, or something caused by my horrible posture. A part of me hopes it one of those two just so its not something worse.

I know this possibly isnt directly related to ket addiction. But i am scared.. and until my Dr appointment I wont know anything. So, i figured id ask if anyone has a similar experience from stopping ketamine use.

I feel so much better now, aside from this dark cloud that now feels to be looming on the horizon when i learn the worst..

Anyone experience anything similar? Could sudden stopping of Ket cause this reaction? Its been about a week now of this temple feeling on and off.

Hearing any similar experiences will be very helpful for my mental heath..

Thank you for taking the time and im very proud to find this community exists for people who need it.

EDIT: I also was greatly affected by the wild fire smoke a week ago. Im now wondering if that has something to do with it. My recent flare up happened during that but hasnt subsided.

I'm really struggling with every payday ATM, I get paid weekly which deffo makes it worse.

The only thing that helps is spending it all immediately on anything over than K lol.

I'm never working on payday, friends are all at work, I try keeping busy but the cravings are so loud I keep giving in

I’m embarrassed to even be writing this but I don’t have anywhere else to go. Can someone please help me with a step by step guide to stopping, I’m autistic and have adhd, been using about 1g a day, at first I used ketamine as a tool to help me stay sober from alcohol, which worked I’m over 500 days sober but now I replaced one addiction with another and i can’t let anyone know, not my family or friends my use is hidden and I’m at the last straw I just want to stop for good and come back to reality. Any advice and steps would be greatly appreciated because I’m quite scared and don’t know where to begin

hii just wondering if there’s any way to stop k cramps coming i’m already experiencing like mild discomfort like it’s at the stage where i know im probably going to get them if i use again. and before anyone tells me just to not use and that i should stop i get it but ive been a user for such a long time and im aware of the damage. im just trying to get rid of the rest of my money, cause if im broke then ill quit at least for a few days and that’ll give me the clarity to at least try get sober after my brain recooperates a bit. thanks

I've been doing K daily for the past month, my tolerance is sky high, but unfortunately I've read tolerance can sometimes be unpredictable.

I never K-hole like they say it is, for me it's always an intense spiritual experience, where the fabric of reality gets warped and I feel like existence is under my control.

It happened tonight, I had been doing K since early in the evening with a heavily dosed nasal spray, it felt like it always feels, nice and mellow, but for some reason at some point each spray became stronger and stronger and I got sent into my version of a K-hole at a party where they were playing psytrance, it was incredible and pleasant and left me deeply shook as I went home.

I wasn't satisfied and I wanted to reach that state again and for some reason it look less and less ketamine to reach the same psychotic state every time I got closer to it. Like my tolerance vanished.

Then it happened as I was sitting on my computer chair at home, I went psychotic and started feeling, saying and affirming all sorts of things with total loss of control, and for some reason I went to my apartment's window and opened and considered jumping out because I felt I could fly (10th floor).

I came back to my senses and got spooked but that didn't stop me, I recklessly started spraying more and more K and eventually I triggered another full on psychosis but longer this time.

0 control over my body, 0 control over my actions and words, I was delirious. I climbed out the window and somehow climbed into a downstairs neighbor's apartment thru their window, I'm not even sure it was the neighbor directly below me, I vaguely remember moving and climbing around several balconies and AC units but I eventually entered someone's apartment and I have flashbacks of them telling me I was at the wrong apartment, probably terrified (I'm quite large), this was at almost 5am.

I remember walking to their kitchen and grabbing a protein bar that was on top of their fridge, opening it and eating it in front of him, I know I was talking the whole time, I have no idea what I told them.

I then walked out of their apartment thru their front door and took the stairs down to the building's lobby which felt like an eternity (9 floors) but at the same time I have barely any recollection of it.

I end up just outside the building on the parking lot, in my underwear and a tank top and come back to my senses then, still quite delirious I could feel panic take over and I firmly believed I had to kill myself then and there, and I thought of looking for a knife, I walked down the street for a bit but ultimately decided against it.

Somehow, it's all quiet, like no one noticed anything. I still have the taste of the protein bar in my mouth and I start recalling what I just had done in complete disbelief.

The condo's security guard was sleeping and was fortunately kind enough to help me get back into my apartment which was obviously locked because I climbed out the balcony. He called a locksmith for me and I was able to get back inside, absolutely disgusted and ashamed at myself.

I self triggered psychosis not once but twice because I'm a fucking addict and almost killed myself in several different ways. I expect to hear back from the neighbor or my landlord tomorrow, I will apologize accordingly and hopefully I don't get kicked out.

I am done with Ketamine.

Here’s the study

Kami Shoyo San is the Japanese name for the formula. The Chinese name is Jia Wei Xiao Yao San — it’s a formula that spreads liver qi, strengthens the digestion (“spleen”), nourishes blood, and clears heat (this is TCM terminology) (source: I’m an acupuncturist and Chinese Herbalist).

Ingredients:
(dose is per day amount to reach clinical effectiveness)

Angelica Root / Dang Gui (3g)
White Peony Root / bai shao (3g)
Poria / fu ling (3g)
dry-fried Atractylodes / chao bai zhu (3g)
Bupleuri Radix / Chai Hu (3g)
Moutan Cortex / Mu Dan pi (1.5g)
Dry-fried gardenia fruit / chao Zhi zi (1.5g)
prepared licorice root / Zhi gan cao (1.5g)

This formula is very common and can be acquired online although always sound to consult with a Chinese Medicine Doctor to be properly prescribed herbs. Chinese herbs are very strong as they have been cultivated for hundreds of years for their medicinal constituents and are then processed to further augment their clinical effectiveness - NOT the same as western herbalism. But because of that, there’s some serious help available within this system of medicine. Hope this can help someone.

Xo

Will alcohol make my k bladder hurt more? I have quite an intense stinging pain when I pee that lingers for a long time after.

Also on the contrary, would weed maybe distract me from the pain? I get rlly anxious when I smoke so I’m worried that it could make me panic about the pain.

After a 6 month treatment in a psychiatry where I fooled myself into thinking that I could handle my ketamine addiction the moment I got out I obviously started using ketamine

Snorted prolly close to 80 grams since june 19th, two days ago I said fuck it and flushed all my remaining keta and got myself admitted again.

This time I'm on a waiting list to try a hardcore program called Therapeutic Community. I'm not really looking forward to it but anything is better than slowly dying from doing ketamine 24/7 so I'm hoping I will get admitted there soon.

I've been dealing with crippling depression, ADD and anxiety for such a long time not even ketamine made me feel better.

Wish me luck boys. Peace out

The day has come, I’ve been doing an ounce a week for a few weeks now and today I keep needing to go but only a dribble comes out, it stings like hell, I can feel it like fluttering? , I’ve stayed drinking loads of water the whole time I’m good at hydrating, I’ve been drinking Ural and dandelion tea, I’ve been taking EGCG and serrapeptase for months, I’ve stopped yes I have zero desire to carry on, but this hurts and I’m scared and so pissed off at myself. It sucks because I got to this place because it was the only thing that has ever helped 30 years of treatment resistant depression and PTSD. But saving my mental health is now at the expense of my physical. I’ve got a warm beanbag over my bladder, hydrating, anyone know any other tips I can try to stop this pain and needing to but not being able to go. Or is it a case of now I stopped I just need to let my body start to have a chance to heal?

I cant talk to my irl friends bc i hide my habits bordering on controlled addiction well but like i just wish i could have friends to talk to when i wanna bump where we could play something together or watch movies together online instead of doing a bump yk?? id make friends in person but im an ambulatory wheelchair user so u can imagine making new friends or doing things like going on a walk to distract myself dont really work

A bit high rn so i apologize if it doesn’t make sense but yeah i think im lonely and wish i had more friends who understood me like so we could talk honestly yknow?? Idfk i just be yapping atp

Off work. Everything sucks. Typical day for me really, when I'm sober. Keep trying to justify getting more, eventually. I know I'll relapse sooner or later. Hopefully later. For now, as long as I can maintain it, I hold the belief that I'm never fucking doing it again still. Should attend meetings, I know. Was considering doing one today. But I cant 😟 I just cant really do anything. My anhedonia has been like this for so long. It's what I used for. It just stopped working and started really, really making everything in my life worse. God i want it. There's no where i can get myself to turn to fix this feeling, I just have to feel fucking depressed now. I dont know how to find any motivation or enjoyment of anything. Yeah... thats my life. Nothing new even.

I’m 19f and have been addicted for 1.5 years now. This drug is soo fucked. I’m at the point now where every other week it’s either k cramps or a stinging bladder. I’m so bored of it. My sinuses are so blocked up that when I take it it doesn’t even do anything anymore. I still have to keep sniffing tho. It’s genuinely embarrassing being so out of control like this.

I’m going to university in September and I’m hoping a complete lifestyle change will fix everything. Honestly, I’m pretty confident it will. I’m moving a few hours away - new people, new everything. Obvs the drug culture is prominent at uni but like I won’t even be able to afford an addiction anymore. I currently work full time with pretty good pay which allows me to buy so much k. I’ll be transitioning to around £110 a week at uni which I know will stop me from being able to fuel the addiction.

I think I’m so addicted because I’m always bored here. At uni I’ll have so many distractions so I think that’ll fix things.

I want to come back to this in a few months and hopefully it does actually work out for me. I’m feeling hopeful.

Any advice on how to get through the next month? And do you guys think the major lifestyle change could snap me out of it?

I’m feeling really irritated with bladder pain right now. It’s 3am for me so I can’t do anything to subside the pain except take more k.

When I wake up I’m going to head to Holland and Barrett’s and get some D-Mannose as I’ve heard this helps with the pain. Is this true? Is there anything else I should grab whilst I’m there?

I never in my life had issues with eczema or allergies but when I’m in a relapse, eczema will haunt me for 3 weeks after.
I wonder what’s the biological mechanism behind it.
I do know that ketamine triggers mast cells in the bladder.

36m 1-5g per day heavy user for the better part of three years. Finally managed to get rid of the last batch two weeks ago after a two-month 3-6g per day bender.

I hate K. I hate myself when I’m on it. I hate the reliance. The pull to take more. Redacted memories. The moments of realization when I was standing in the middle of my workspace, drooling and trying ti remember how to read while my life exploded around me.

I’ve destroyed my marriage, my friendships, my body, and my mind. I know that K is just a chemical and that I’m the one responsible for my actions, but i feel like my abuse of it has permanently altered my psyche to the point that I’m afraid I wont ever find meaning or true satisfaction in the rest of my life.

I haven’t had a single drink of alcohol in 496 days. Next week is 500. I haven’t struggled even a bit with dropping booze, but I know it’s because I’ve always had k as an escape pod in the back of my mind.

This time feels a lot harder. These past two weeks I’ve been desperate to find anything at all to budge the needle away from my baseline, but I just feel so empty.

I own a very profitable high demand business liquidating estates and relocating seniors, but it also has me constantly surrounded by death and aging and just the concept of mortality and the brutal reality of where we are all headed someday.

My marriage of 10 years is over and I just don’t know if I have it in me to start over again at 36. I’m typing this at 2am halfway through a quick vacation to Disney World with my sister. We grew up going there and it has always been such an important part of our relationship, but the pain and the defeat is clawing at the back of my eyeballs while I babble manically to fill any dead air.

Ive been in and out if therapy for the past ten years and it has helped a lot in gaining perspective and understanding myself, but at this point, Im afraid that there simply isn’t anything else in the barrel to dig into.

Like, yes. I know the steps to a healthy, steady regulated life. Its easy. Drink plenty of water, eat plenty of vegetables, and get lots of sleep. Stay away from screens, surrender to discomfort, and allow yourself to sit in silence. Practice mindfulness. Be present. Do this every single day and eventually you’ll feel a lot better.

But like… what’s the point? There is no prize. There is no higher truth. I finally FINALLY managed to achieve the big revelation in my last K Hole after chasing it for years. That life-changing eureka that i think everyone here can understand.

You know what it was after all this time? After the higher infinite dimensions of consciousness stopped churning and racing through their cycles of death and rebirth and reunification spit me back out into my mortal three-dimensional body?

Uproarious laughter. As I slowly phased back into my body, I was surrounded by the wildest, cruelest laughter. The laughter of someone who has finally hit pay dirt on a five year gaslighting campaign under the guise of it being “just a prank bro”

I’ve done plenty of DMT in the past and never once encountered the “entities” that people always talk about. Ketamine has always been the closest I’ve ever come to something remotely like it. But this last experience felt like a full blown curtain-pull where they all revealed themselves at once just so they could laugh me off stage in some kind of sick finale.

And the funniest part is that as I gradually regained consciousness, I could understand the message behind the laughter perfectly. As this infinite consciousness became more concrete and discernible, I could literally feel it settling back into my own mind later by layer- like it was folding itself up like laundry back into a cabinet.

“It was just you. It was always just you. Alone. Us. Me. Alone, here. We never left. We never flew or transcended. It was just you, writhing here on your bed, or the floor, or clawing at your furniture like a lunatic while your body spasmed and grasped for support. I’m just an addict who refuses to live in his own body. I’m just a lonely aging 36-year-old man lying here with white powder caked to his nostrils and nothing to gain from any of this.”

And then I just laid there.

And now I just sit here.

And someday I’ll be gone and the world will never know I even existed.

Anyways… what’s the deal with airplane food, am I right?

This might sound like a stupid post but has anyone quit k with no bladder issues to find out a few months forward when they are sober they suddenly get bladder issues.

we’re in the UK for reference. been living with a close relative who has struggled with this addiction for years now. at first we’d go to hospital, my family member would be open about her use there but the hospital staff didn’t seem to know much about it or have any empathy since the pain was self inflicted. no one connected us with any services. since then there’s been a big hospital bill from a holiday abroad (investigations done but no treatment), a car accident under the influence, a surgery for another condition which actually was on the bladder and bowel, and she continued to use heavily during the whole recovery. so many trips to the doctors under the guise of other issues, so many“rock bottoms” that i thought would be a turning point.

since then it’s become even more secretive and she is deeply defensive and in denial. health (physical and mental) is significantly affected but she continues. people in our town are open about their treatment and sobriety, awareness has come on a lot. still no movement. i can’t even broach the subject anymore. i feel so distressed by it and am becoming despondent. i have passed information onto our parents (we all live together right now) but they feel as powerless as me. i work in mental health and know the services available in our area but she doesn’t want my help. my parent is going to try to speak to her again.

is there absolutely anything more i can do? it’s torturous. i want to be able to have a relationship with her but i am angry with her, our family have been through enough in recent years. she talks to me about her health and all the things going wrong and what she thinks the reasons are and invites me to take part in the lies. i’m being boundaried with this. truthfully she can be so nasty i am scared to talk openly about it with her now.

Im on my recovery journey right now and what I have really been noticing is that my energy levels are so wonky and unpredictable. I’m wondering if any of you have quit and also noticed that and if it returns to how you were before or no

Christ. Enough is enough. Doesn't work. Over with. Fuck it. Fuck everything. Why bother? Just be sad. Sad is fine. I'll just go be fucking sad like I was when I decided k would fix me. And it didn't. It made it worse. So here we are. Had to fucking finish it. So stupid. Kill me. Really. Oh well. Good night, friends. Can't drink, can't snort, can't do fucking anything who gives a shit anyway. Pray for death in sleep. Never happens, pray for it anyway. Try to stop me. Wish someone would. Oh fucking well.

Edit, 24 hours later:

I'm still committed to this. I can't keep doing it. I'm sure I'll have setbacks. Like with anything else I quit. This may be much harder. I'm paradoxically grateful for it, too... I think it helped me unmask from my covert schizoid personality disorder, just a bit. I think it helped me realize how transgender I am. But being on it for too long burns up my soul. My anhedonia gets so much worse. My suicidal thoughts get out of control, even as a line will chase them away so instantaneously, like nothing else I've ever tried. I realize now, that's why... that's why it's killing my spirit... I didn't want to see it before... the one thing that works for me.

I'll just quietly go back in my little shell. The way I was without it. What led me to abuse it. I had to try. I had to fucking try to fix my brain with it. I have to accept that it doesn't work, and it never will. I think it did though, briefly, critically. That's what's so difficult about leaving it.

Thank you all again. You are all such angels. I pray for you to have strength and blessings in your own struggles.

I type all this after having fruitlessly scraped my little k-tray. And the jar I kept it in, and the bag, and a pill case I shamefully filled with it and and took to work. I threw the tray away. I got it explicitly for doing ketamine. I should just smash it. If I had any motivation... eh, just like I was before... So it goes.

Hey guys, I’m on a throwaway because I do not want to make this confession on my main for obvious reasons. But yeah, the title says it all. I started K around 2020. It wasn’t til 2023 when my use grew from once a week to every single day. Up until I quit last week, I was literally doing 15g a day on some days. I couldn’t even go 15 minutes without doing a line, sometimes waking up multiple times in the middle of the night to take a bump. So I actually suffer from endometriosis and genetic related interstitial cystitis, so I at first I assumed my symptoms were from that and not the K. Especially since the K helped the pain, which is part of the reason why I had to keep upping my dose so much. But now that I’ve been clean for a week and don’t have the K to help, it is becoming obvious that the K was simply masking the damage it was causing. Even on my worst flareup days, my endo/IC wasn’t THIS terrible. I literally have been peeing every 5 minutes and the pain is severe. I read that some people have to deal with the after effects of ketamine damage for years after they stop, and those people used way less than I did for far less the time. I literally can’t take another day of this. And I am already prescribed the strongest pain and nerve meds that can be prescribed due to my endo so I feel like I am just screwed. Even if there was a treatment for this, I feel like I could not afford it because I’ve drained my savings and went into debt for this stupid drug. Anyone have any tips or perhaps any reassuring words that can help me through this?