By Matthew Zerwic
I have been a psychonaut for a long time, but for an even longer amount of time, I have been mentally ill. My diagnosed mental illnesses can quickly be described as depression, anxiety, and OCD. I have suffered from mental illness since second grade. Mental illness has been a significant part of my life. These illnesses are not just illnesses. They are inherent parts of my character. For instance, a person with autism has unusually pointed/focused interests. As a result, some autistic individuals can be incredibly successful in areas they obsess over. As someone with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, I behave in very much the same way. My obsessions and interests define me. They are me. Do they not define you?
If you are interested in writing, read other people’s writing, and write for a living or hobby, doesn’t writing define who you are? Are you not a writer?
I am ascending, slowly, but ascending, from my deepest depression, a very severe depression. Perhaps, I am married to my mental illness, but I know that it has something to do with my brain and body—fundamentally architectural, chemical, and electrical. That being said, I still want to alter myself.
The alteration I speak of occurs via unusual means, but it is not all that different from the self-alteration from meditation, prayer, life experience, hard-work, etc. I will always be a person with depression, anxiety, and OCD, but I don’t have to always be depressed, anxious, and obsessive compulsive, just as someone with autism might always be shy but not necessarily always unable to make eye contact or new friends. The self-alteration I pursue cannot be reduced to personal growth, however. Truly, it cannot be reduced to anything. Well, I suppose it can. It can be reduced to a chemical. In this story in particular, it can be reduced to a white, crystalline powder that can be snorted or suspended in liquid and then injected. I prefer to let it be its own thing rather than put it in a box, unlike some others. Some call it horse tranquilizer, but I prefer to call it ketamine.
Ketamine truly is a horse tranquilizer, but it’s much more than that, like I said. It’s also used for cats and dogs. But going beyond that even, ketamine is used in battlefield medical kits, human surgeries, and to treat people’s pain. In recent years, ketamine has exploded in its use to treat people who suffer from chronic pain (physical) and mood disorders (emotional) like my own.
As a full-time resident of Iowa City, I receive my infusions in town at a ketamine clinic in Eastdale Plaza. Just to give you an idea where that is, the plaza is off of Highway 6 and also houses the DMV. When walking into the building for my consultation, I was impressed with the plaza’s architecture. It’s stave church-esque design, accompanied with the odd, modern, red paneling on the Java House across the street only added to the foreignness and strangeness of the psychedelic experience I was soon to embark on. After climbing up the rickety wooden stairs, an odd sprawling structure, I found my way to the Midwest Ketafusion’s waiting room. Still with the loud door chimes ringing through the air, I took a seat on one of the couches. As I was waiting, I heard screams from one of the patients, a not so comforting sign.
I dislike applying such terminology to myself, but I am an expert on the psychedelic. I have researched the drugs themselves and the experiences they produce extensively and have taken them on a number of occasions. Many people do not classify ketamine as a psychedelic, but after taking it, I can confirm that it very much is one. Therefore, I went into my infusion series with extensive knowledge, more knowledge of the experience than even the nurse anesthetists administering the drug to me. That being said, they are definitely more well-versed in the chemistry, pharmacology, and practical use of ketamine. Despite my knowledge on the subject, I was definitely scared of the prospect of taking ketamine. Perhaps, my knowledge was even the reason for my nervousness. I have seen some older people in the waiting room of the ketamine clinic. They definitely don’t know anything about ketamine or tripping. When the nurse anesthetists tell them they might feel a floating sensation or see some colors, they think they might feel a floating sensation or see some colors. Me on the other hand, I think I am going to have a bad trip. I am fully aware of the bad and the good that psychedelics can bring. Especially after taking ketamine, I know that it isn’t just floating or some colors. I have flown through the dark folds of my synapses, I have tumbled through space, I have ridden trains amongst the stars, and I have lived as South American Indian—just one of many lives I have experienced on ketamine.
“My depression is getting better. I don’t want to mess it up with ketamine.”
“I don’t want to have a bad trip.”
These were the thoughts running through my head when I sat in the office, waiting for my consultation, waiting for the woman to stop screaming.
After waiting nervously for some time, I was asked to fill out some forms by the receptionist. I then went back to an infusion room with Charlie, one of the nurse anesthetists and part owner of the clinic. We talked for a long time about why I was there, why I was interested in ketamine, what medications I take, and why the woman would scream from time to time as we talked. Charlie explained, without getting into too much detail, that the screaming woman was dealing with pain. In her case, chronic pain. She was also taking a much higher dose for much longer than the dose that I would be taking. I felt somewhat relieved by this, but by this time, I could already see that I had more knowledge than Charlie about the psychedelic experience. What he saw to be side-effects, indicators of a molecular effect occurring, I saw to be the therapy. When he speaks of colors and a floating sensation, I speak of an Odyssey—a life-changing voyage; “[a] man who comes back through the Door in the Wall [that] will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less cocksure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable Mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend” (Aldous Huxley – Doors of Perception).
When I left that appointment, I had six more scheduled. For the standard ketamine infusion protocol for mood disorders, patients are required to complete six infusions over a period of fourteen days. I would take my last final on Thursday, go to a concert at a country and western bar on Friday, and have my first infusion on Monday. Right after the semester ended, my infusions took place. Also, part of ketamine infusions is having a driver, someone to bring you to and from your ketamine appointment, someone who may also function as a tripsitter. Since you are getting not high as a kite but high to the point in which you become the kite, it’s best not to drive that day. My mom tripsat me four times, and my dad tripsat me two times.
I’ve written enough on the experiences that took place in those fourteen days to write a book. No, I’m serious. I wrote the Matthew Zerwic ketamine version of the Doors of Perception. I will be sure to keep it brief here but to do so would result in that kind of reductionism that I am none to fond of when it comes to psychedelics. Even so, I guess I did that with the writing I have previously done on the subject—trying to record and comment on the unfathomable Mystery which I try, forever vainly, to comprehend. What’s happening here is very much like what happens when a book becomes a movie, except this essay doesn’t star a more handsome version of myself who also has explosions and slo-mo to keep low-attention span audiences engaged.
That’s the part of the psychedelic experience I’d like you and everyone else to understand. The psychedelic experience is not a light show or a drug. The psychedelic is experiential. The business of the psychedelic is isness. It is best not retold, although some retellings can be psychedelic in their own right. The psychedelic experience can be experienced not just with drugs but when looking at a painting, listening to music, meditating, praying, or just doing. It is not the shiver down your spine, nor is it the vocal “a-ha” you send vibrating through the air. It is the shivering. It is the a-ha’ing.
To speak here about the psychedelic experience is almost worthless. It’s like being one of those insufferable talking heads. To think that you have really learned and are going to educate everyone by retelling what you saw is the act of not getting it. If one truly got it and wanted to share it, they would create a new psychedelic experience and not force the triangle and square-shaped pegs that are everyone else into your custom-made circle hole. To be psychedelic is to be in-touch. How the hell can you be in-touch when thinking what works for you must also work for someone completely different from you? C13H16ClNO might not work for everyone. Hell, the psychedelic experience in any of its forms might not be for everyone. However, if it can work for Mr. Scrooge, then I think the psychedelic experience has a pretty good chance at working for everyone.
No one will have the exact experience that I had. I was the “druggy” son that, through years of educating and talking openly to my parents about drugs, was able to get them to pay for and facilitate an expensive out-of-pocket procedure without any convincing. My mom told me to shut up and let the trip happen on Day 1, and she was right. On Day 4, my dad, a local VA psychologist, talked to the nurse anesthetists, ruining my trip. Little did they know, my mom was the person they’d be more interested in talking to. As a result of my killed trip, I was able to salvage a message and meaning. I advocated for myself, asking them to talk someplace else; I plainly and honestly told my dad that it brought me out of the trip, the thing that actually does the healing. Through my fear and anger over a lost experience, a loss that may mean a lack of improvement in my wretched illness, I was able to find forgiveness for the nurse anesthetists and my father. I had grown as a person that day. No one will ever have that experience, and if it were possible for someone to occupy my shoes and have that same experience, it wouldn’t mean anything to them because they lack the context that my life has given me. That experience was a psychedelic experience for me and me alone.
The psychedelic experience shows individuals that they are individuals. That they will die, and that will be okay. That horrible things could happen to them, but they will pass. That the world is made of the stuff of dreams. That nothing matters, yet somehow things do matter. That they can do it. It doesn’t matter if your drug of choice is Puritan prayer, ketamine, or The Jimi Hendrix Experience so long as you experience the psychedelic experience.
