Comment by ozzmotik | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ozzmotik | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

i personally think arylcyclohexamines and really just NMDA antagonists in general have a large amount of untapped therapeutic benefit, especially for individuals suffering from depression otherwise resistant to other forms of treatment. perhaps it's slightly anecdotal but in my experience, a daily to semidaily 150mg dose of memantine combined with cannabis prn as an anxiolytic is pretty much the most effective dosing strategy I have found to control my depression, anxiety, and lapses in attention. however i certainly don't recommend it for others, at least with that high of a memantine dosage because with its insane metabolic half life (60+ hours) it really conpojnds heavily. not to mention a therapeutic dose of memantine for what it's prescribed for (controlling dementia symptoms) is generally like 5-10mg. but I will say if you have the fortitude for it, it's a wonderful experience. you just have to be willing to essentially exist in a 24/7 state of moderate to heavy dissociation and not be too predisposed to panic because ive certainly seen heavy dissociative experiences to be quite anxiogenic for those who don't really get down with that. but I'd certainly suggest regular memantine usage over my old practice of constant high doses of dxm :V

I could have written this paragraph about 15 months ago, at the tail end of attempting to manage my depression with various cocktails of research dissociatives and nootropics.

I've been sober for over a year, and it's now amazing to me how completely terrible my self-perception was. I was laser-focused on measuring my mood and focus and completely blind to my intensely addictive substance use. I made a lot of dangerous choices. The same substances that can heal in small doses are recreational in large ones, and it takes a lot of self control to stay on the right side of the line.

I have had a lot of experience with psychedelics, stimulants, cannabis, and dissociatives. I respect the substances and value my experiences greatly. I believe there is no bad drug, just bad uses of drugs.

Here is a message I wrote to The Listserve in the middle of my using: https://thelistservearchive.com/2016/03/27/methoxetamine-dip...

And here's one I wrote after about 8 months of sobriety: https://thelistservearchive.com/2017/10/16/oblivion/

Have you tried ketamine? Not just for recreation, but as a possible treatment. It definitely is not going to last 60+ hours, more like .75-1.25hr, but it may be useful for acute symptoms. But if you approach an anesthetic dose it is quite enjoyable and calming, especially if you're already accustomed to psychedelic/narcotic experiences and the like.

i have tried it intranasally and it was certainly not the worst experience I ever had but I believe what I had to be of not the best quality as I went through 500mg in about 3-4 hours and didn't feel much other than a minor alteration. i think if it were still possible to find the original formulation of it, methoxetamine would be highly preferable, that was a very powerful experience when I got to try that out.

Translation: I snorted a very large amount over a very short space of time but didn't get much of a buzz out of it.

https://erowid.org/chemicals/ketamine/ketamine_dose.shtml says that 100-250mg produces "the K hole" (depends on body weight) so 500mg over a fairly short period sounds like quite the dosage. That you felt only a mild alteration suggests that either you have quite the tolerance for substances or that what you tried was not in fact ketamine. Also, it appears to me that you're deploying clinical language to mask recreational drug use which could be for our benefit or yours, I can't tell which.

i wouldn't be inclined to say that my choice of verbiage is to have any intent of masking the action or the nature of it. that's just how I generally talk about things. i feel like it leaves less up to interpretation and sort of solidifies the message I'm trying to communicate. which it did as your summary of what I had to say confirms.

also: i can't confirm if it was or wasn't actually ketamine. but i know that I experienced something, just nothing significant. I believe many dissociatives present a cross tolerance with each other and I was heavily tolerant to dxm at the time from heavy usage, so that may possibly have contributed to my tolerance, along with a certain level of inherent tolerance that my mind and physiology express when it comes to mind altering substances. which, and forgive me for sort of changing the topic, but that just sucks

Reply on news.ycombinator.com