Re:The Curious Life and Mind-Altering Death of Justin Clark
by lewispollard on Thursday February 24, 2022 @12:53PM
(#30457885)
Right on. It was reading "Journeys Into the Bright World" (and reading about the author's death) that helped me to end my abuse of ketamine, which by that point had become a daily habit.
Dissociatives (e.g., ketamine, nitrous oxide, xenon, phencyclidine, dextromethorphan in cough syrup) are too addictive, too pleasurable, and reliably produce long-lasting delusional states (e.g., as observed in John C. Lilly and Marcia Moore and Tony Hsieh).
It is disturbing to read Marcia Moore's "Journeys Into the Bright World" (http://pdf.textfiles.com/books/journeysbrightworld.pdf) where she recounts that John C. Lilly warned her to stop using ketamine. She died in the woods not long afterward, hypothermia after injecting ketamine, trying to hide her addiction from her family. John C. Lilly himself went clean after decades of delusion, but never fully recovered, mentally.
For a frank summary of the dangers, see D. M. Turner's "The Essential Psychedelic Guide". Before he died in his bathtub (after injecting ketamine), he wrote the following (https://www.ketamine.co.uk/dmturner/index.html):
So, all the dissociative psychedelics (NMDA receptor antagonists) seem to be bad. They should be avoided.On the other hand, there are other classes of psychedelics that are unambiguously good: tryptamines (e.g., psilocybin) and phenethylamines (e.g., mescaline). These drugs produce informative, useful, introspective, challenging mental states and are NOT prone to abuse. These are the valuable psychedelics.