Hey lovey bunnies!
Sorry for the clickbait title but I knew you probably wouldn’t open it otherwise! 😂
It actually isn’t clickbait though. It really is MDMA & Ketamine season, unfortunately. As I began writing this I already got like 4 people asking if I could help them find ket! Obviously, the article needs to be written now, because everyone is tired of me explaining everything a thousand times and in a lazy way.
Maybe you have heard of these two drugs which are almost mainstream now for those suffering from severe depression and PTSD?
I wonder, have you heard only positive things about them?
I’m writing this because I’ve heard a lot of negative things, but I have not heard negative things in most online forums. That’s a real mindfuck! Of course, the media demonized both of these until recently. Anyway, if you want a more balanced perspective on these drugs, read on. I’m not here to sell you on them, nor am I a D.A.R.E. teacher.
TL;DR: These drugs can be useful sometimes, but they suck in various ways. Haoma is a way better natural alternative that I promote.
Acknowledging Potential Benefits
Before we begin, I must acknowledge that when correct forms of these are used in proper therapeutic contexts, they have certain known benefits.
Relationship counseling/re-gluing
MDMA is often used for marital counseling, as it helps partners re-connect with the love they originally felt for each other, and also promotes some interpersonal vulnerability. Loveyhuasca can also function like this, but there is often less interpersonal vulnerability and more enjoyment of divine love without a felt need to connect with a partner (although that connection tends to happen at a certain point by itself as a result of wanting to share happiness). MDMA is so good at gluing people together that it’s famous for instigating marriages between strangers. My personal experience, however, was that it’s useless if you don’t already have basic trust established between partners.
Ketamine is less likely to be used for this purpose, since it tends to dissociate you from difficult feelings (you feel like they just don’t matter anymore), rather than giving you the ability to confront them. I have not personally heard of couples using ketamine for relationship counseling benefits, although I have heard of couples using ketamine in order to avoid feeling horrible while together.
Confronting Trauma
Like loveyhuasca, MDMA is often able to help people to revisit traumatic (and especially early traumatic) memories which otherwise would be hidden by the psyche… although the exact details of these memories might be faulty. Still, if the trauma is very deep, don’t expect it to be a cakewalk. It is often still extremely rough to confront this pain regardless of what medicine you take, and if you aren’t in a proper therapy session during this MDMA high, you might even get more traumatized by remembering things you were hiding from, without any help in processing them. For this reason, some people combine MDMA with ketamine, to make it even easier to confront the traumas, but that has its own additional set of risks.
Ketamine alone is less likely to be useful for directly confronting trauma, as it is a dissociative (pushing the trauma away, like heroin). Thus, while it’s quite useful as an anesthetic agent (especially local anesthetic) or an emergency measure against suicide, it is much less useful in therapeutic contexts.
Emergency antidepressant to prevent suicide:
Ketamine shines here. It may be my first choice if someone enters an emergency room and is actively trying to kill themself (but not on drugs that have dangerous interactions with ketamine, of course). A single dose is well-tolerated by most people, and can give a window of relief up to a week long. It does have a great addiction potential though, and can cause permanent psychosis & depression for heavy users, sometimes even after one dose.
MDMA is often used by people with chronic severe depression, but the happy feelings tend to be short-lived, often with a harsh comedown. However, like ketamine, MDMA can give the user a brief window into the possibility of a beautiful mind/heart/life, unless their trauma is really too deep, in which case ketamine might work better for this.
Hard to Find Good Stuff, and Even Then It Sucks
At the end of this article, I will give a bit more of a technical deep dive into why it’s so difficult to find good ketamine and MDMA these days. But here’s the rub. These drugs suck for a number of reasons, even in their ideal forms. Of course, individual experiences will vary, but what I’m saying is by and large accurate based on my observations.
No Teacher Component, Or Hard to Integrate
Unlike iboga, ayahuasca and loveyhuasca, these two drugs have no “teacher” in them to (50%) guide you. Because of this, they often encourage spiritual bypassing. It’s not that you can’t use them to heal with inner child therapy, but because the bliss comes so freely and easily, this therapy is often skipped.
The love you get from MDMA feels like something is just being forced on you “for no reason” other than that you took the drug and it is modifying your brain chemistry. There’s no spiritual awakening, no sense of a divine guiding presence, no teaching from the drug about how to access this state without drugs. No wisdom. It can be useful if you have a good therapist to work with while you’re “rolling” (high on MDMA), but by itself it doesn’t seem to help most folks, except momentarily.
Like benzos and opioids, ketamine and similar dissociative drugs can make all your problems vanish for some time, but they discourage resolving those “illusory problems.” With a K-Hole (high dose ket trip) people invariably say they learned the deepest things ever, but then they can’t remember what those things were, until they K-hole again. My friend “A” used to be a big ket dealer, and he noticed that ket ruined the lives of every single one of his hundreds of customers, in the same way that heroin does. Interestingly, opioid-blocking drugs also block a good part of the high you get from ketamine, so they aren’t really that far apart from each other.
Chronic Health Effects Compared
Chronic MDMA and ketamine use are both associated with significant long-term neuropsychiatric and physical health risks, but ketamine’s effects tend to include more severe structural brain changes and urological damage, while MDMA primarily impacts serotonergic neurotransmission and cognition.
MDMA: One Dose Ruins Lives, But Harm Can Be Avoided
MDMA has a tremendous potential for acute toxicity due to its narrow therapeutic index. From what I’ve learned, it seems to first deplete your magnesium levels (which you start noticing as jaw tension), then it depletes your potassium levels (which can lead to seizures and death), and since it makes you thirsty, it can also deplete sodium levels if you drink just water to hydrate.
If you supplement with enough magnesium chloride when you start to feel jaw tension (or jump into an epsom salt bath), and keep your body temperature low, chances are you won’t suffer the known neurotoxic effects unless your MDMA itself is not good. If you fail to prevent the neurotoxic effects, you can use dimethylsulfoxide to reverse them quickly (validated by a friend who OD’d).
I know a number of people who got semi-permanent (i.e. permanent without intensive and intelligent intervention) brain damage from one dose of MDMA:
One friend, “O,” only took 100mg MDMA, but because he was also supplementing with resveratrol (an antioxidant from grape skins), which blocked the CYP2D6 hepatic metabolism of MDMA, he essentially got a massive overdose crisis. It took him 9 years of experimenting with different approaches before he finally found the one thing that actually nearly cured his severe, MDMA-induced cPTSD.
“B,” who I was extremely close with, used MDMA daily for depression before she met me. It didn’t do that much after a while at 100mg or so, but it seemed better than nothing. Then, one day, her then-boyfriend asked her to take another pill since they didn’t dose at the same time and he wanted to be at the same level as her. Of course, the second pill, taken only 30 minutes later, caused an overdose. She began having seizures, at which point he seemed satisfied, and left. Luckily, a neighbor called 911 and she was given a lifesaving potassium IV drip. However, seizures continued for weeks after hospital discharge to a lesser degree. She felt that even years later she was still not functioning as she should.
MDMA can also destroy lives over time:
Andrew, and his partner Aron, were hosting MDMA cuddle puddle gatherings at their house for years. Over the years that I knew them, I noticed a precipitous decline in emotional and intellectual capacity. I also discovered they were dishonest.
Another ex-friend, Z, used MDMA for social connection (I think he had some level of autism, but he disagreed). He noticed it was causing reduced capacity for feeling good naturally the more he used it. He kept vowing to never use it again, but kept getting drawn back. He also has a pattern of attacking me and then apologizing, BPD-style.
Ketamine Chronic Toxicity & Harm Avoidance
While ketamine is not quite as dangerous as MDMA in the short-term (with some exceptions), it can be a lot more dangerous long-term for your organs. Many people are already aware that ketamine can cause permanent damage to the bladder and kidneys, forcing long-term addicts to painfully attempt frequent urination or go on dialysis or transplant lists. What’s less well-known is how it can cause more severe brain damage than MDMA when used frequently or at high doses for months or years.
My friend L is a great example of this. While many more lucky folks might just get decreased brain functioning, he got what appears to be a set of symptoms indicative of central sensitization, which is a painful condition spurred by glutamate excitotoxicity, along with some type of chronic disconnection from his body, mind, heart, reality (luckily not to the degree of complete schizophrenia, but he was heading in that direction). He has a slew of physical symptoms, but so far, doctors can’t find much physically wrong with him. I suspect severe leaky gut, but much of it could also be just the central sensitization. Ironically, ketamine is used to treat central sensitization, but just as with opioids for pain, chronic use/high doses can have the opposite effect.
This article by EcstaticIntegration.org has a lot of good background info on ketamine and its history.
I have advice on ameliorating the damage from ketamine here:
Why Do So Many Studies Seem to Praise MDMA & Ket Benefit vs. Risk Ratio?
Many people might look at this post and not take it seriously, because the science has been presented by the media lately as showing that both MDMA & Ketamine are “miracles” for trauma & depression, with manageable side effects. (Shoot, the richest guy in the world even angrily enjoys his ket, “as prescribed”!)
But the truth is, the science, as usual, is biased by the funders. Here is a list of publicly-known ketamine study fraud. And here is a list of publicly known MDMA study fraud (including MAPS therapists raping people in their trials, while MAPS ignored the crimes). No surprise that MAPS is controlled by CIA. Interestingly, out of all the controversial stuff I say, that’s the only thing I said which got banned from Substack, but still up on YT.
I already knew MAPS was conducting fraudulent studies, because their messaging in TED talks and studies was usually absurdly biased (although sometimes MAPS did mention that MDMA itself is not useful without therapy). MAPS even had a financial conflict of interest until it split with Lykos Therapeutics, marketing MDMA. And even without Lykos, they still have a conflict of interest, because their donors only fund them due to the hope they give for helping people with the drugs they promote.
As for ketamine studies, the Veterans’ Administration was embroiled in fraud and conflict of interest regarding its shared patents on ketamine treatments with Yale University. Hennepin County Hospital was one of the clinical trial centers for ketamine (and other drugs), and as it turns out, they were forcing the drugs on ER patients without consent, often killing them, and never got into trouble for it. I spoke with one person who was actually one of the involuntary patients in a VA-funded ketamine trial. He sued the VA for damages to his health, but wasn’t able to win, because the study was “triple-blinded” so that he couldn’t even prove that he was a part of it.
Do We Even Know What “Ketamine” & “MDMA” Are?
Before we talk about the pros & cons of these, it makes a little bit of sense to ask what they are! Does anyone even know? There’s a common wisdom among midwits that “LSD is LSD, MDMA is MDMA, Ketamine is Ketamine, Shrooms are Shrooms,” etc. But dig a little deeper and you’ll see that’s just not true. It’s yet another example of how most people are ignorant and arrogant. It’s always incredible to me that with even a few minutes of research or real-life experience, 99% of the stuff you hear can be proven false. To live in this world is to be gaslit.
This ain’t your Grandma’s MDMA
The amazing thing about MDMA is supposed to be that it opens your heart chakra to the max. It’s called an empathogen, and it’s the best known empathogen (loveyhuasca is lesser known, but in many cases can work even better). The good thing about opening the heart chakra is you can then process traumas in an easier way. The bad thing about it is you might marry someone you just met.
But these days, a lot of people notice that MDMA is maybe stimulating and euphoric, but it doesn’t blast the heart open. I previously read this Bluelight forum MEGA thread on “MDMA magic being gone.” It’s controversial, but if you read thru it I think you will come to the conclusion that while some people are losing the magic from MDMA after their first dose (and NAC can restore that magic), others lost the magic just because they got some “MehDMA” (which is most of MDMA these days, bad quality).
Here’s a Bluelight chemist who explains the various reasons for why MDMA (or any drug) might not have the same effects batch-to-batch, even if they test as the same molecule on GC/MS (standard lab test). Aside from impurities or enantiomeric ratios (R-MDMA is relaxing and neuroprotective but not euphoric at normal doses, S-MDMA is stimulating, toxic, heart-chakra blasting), s/he notes that the polymorphism, or the crystalline structure of the drug itself, can alter the effects profile (ever seen the X-ray powder diffraction analysis for your drugs? bet you haven’t)! That structure is determined by numerous factors, especially the final solvent used to extract and dry the drug (DCM being the best, perhaps, although also one of the most neurotoxic solvents). Paid subscribers will see Gemini’s summary of all the analytical techniques required.
What I have noticed anecdotally from talking to hundreds of MDMA users (and reading thousands of darknet reviews) is that most of them can’t tell good MDMA apart from bad MDMA. Maybe they never actually had the good stuff, or maybe they are just easily opened up by drugs in general. In fact, I only know one person (let’s call him D) who is extremely good at differentiating the various quality levels of MDMA. It’s only when you have a friend like this that you are able to really find the good stuff.
Even if you manage to find some really good MDMA, the issue is you can’t be sure you’ll be able to find that stuff again.
This Ain’t Your Grandpa’s Ketamine
In terms of batch-to-batch consistency, ketamine has all the same problems as MDMA, plus an additional one. What I have noticed is that there used to be a lot of high quality ketamine on the darknet right up until the point when it was legalized in USA for clinical depression. Coincidence? My guess is that when Big Pharma started seeing mega profits from selling ketamine for this new indication, they poisoned the well for illicit ketamine (most/all of which is being diverted from Pharma manufacturing plants, which makes it easy for them to do this). At this point, finding quality ketamine is extremely challenging.
Conclusion
These drugs do have some legitimate use cases, but most of the time there are better alternatives. Street drugs are always going to be appealing to people because of the reputation they have for providing a quick fix, and these are the therapy version of street drugs (and usually are literally sold on the street). I encourage people to make every effort not to get stuck in the downward spiral of dependency on toxic drugs like MDMA and ketamine, even if they have found some initial benefit from them. In most cases, loveyhuasca will be a better option.
Deep Analytic Techniques
Below, I will show my guided Gemini Pro Deep Research analysis on all the analytical techniques needed to really understand a drug. Only Big Pharma and top universities and rich governments can attain this.
