INTELLIGENCER THE CUT V U LT U R E GRUB STREET T H E S T R AT E G I S T THE MAGAZINE SUBSCRIBE SIGN IN

F E AT U R E A Party Drug for the End of the World 13

F E AT U R E N O V. 2 1 , 2 0 1 9

Leave Your Body at

the Door How
ketamine became the
drug of choice for
our dissociated
moment.
By Anna Silman

Photo: Hero Images Inc./Getty Images/Hero Images

This article was featured in One Great Story, New York’s reading MOST VIEWED STORIES
recommendation newsletter. Sign up here to get it nightly.
1. The Single Biggest Difference
Between Parents and People
t was well past the hour for getting trashed, but James still couldn’t Who Don’t Have Kids

I switch o his work-brain. The -year-old had come straight to the

party from the o ce, and despite the array of Friday-night delights his
friends thrust at him — cheap beer, crumbly coke, a hit of a rare mango Juul
2. The Beauty Exec Fantasizing
About the Single Dad Next
pod — his mind was still stuck at his job. Then his friend — the kind of Door
friend who carries a coke-spoon on her like it’s an EpiPen — o ered him a
bump of ketamine.
3. Madame Clairevoyant:
Horoscopes for the Week of
“Nothing that I’d heard about ketamine sounded appealing to me,” recalls
December 2
James, who had tried it before in tiny doses, just enough to feel a bit loopy
and drowsy. “But something in my mindset switched that night, and I was
just like: fuck it, I’ll just go wild and plunge full in, and I took the biggest 4. Here’s How You Should Really
bump of K I’d ever taken.” Apply Foundation

Technically speaking, ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic, meaning that it 5. The Things I Shrugged Off
numbs your body and makes you feel apart from your environment — like Then, Horrify Me Now
you’re watching your own life happen instead of living it. But that doesn’t
begin to capture the weirdness of what it feels like to get high on K. As one
friend put it to me: “It’s like walking from your kitchen to your living room,
and from your living room to your kitchen, and it’s uphill both ways, but
you’ve never had so much fun walking up a hill.” It’s true that K can make
both you and the world feel tilted — as if you’re walking on an underwater
treadmill pitched at a -degree incline. Thought-trains jump their tracks,
anxieties oat o like helium balloons, and everything becomes silly and
warped, like lming a movie through a camera with a sh-eye lens. At least,
that’s one possible outcome.

Ketamine has a triple-threat of sedative, stimulating, and psychedelic

e ects, which vary depending on how much you do and what other
substances you combine it with. “It’s just a very strange drug — the strangest
drug,” Dr. Joseph Palamar, an NYU professor and expert in recreational
substances told me recently. It’s also extremely potent; the di erence
between a goofy buzz and total body paralysis could be as little as one or two
baggie-dips. If every generation of partiers gets the drug that speaks to them
— the psychedelic ’ s, the coke-and-disco-fueled ’ s, and the MDMA-
hued early aughts — then perhaps the end of the decade marks the dawn of
the dissociation generation.

Since that night a few months ago, James has joined

a growing number of young professional New
And these days, who Yorkers who are trading their white baggies of coke
really wants to for white baggies of ketamine, or simply mixing
spend their free them both together (he and his friends call this
time doing a bunch mixture “revolutionary lines,” while others refer to
BEST OF THE CUT
them as Calvin Klein lines, so named for the combo
of uppers and
of C and K). While the sideways-ness of K may not A Joyful Testament to Middle
talking about the seem like the most intuitive replacement for the Age
news? pure up of cocaine, both substances can be
de brillators for parties on life-support; dosed right, BravoCon Pickled My Brain in
K has a stimulating e ect that can keep an after-party going into the wee Rosé Pepsi
hours of the morning. Like coke — and unlike MDMA or psychedelics — the
e ects of snorting ketamine subside in less time than it takes to watch your
Cobie Smulders Is the Grungy,
average Net ix special, and rarely cause a hangover if consumed in
Bisexual P.I. That TV Has Been
moderation. (One New York drug dealer sells a gram for about half the price
Waiting For
of coke, and it lacks cocaine’s stigma as a source of cartel violence and
environmental destruction). Most importantly, instead of fueling anxiety
and heated close-talk, it makes you feel like you’re giving your brain a bath Margiela Finally Comes Out of
Hiding
in a pool of warm macaroni. “Coke brings this intensity to everything,” says
James. “K does the opposite — it provides this looseness, and the feeling that
things really aren’t signi cant.” And these days, who really wants to spend ‘The Meanie, the Lightweight,
their free time doing a bunch of uppers and talking about the news? the Crazies, and the Angry,
Dissembling Elitists’
For James that night at the party, what rushed over him was a sense of
SEE ALL
strange wonder. “There was something profound and spiritual about it,
where I was having an alternative perception of the world in which time and
space had di erent qualities, and the world didn’t seem real,” he recalls. His
limbs felt as heavy as sandbags, and he struggled to drag them the feet
from the living room to the kitchen. Eventually — in what he thinks was
probably minutes but felt like an hour — the intensity wore o , but a
feeling of pleasurable lopsidedness remained. “I felt this sort of ongoing
euphoria and silliness that I hadn’t felt since childhood.” What resulted was
one of the most fun nights of his life. He and his friends turned the living
room into a sweaty dance party, contorting their faces like Plasticine and
ailing their limbs like those in atable tube men at a used-car lot. “It wasn’t
like when you’re drunk when you feel really out of control. I felt like I could
completely be ridiculous and that would be liberating.” He left the party and
walked the entire minutes back to his house, feeling calm, at peace, and
happy to be alive. And he had totally forgotten about his crappy day at the
o ce.

“We’re all so overwhelmed, it makes sense that we’re literally taking

dissociatives,” adds Claire, , a Brooklyn lmmaker, whose group of friends
— primarily queer women — have adopted ketamine as their drug of choice
in the past few years. “We don’t have time to be hungover, everybody is
exhausted, and pulled in so many di erent directions. It’s the peak of
distraction culture.” In , escaping isn’t just something you do for fun;
it’s a survival tactic at a time where the world feels so inescapably stressful
and out of control. We spend our days being force-fed the unrelenting news
cycle — with its heady brew of climate crisis, political chaos, and
technological dystopia — then binge TV at night like a sedative. Meanwhile,
it’s harder than ever for our minds to take a night o . The internet has MOST VIEWED STORIES

eroded the boundary between home and work; even going on vacation
1. The Single Biggest Difference
provides little respite when you’re still trapped in your phone’s glowing orbit.
Between Parents and People
Who Don’t Have Kids
But ketamine puts life on airplane mode. “Phones aren’t really a thing when
you’re on K,” adds Claire. “You’re creating an internal world. You’re not
trying to reach out or engage with anyone but yourself and who you’re with.” 2. The Beauty Exec Fantasizing
About the Single Dad Next
Door

Ketamine was patented in the U.S. in for use as an anesthetic, and was
3. Madame Clairevoyant:
approved by the FDA in . Its relative safety and e cacy has made it a
Horoscopes for the Week of
mainstay in operating rooms around the world, as well as in veterinary December 2
medicine (because of its reputation as a horse tranquilizer, one recreational
user said his group of friends refer to it as “pony medicine” and greet its
4. Here’s How You Should Really
arrival at a party with a chorus of neighs.) Like any drug, risks abound:
Apply Foundation
heavy use can lead to chronic bladder and urinary tract damage, while high
doses can cause signi cant cognitive impairment which have led to a
handful of highly publicized deaths in the U.K. and elsewhere, often from 5. The Things I Shrugged Off
accidents like falling or drowning. Still the World Health Organization says Then, Horrify Me Now
overdoses are rare, and it has a lower dependence potential than drugs like
ca eine, marijuana, MDMA, and alcohol. Most of the stigma comes from
the cultural lore of the “K-hole” — the full dissociative experience that
ravages your speech capabilities and motor functions and can make you feel,
as James did, like he’d entered another dimension. Whether this feels
pleasurable depends on your taste in altered states. As Norman Cook, a.k.a.
Fatboy Slim, said in a Muzik article: “Get the quantity right and it’s
incredible. Get it wrong and you feel like you’re dying.”

Then again, for some experienced psychonauts, K-holes are the whole point.
-year-old Luke, a oppy-haired Canadian with a goofy grin, signed up to
volunteer at a music festival guiding people through bad trips. But before he
did it, he wanted to see what the experience of K-holing might be like, so he
got his friend to call him on Skype, and then snorted half a gram of
ketamine in one line (which is a lot). “Within seconds it’s coming almost
up my feet and up my body; everything’s tingling. And in the instant that it
reaches my head, the entire world ceases to exist. Everyone I knew was gone,
but for some reason I was very complacent. I was just a ball of energy in a
galaxy far far away, and from there I was kind of watching worlds and
societies form in fast motion. It basically ended with me kind of waking and
coming to in the shower naked half an hour later.” Then he remembered the
friend he had called on Skype. “Apparently I just said ‘I’m out, good night,
the world doesn’t exist, good-bye family.’ And then I started taking o my
clothes.”

Like most new substances, as soon as K was

invented, people quickly started investigating
For a generation whether it was a good thing to shove up their noses BEST OF THE CUT
that has less free for fun. In the s and ’ s, the growth of rave
A Joyful Testament to Middle
time for sprawling culture brought it onto New York dance oors and it
Age
multi-day became a staple of the club kid scene, prompting the
rst wave of ketamine trend pieces. “Whether it’s a
psychedelic trips, BravoCon Pickled My Brain in
gay all-nighter, or at a hard techno rave patronized
ketamine has an by young, white out-of-towners, the picture is Rosé Pepsi
appealing choose- invariably the same. Come a.m., the dance oor is
your-own-adventure littered with those wasted on ketamine,” Muzik Cobie Smulders Is the Grungy,
quality. Magazine wrote in that same article. American Bisexual P.I. That TV Has Been
authorities responded by cracking down on its Waiting For
recreational use, and by the Federal Drug Enforcement Agency had
labeled it a schedule III substance. As its popularity waned in the States Margiela Finally Comes Out of
over the next decade, it became a xture in places like Russia, South East Hiding
Asia, and Western Europe. While many millennial drug users in the U.S.
may not have tried ketamine until recently, it has long been a staple of
‘The Meanie, the Lightweight,
Britain’s drug scene. In , Time Out London declared “Ketamine is the
the Crazies, and the Angry,
new E.” Dissembling Elitists’
Yet in the past few years, it seems that ketamine has found its way back into SEE ALL

New York’s needy nostrils. While K is still fringe compared to MDMA or

cocaine, Palamar, who also works as a researcher at NYU’s Center for Drug
Use and HIV/HCV Research, says that he has seen signi cant increases in
the number of nightclub and festival attendees using the drug, with
prevalence doubling over approximately the last four years. Brooklyn
nightlife institution House of Yes even put on a performance in called
Ketamine: The Musical, with co-founder Anya Sapozhnikova telling the
website Splinter that K is to her community what cocaine was to Studio .

Most of the people I spoke with are preexisting drug users who discovered
ketamine on big nights out; it’s particularly a staple of New York’s booming
queer nightlife scene. But in , once-fringe elements of rave culture have
bled into the mainstream. EDM is elevator music, banker bros and leather-
daddies share bumps at Bushwick warehouse events, Silicon Valley has
invaded Burning Man, and the wellness world has turned the drugs of the
’ s counterculture into productivity boosters for start-ups. As rave culture
has rebranded, ketamine has pivoted with it. Today’s K users are bringing
the drug beyond the dance oor: to chilled-out bar nights and tech-world
salons, New-Age wellness retreats and quiet nights at home.

There will always be the Lukes of the world, eagerly passing out naked in
front of their webcams, but most of the recreational users I spoke with said
they take K in very small doses, seeking a pleasant buzz that wears o within
minutes or can be re-upped as needed. It’s often taken to compliment
other drugs — a garnish instead of the main course. For a generation that
has less free time for sprawling multi-day psychedelic trips, ketamine has an
appealing choose-your-own-adventure quality. Ketamine and alcohol are
uneasy bedfellows — and often a recipe for a night of puking — but a MOST VIEWED STORIES

number of the people I spoke to said that K has led them to pare down their 1. The Single Biggest Difference
boozing overall. Claire says it actually feels like a healthier and more mature Between Parents and People
lifestyle. “People are like: I used to go out and have drinks and do a bunch Who Don’t Have Kids
of cocaine and feel like shit the next day. And then it was this total shift of:
Oh, yeah, I can do this. And it still feels like stepping out of my life, but I also
2. The Beauty Exec Fantasizing
feel ne tomorrow.” At this point, she says: “I wouldn’t say that it’s di erent
About the Single Dad Next
than like, a bunch of people getting o work and going out for drinks.” Door

3. Madame Clairevoyant:
Repurposing horse tranquilizers as a healthy life choice may sound like a Horoscopes for the Week of
parody of aky millennial self-searching, like a more hardcore version of December 2
switching your morning Nespresso for matcha, or getting really into Peloton.
Yet when it comes to ketamine, the warehouse ravers and the scienti c 4. Here’s How You Should Really
establishment happen to actually be on the same page. Just as researchers Apply Foundation
have started returning to drugs like LSD, psilocybin, and MDMA for their
potential mental-health bene ts, ketamine has widely been heralded as a
5. The Things I Shrugged Off
revolutionary treatment for depression. This March, the FDA approved a Then, Horrify Me Now
nasal spray called esketamine for treatment-resistant depression, marking a
major development in a eld that has been slow to innovate. “This is
potentially a life-saving medicine,” said Gerard Sanacora, director of the Yale
Depression Research Program. “It really was the rst treatment that we had
found that could fairly reliably produce antidepressant e ects within hours,
and de nitely within days of taking it.” Still, he adds: “This is clearly not a
medication that should be taken at home.”

Which has led, of course, to people trying it at home.

Ava, , who works in the tech industry, says she’s
“Some of the been “biohacking” since she was or . When she
leaders in [the tech] went through a serious depression and began feeling
industry will talk suicidal, a friend of hers told her about the emerging
publicly about it and research on ketamine, and her ears pricked up. “I
had previously known mushrooms as a party drug
text our group chat,
and then I did a secret ceremony with this New Age
like: I’m getting so Shaman guy, so I already knew that there could be a
high on K this huge di erence between like the party setting and a
weekend!” more intentional one.” With the help of a friend, she
bought and self-administered ketamine a couple of
times a week for a month, and then once a month after that. The e ect on
her depression was profound — she says her suicidal thoughts went away,
and she was able to socialize with friends once again. “I was able to go to
Burning Man again that year, and I didn’t think I would have been able to a
couple months before. I thought I was going to jump o the roof of my
building.”

The drug has become popular among Ava’s anxiety-ridden tech-world

BEST OF THE CUT
friends in recent years, she says, and not just the ones running ad-hoc
mental-health clinics out of their condos. “My theory is that ketamine is a A Joyful Testament to Middle
response to the overabundance of information and the disengagement a lot Age
of people have from the millennial job market, and now Trump, and seeing
the world burn before our eyes,” she says. Another tech world source I spoke
BravoCon Pickled My Brain in
to told me about an industry peer who invited people over for a ketamine
Rosé Pepsi
party and supplied the drugs for everyone. Ava described how she and a
group of co-workers even conducted a ketamine-guided meditation session
together. “Some of the leaders in [the tech] industry will talk publicly about
Cobie Smulders Is the Grungy,
Bisexual P.I. That TV Has Been
it and text our group chat, like: I’m getting so high on K this weekend!” she
Waiting For
says.

If there’s any sure sign that ketamine is hitting the mainstream, it may be Margiela Finally Comes Out of
that for some communities it’s already well on its way to losing its street Hiding
cred. When I tell Claire, the lmmaker, about the drug’s newfound
popularity in the tech world, she sco s. “That doesn’t surprise me,” she says. ‘The Meanie, the Lightweight,
“They’ll do anything to do to get themselves out of the misery of the world the Crazies, and the Angry,
that they’ve created for us.” Dissembling Elitists’
SEE ALL
Names have been changed.

O N E G R E AT STO RY : A N I G H T LY N E WS L E T T E R FO R T H E
B E ST O F N E W YO R K
The one story you shouldn't miss today, selected by New York's
editors.

ENTER YOUR EMAIL SIGN UP

Terms & Privacy Notice

R E L AT E D

The ‘Hooker Laureate’ of the Dirtbag Left

TA G S : K E TA M I N E DRUGS NEW YORK D I S A S S O C I AT I O N G E N E R AT I O N MORE

13 COMMENTS

T H E L AT E S T

O P E R AT I O N VA R S I T Y B L U E S Y E S T E R D A Y A T 2 : 5 7 P. M .

Olivia Jade Returns to YouTube to Say She’s

‘Legally Not Allowed to Speak’ “It’s so hard,” she
said, “because I’m not trying to make this about
me.”

ADVENT CALENDAR 2019 Y E S T E R D AY AT 9 : 0 0 A . M .

Gift of the Day: Luxuriously Soft Pajamas

So good, they’ll want to wear them outside.
By Indya Brown

ASTROLOGY 1 1 / 3 0 / 2 0 1 9 A T 7 : 3 0 P. M .

Madame Clairevoyant: Horoscopes for the

Week of December 2 Over-the-top Jupiter
enters severe Capricorn this week — and
will remain there until next year.
By Claire Comstock-Gay

SEX DIARIES 1 1 / 3 0 / 2 0 1 9 A T 6 : 0 0 P. M .

The Beauty Exec Fantasizing About the

Single Dad Next Door This week’s sex
diary.
By the Cut

ROLL CLIP! 1 1 / 3 0 / 2 0 1 9 A T 1 2 : 3 4 P. M .

Dakota Johnson Wastes Zero Time Calling Out

Ellen’s Bullshit The talk-show appearance took a
weirdly contentious turn when Johnson’s birthday
party was brought up.

GONE SALE-ING 1 1 / 2 9 / 2 0 1 9 A T 1 : 0 0 P. M .

The Best Deals From Nordstrom’s Black

Friday Sale Gucci, Rachel Comey, and
those Tom Ford lipsticks are all on sale.
By the Cut

THE WEDDING FILES 1 1 / 2 9 / 2 0 1 9 AT 1 1 : 0 0 A . M .

A Tropical Disco Wedding in Prospect

Park Guests toasted the happy couple
with rum punch and pineapples.
By Kaitlin Menza

BOOKS 1 1 / 2 9 / 2 0 1 9 AT 1 0 : 0 0 A . M .

Demi Moore’s Memoir Is a Surprisingly Healing

Read The actress takes a tough look at her
relationship with her mother.

H O L I DAY 2 0 1 9 1 1 / 2 9 / 2 0 1 9 AT 9 : 3 0 A . M .

Against Christmas Lists They take all the joy out of

gift-giving.

THE BEAUTY OF IT ALL 1 1 / 2 9 / 2 0 1 9 AT 9 : 0 0 A . M .

This CEO Can Mend Your Split Ends Melisse

Shaban on her favorite beauty products and the
secret to her Bolognese sauce.

MEMORY LANE 1 1 / 2 9 / 2 0 1 9 AT 9 : 0 0 A . M .

Before There Were Instagram Filters,

There Was Kodachrome 700,000
anonymous photo slides form a nostalgic
picture of mid-century domesticity.
By Anne Cruz

GLOSSY GLOSSIER GLOSSIEST 1 1 / 2 9 / 2 0 1 9 AT 9 : 0 0 A . M .

Everything at Glossier Is on Sale Right Now

Happy Black Friday.
By Erica Smith and Hayley Schueneman

GONE SALE-ING 1 1 / 2 9 / 2 0 1 9 AT 3 : 0 0 A . M .

Shop the Best Black Friday Deals on

Amazon From skinny jeans to Instant Pots.
By the Cut

THANKSGIVING 1 1 / 2 8 / 2 0 1 9 AT 9 : 0 0 A . M .

The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade Goes

Fashion Coach will be the first luxury fashion
brand to participate.

READING THE SIGNS 1 1 / 2 7 / 2 0 1 9 A T 3 : 5 2 P. M .

Ivanka’s Wall of Silence Where is the

pastel-clad cipher of the Trump
administration right now?
By Rhonda Garelick

D E A L O F T H E DAY 1 1 / 2 7 / 2 0 1 9 A T 2 : 2 6 P. M .

These Outdoor Voices Leggings Are $43 (the

Cheapest We’ve Seen Them) They’re 55 percent
off.

HELPFUL TIPS 1 1 / 2 7 / 2 0 1 9 A T 2 : 2 4 P. M .

What Should You Talk About This Thanksgiving?

Some suggestions.

DONALD TRUMP 1 1 / 2 7 / 2 0 1 9 A T 2 : 0 6 P. M .

A Fully Roasted Turkey Trump rung in

Thanksgiving weekend with a photoshopped
image of his face atop a golden, perfectly oiled
torso.

EQUINE MYSTERIES 1 1 / 2 7 / 2 0 1 9 A T 1 : 0 2 P. M .

How’d That Horse Get Up There? Delving into

the mystery of the horse in the hayloft.

FA S H I O N 1 1 / 2 7 / 2 0 1 9 A T 1 2 : 5 0 P. M .

What Are These Fuzzy Hats on The Crown? A truly

bonkers ’60s-style moment.

MORE STORIES

S I G N I N TO C O M M E N T

STYLE SELF CULTURE POWER

NEWSLETTERS ABOUT US C O N TA C T HELP WE’RE HIRING PRESS TRADEMARK P R I VA C Y TERMS AD CHOICES

THE CUT IS A VOX MEDIA NETWORK. © 2019 VOX MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.