Ketamine Addiction Destroyed My Brain Before I Noticed

Added: 2026-05-19

[00:00:00]I tell you what, one of the worst things about ketamine addiction that most people don't talk about, which is fair enough considering the other nasty physical side effects that come from abusing this uh substance such as K cramps, bladder pain, the removal of the bladder, and there's many other people online who've gone through the uh journey to health that comes with ketamine addiction that talk about that in a greater detail. And I don't really have much room to talk about that considering um as well I did have numerous amounts of K cramps which is uh basically kept blocking your bile duct gallbladder and resulting in spasms and cramps that are to be honest like the most white hot physical pain I've ever felt in my life. And you think that would be enough to stop but well that's the power of addiction is it pretty. So the worst part for me and something I'm still recovering from is cognitive impairment uh and memory loss. Not memory loss in terms of I've lost chunks of memory from my youth and etc. I've not got dementia as far as I know. So, what actually happens is it it diminishes your ability to form short-term memory and it can really exacerbate especially for someone who's got ADHD like myself and we're already accursed with shitty memory anyway.

[00:01:22]So, this is like throwing fuel on a fire, having ADHD and and being a being a catad because not only do you struggle with remembering little minor trivial things in your ADHD state of mind, when you're funneling ketamine into your [ __ ] neural pathways every day for years on end, the state of memory loss becomes normal. And you don't even realize just how much better your memory was before you got addicted. And this becomes the new normal. And you think, "Oh, I was always like this." You start tending all these delusions, especially [music] in the vein of sort of justifying the addiction. Not justifying it, but sort of, >> I guess, blocking you from really tapping in and acknowledging that you've got a problem because deep down I think you know anyway, but you don't think it's as bad as it is. So you you entertain all these delusions and narratives, don't you? This is very relatable to anyone. Uh it's relatable for anyone online who probably hears people like me are in that place because yeah we all do it don't we? And at some point you got to just admit to yourself that yeah you know what this cat is absolutely frying my brain. I mean the physical aspect of it the bladder and the gallbladder bladder and any of the other problems that people face during ketamine addiction because it affects many of us very differently. I managed to get away uh from all the the bladder problems per perhaps due to my other severe addiction to green tea which I believe actually protected my bladder over time and perhaps healthy diet, exercise etc. But what I didn't get away with was the gallbladder pain and I have a history of gallbladder issues in my family. [music] So, I was always going to get something to do with my gallbladder regardless of the amount of ketamine that I was addicted to, which wasn't, to be fair, wasn't actually a lot on the dayto-day, but it was the consistency of doing it 4 years or so.

[00:03:20]And you'd think, again, like I said before, you'd think that would make you stop, but actually the real thing that made me reflect very deeply was when I did go to Japan for 3 months and I was completely clean for 3 months straight.

[00:03:35]The longest I'd been in god knows how long. I noticed that my memory started to reform in very subtle ways where I wouldn't be like touching everywhere I'd see if I've got my wallet, my passport, my phone, etc. And it came as a bit of a surprise to me how cognitively functional I was uh in the in the light of being off ketamine. And that's what really made me solidify my decision to sort sort my [ __ ] out because I knew that I mean I obviously really value my own physical health of which your brain is part of but out of all the organs I'm going to be biased towards probably my brain because at the end of the day the YouTube requires my brain and all the other areas of my life that I love the most require my brain to function. And uh it was it was ironic.

[00:04:24]Isn't it ironic? The one thing he used to escape the mind was the thing that put him back in the mind. Uh yeah, [ __ ] doing ketamine all the time was like my pure escapist tool. And then actually it put me deeper into my mind and deeper into the abyss into the shadow. Uh that was uh quite twisted where it's like oh the one thing that I used to escape every single problem is now producing every single problem and then some to the nth degree. I was having like schizophrenic experiences on on ketamine. I was I hearing like voices in like the top corner of my head and they were like oh he's he'sard us. He's heard us. Shut the door. Stuff like that. A proper skitso material. I can't lie. Uh, and whilst that was scary, the ultimate the ultimate straw that broke the camel's back was finding out how [ __ ] up my memory was through it through its recovery because I realized how scatterbrained I was. I was already quite scatterbrained anyway beforehand just being me. And then this took it to a whole new level of ridiculousness. I couldn't remember what people had told me the day that like a few hours ago few let alone a few minutes ago. The days were all blurred into one and the and the the sadness of say or the moments where ketamine allowed me to escape or whatever. I'd be I don't know watching watching some sci-fi movie on ketamine.

[00:05:52]I'd watch it and be enamored because the immersion enhancement is just transcendental on ketamine. as many I'd say a lot of ketamine users and addicts as I see on the ketamine addiction subreddit a lot of their peace peaceful moments are just in bed watching a film or something and [music] watching David Atenburgh and just being immersed not even in a cable hole but just having that immersion it's on another level it's like you become the screen and you you you you dissolve the distinction between yourself and the TV and the idea of the TV even being a physical like electrical device. It seems like a window of another world. It's It is very magical, but the problem is it's basically a psychedelic heroin. It's heroin for psychonauts really because it's so reproducible physically.

[00:06:42]It feels great if it does for you because some some people that doesn't.

[00:06:44]That's what puts them off it because they don't like the feeling of it, the physical feeling. But the psychosomatic sort of like brain and body synergistic feeling that you get from smashing loads of kett is super relaxing for anyone with uh yeah a scatterbrain like myself.

[00:07:03]And I can see why a lot of ADHD people who don't go down the cocaine addiction route go down the ketamine addiction route and why so many people in the UK are addicted to it cuz I mean especially in the raver like party scene like a lot of people are neurody divergent and I think they take comfort in in drugs like dissociatives.

[00:07:21]So yeah, I can really see how people go down the dissociative route of um ADHD addiction where like people with ADHD, they find that thing that quietens the mind, settles them, it becomes their medicine of choice. And it can be alcohol, cannabis, okay? It can be anything really. But often times you see people going down the stimulant route because how do they medicate ADHD? It's through stimulants. So often times many people who who use cocaine habitually, I think it's like eight times out of 10 they have uh ADHD. But it' be interesting to see how many ketamine users have ADHD because having scoured ketamine addiction subreddit, uh it's pretty obvious that most people on there are neurody divergent, OCD, ADHD, autism, you name it. A mixture of them all. God help us. [laughter] Uh who've got the mixture. The mixture is [ __ ] up. So yeah, the the problem is is that yeah, it feels medicinal for a while and it might help you escape, but then in the classic case of the the addicted stoner, the the drug or the medicine starts to seep into every single area of your life and you don't know how to live life without it and it starts to govern like how your brain works. You almost get possessed by the drug. It's it's a it's an interesting phenomenon to see.

[00:08:35]I've seen it in many uh close friends and acquaintances who get really into cocaine and how it actually hijacks their brain and it's almost like they are possessed by the coke itself because everything they become coke incarnate.

[00:08:47]Everything becomes a dopamine uh chase and whether it's sex, gambling, vaping, whatever, if it's dopamine, they'll have it. I mean the only thing you can't do dopamine wise on on cocaine is eat. Have you ever tried to eat on simulants?

[00:09:00][ __ ] hell, that is hard, man. I'm telling you now. They they should have employed that in Guantanamo Bay or something. That's one way to make to to [ __ ] crack a man, force him to eat a [ __ ] like baguette on Coke. Um on ketamine, you can eat quite quite quite happily. But the problem is is with ketamine is there's so much dissociation going on that I remember sometimes I'd be so dissociated where I wouldn't even recognize anything in reality anymore. I didn't know what bread was and it just was it everything just becomes nothingness. And yeah, whatever. You might say nothingness is the substrate of reality and nothingness is consciousness, etc. But you're a human right now. And if you everything's nothing all the time. Like I'm not even saying like blissful nothing. I'm just like it's like pure nothingness like SS SSRI, anti-depressant feeling, nothingness where nothing can hurt you, but you can feel no pleasure either. And it's just there's no there's no life in that in that in that state of state of being. But yeah, really the the problem for me was just the cognitive impairment. I couldn't even remember what people were telling me that I'd done like a few days ago and then they'd be finding me like I'd go into this weird not even a K-hole. just like reality just shut off and it shut off and just go blank and it felt like I was having like a seizure and I swear to God every single time I had one of them like like seizure K holes where I [music] was like thrashing about and everything became black and I like wriggled out of the the void to to reform reality like I' I'd said said this before where like I'd touch is funny this is a biohazard thing on the wall [music] I'd touch that like if I was on even in a khole everything would be black and then slowly things would reform I could see like my hand and then I could put my hand on here and [music] And everything I touch with my hand would reform. So like a little bit of that would reform, but then I'd have to touch the rest of it to make it reform. And it was like I was piecing reality back together through my physical senses. Tell you what, when you experience that, despite how insane it is to look back on and almost be bewildered in amazement, when you're actually experiencing that at the moment, you think you you've broken reality. You're like, first thing you think or I thought was you've actually done it this time. You've done it this time. Viv can you [ __ ] broken the matrix. And uh every single time, even though I knew I was going to come back, you don't you don't actually fully realize that you're going to come back.

[00:11:12]It's horrible, mate. But heart goes out to all the ketamine addicts who've ever messaged me over the years. I know it's hard and and it's a it's a substance addiction that we don't fully understand the long-term consequences of or even like how someone gets addicted to it. I mean, for me, it was literally just the ultimate escapist tool as I've said. Uh but then the problem is is that the escapist device then becomes uh the ultimate torment because the device stops working. It becomes faulty and then it puts it instead of taking you out of your head, it puts you so deep into your head into your [ __ ] shadow into the dark abyss of your psyche and life just becomes a living hell and you then have no escapist device to fall back on. Because another really interesting thing about ketamine is it actually affects the way weed uh works for your brain. So sorry for the shaky cam. My my arms can only hold this for so long. The the the problem with say people who claim oh well if you get addicted to ketamine just get on the buds start smoking the reefer again. You clearly I could I smoked weed for a lot before I got addicted to cat and then I noticed the ketamine because it has such well it's sort of overloading your glutamate and if you have a dysfunctional glutamate uh system in your brain I read this online that apparently a lot of other ketamine addicts couldn't actually smoke weed because the high would be physically uncomfortable. They'd have tacicardia and they'd be entertaining some like really dark thoughts that they wouldn't if they were sober. and it became like a bad trip. And actually, it's because uh THC supposedly can't work with your brain if it's glutamate is out of whack, which means that it's not just as easy as getting getting off the cat and back onto the buds. Uh you've got to give it time. And even so, I guess you don't really want to replace one addiction with another. But I mean, if you can do that, I'd say please do because even though smoking weed all the time isn't great, it's definitely healthier than abusing ketamine on the daily. um even though you have to do a lot of a lot of ketamine to actually experience some really negative side effects um and the consequences of just doing it all the time. The problem is is that people get this tolerance perma tolerance type situation and they they're doing like grams and grams and grams every day like up to like 10 grams a day and I'm like even in my darkest ketamine uh addiction experiences. I never ever got to that point and go God I empathize with anyone who's at that point because that's dark mate. That's seriously dark. No one understands how how dark of a place you must be in to sniff like 10 grams of K a day for years on end. That's crazy. I never ever did more than I don't even think like a [ __ ] maybe not even two grams a day. Never more than that. And I still had the most debilitating white hot gallbladder pain you could ever experience. Uh I'm very very lucky to have come around from that. I actually had a CT scan recently just to confirm whether I'd done permanent damage or not to myself and I hadn't which was amazing and reiterated my stance on being clean and sober. Uh relatively sober. You can't be fully sober at 28 years of age. I guess just to wrap this up, I would say that if you are struggling with ketamine addiction, uh please message me on Instagram or join the Discord and I'm a really good person to talk to about it and tell you about how I managed to get off it, sort my story behind it, give you some pointers, advice, tips. I mean, the main advice I can give you is you really want to try to consider going to rehab or getting yourself out of your environment um that you use ketamine in for a long time as well. 2 weeks is the beginning of the recovery. The really recovery doesn't happen until months in when your brain starts recalibrating.

[00:15:04]Your body's fully detoxified. But the thing that's going to be the hardest for you uh if you do that approach where you get out your environment and then come back to the exact same environment is keeping the lessons you learn outside of the addiction zone and bringing them back with you to to sort of like wipe the addiction away or make steps towards that instead of just rationalizing.

[00:15:25]Another [ __ ] horrible thing about ketamine addiction and any addiction is the rationalizations of oh well I was off it for 3 months or whatever I'll come back and I I can redo it and I've healed etc. And then funny enough, what ended up happening to me after I got back from Japan, I actually did relapse and then I had the worst K cramps I've ever had in my life off the smallest amount. It was unnaturally painful for a a ketamine induced uh uh cramp like that in your gallbladder.

[00:15:53]It was it was beyond anything I'd experienced before. It's the most pain I've ever experienced in my life. And that was really I if me if my brain recovering in Japan and seeing the beautiful positive effects of that wasn't enough to really like solidify it, I had to go I actually had to go to heaven and then take a detour back through hell and then up again to then really uh solidify my my stance somewhere. I want my life to go and I want to be clean and uh sharp sharply minded. I mean, you can clearly tell. I mean, you can compare a lot of my older videos to how I've been in the past few few years is that my speech isn't as isn't as precise as it used to be. My brain is still recovering. Uh hopefully, let's let's entertain the idea that it'll bounce back better, as Boris Johnson would say.

[00:16:45]So that maybe actually turning into a vegetable type being allows me to flourish into a beautiful a beautiful butterfly. But uh I I'll I'll I'll see how that turns out. So yeah, if you are suffering with this, please get in contact with me. Let share your story in the comments below. What's your experience of ketamine? Do you find it addictive, non-addictive?

[00:17:08]Uh yeah, let me know everything because I love reading the comments. age-old adage, don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe. Uh, might have to start saying that more now because apparently people tell me it's really effective.

[00:17:20]But I always thought, all right. Uh, I don't know. I might start this. Nobody wants to listen to this, but my stance as a YouTuber has always been I like the old school way of YouTube. That's why I just do these videos without any editing. And I really liked watching uh videos like akin to this back in the day. And I guess I sort of tried to keep that going on top of making [ __ ] weird anime a bridged series which is definitely hearkening back to the past.

[00:17:44]But anyway, love you guys and I'm glad you get something out of this channel because I as much as you get something out of it, I get something out of it as well.

[00:17:52]Uh I get a lot out of it as well because I learn so much about you and myself and I'm constantly exposed to interesting people coming from all different walks of life. That's the beauty of psychonautics is that it appeals to like every it can appeal to everybody really.

[00:18:10]You don't have to be one like niche.

[00:18:13]It it the psychonauts are in every type of niche. They're football players.

[00:18:17]They're gamers. They're artists. They're they're flipping burgers.

[00:18:24]They're just doing everything. They're everywhere. You can find them everywhere. It's fascinating.

[00:18:29]Much love, peace, and love from Florence. Hope anyone who struggles with ketamine addiction manages to figure out a way to sort it out. Please get yourself involved with the ketamine addiction subreddit. That helped me out so much because you don't realize how cathartic it is to confide in others who are going along the same path to you.

[00:18:45]And also reach out to your family and your friends cuz they don't want you to suffer. And if they're perceptive, they probably already picked up on it as my friends did. I'll leave you with one very funny but disturbing story. Uh when I was on ketamine once, uh I had all I was having these ketamine type seizures going into this like dark black void and I'd have to like wriggle my way out of it like I said before. Um, and there was one where I'd tried to climb out the window and I was in my underpants and instead I stepped on my cactus and I was covered in thorns and and dirt and then I got back on my bed and I started jump I started jumping on the bed up and down doing gloss speaking in tongues and then uh people came in and they saw me watching Junior Bake Off the Bake Off TV show in England, but for kids.

[00:19:38]>> Uh, so if that's not weird, I don't know what is. Uh, I can tell you I had no memory of that. So, at least I know I won't be doing that again. So that's always good.