For the past three years, I have been receiving IV infusions of ketamine to help me deal with constitutional melancholy worsened by the widening gyre: 45/47, the pandemic, work difficulties and indeed overwork, and feelings of existential despair. The infusions are extremely effective. I initially took them at long intervals, but now go twice a month for optimal results.
Ketamine, which was invented as an anesthetic for both people and animals (kitties!), was observed by emergency room practitioners to lift, almost miraculously, people’s depression, according to patient testimonies. It is a psychedelic medicine, but it’s not like LSD or psilocybin; it’s neither multi-sensory nor long-lasting. I might see hints of visuals, but not full-blown hallucinations. More than anything, it’s intellective. Because it is “dissociative,” it liberates me (at least, while under its influence) from patterns of thinking and assumptions about how the world is structured. It’s phenomenological. I seem to float above my life and society and even nature for the purpose of disinterested (though not unemotional) observation. I both burrow into these phenomena and see them anew.
It is largely known as a party drug, a use to which I’ve never put it and honestly would not want to. It’s better suited, it seems to me, to interior exploration. Although I’m decidedly NOT a new age type, I have experienced something like a shamanic journey led by a flying white fox; I saw myself in the womb at the moment of conception, inhabiting three subjectivities at once; I observed my hardworking ancestresses dyeing textiles in a dim stone building. Often I find myself in a little boat on a misty lake like Lake Inle in Myanmar. Occasionally I’m a Heian aristocrat just barely dipping my sleeve in the water from my yakatabune. It’s sublime, especially because accompanied by the custom playlists I lovingly make: oud, qanoun, ancient lyre, Bach, Scarlatti, lute, shamisen. It’s as if I hear this music as I never did before, and it makes me tremble in adoration of human genius.
Sometimes infusions have a key letter, like on Sesame Street; “this infusion was brought to you by the letter O.” Sometimes certain flowers, gems, and keywords make appearances. I often find myself feeling deep appreciation for people who were important to me in my past, and sometimes I even forgive them. Exquisite natural places both experienced and not-yet experienced show up, as do interesting narrow streets in ancient cities. Possibilities for projects and things to make and design present themselves. The medication helps to gratify my great desire for novelty and adventure.
Although I have felt, in the past several years, sort of bullied by institutions, the infusions are full of affirmation of what I have been able to accomplish and have given me ways, even just small ones, to move forward despite how fucked the world has become. Thus: Copium. I came upon this word and knew instantly it was perfect for the poem I was in the process of writing, whose raw materials were the post-infusion notes I scrawled in a teal notebook.
The problem, of course, with drug writing, is that it can be trite: “whoa, dude, the universe is expanding…trippy!” I don’t think I was entirely able to evade sounding faux-profound in that dopey (pun intended) way, but I did my best to use my poetic defamiliarization toolkit to compose this. In any case, I’m glad to add my voice to the pharmaceutical genre.
Nada Gordon consists of a head, neck, torso, two arms and two legs. Since reaching adulthood, her body has consisted of close to 100 trillion cells, the basic unit of life. These cells are organised biologically to form her whole body. She is the author of Folly, V. Imp, Are Not Our Lowing Heifers Sleeker than Night-Swollen Mushrooms?, foriegnn bodie, Swoon, Scented Rushes, Vile Lilt, The Sound Princess (Selected Poems 1985-2015), and Emotional Support Peacock. The initiatory sentence of her blog at https://thesoundprincess.com/ reads: “The impulse to decorate is, as always, very strong.”.
