I had a NDE
about 6 days before the first time I took ketamine
because my then partner died. She had a party at her
flat and the flat caught fire. I got out of the flat and
thought that she was out as well, but she'd been really
drunk and she'd slipped and fallen and pushed the room
door shut. I got out and shouted, "Christ, she's not
here!" and went back up. The flat was full of thick
smoke. I thought, "Right, what you do is you get down on
the floor and crawl along the corridor." But there was
no air there. I crawled along and couldn't see anything.
I could hear her and I was trying to push open this door
but I couldn't. I was overcome with smoke, and clink!
The next thing
it was like white light and then everything going very
fast. All these sounds and things sounding far off and
very close and far off, then whoosh! You're out of
your body and there was all this light. All this sounds
really crap, like one of those 1940s Old Testament films
... It all happened so quickly. The next thing, it's
very bright, you're out of your body, flying through the
night and there's light, there's light. Er, well, it's
pitch black and there's light - that's a better way of
describing it.
You go into the light and you just feel
that everybody who has ever died is there. Not heavenly
choirs as such, but there's certainly a lot of people around
you and you get waves of concern. And the next thing was
swoosh! And it was back to the everyday world very quickly.
When I came back it was so abrupt, and I was fine really
- I had a very narrow escape. Your first impression would
be that you fly up in the air but that can't be. I'd have
laughed at myself ten years ago for saying this kind of
thing.
So I had an
out-of-body experience and then I got hauled out of the
flat by ambulance guys who put an oxygen mask on my
face. My partner was on a life-support machine from the
Saturday until Monday, when they switched the machine
off. I had acquired the K a week previously for the
party, but didn't do it until a few days after she died.
It was the first time I had taken K.
I had the flat
to myself. Everybody was out and I sat in the front room
on a big comfy chair and just took this stuff. Within
about 5 minutes I was out of my body. I was still numb
after what had happened. It was like being outside of
myself but still there. I could smell this perfume she
used to wear. I could sense her all round me. It was
like a way out and it was exactly like the out-of-body
thing. It was very upsetting and it did shake my
atheism, very much so. It made me aware of it not being
the end when all this ends.
I tried K again
quite a number of times and the same thing happened
every time. It was like this pure consciousness. I
hadn't any shape. You could fly and you could actually
travel although you are still in the same place. You are
in the place where everybody is who has ever died. It's
this big entity. It's not like an old guy with a beard.
It's this sense of energy that everybody who has ever
moved on is there together and it was like she was
looking after me. Precisely the same thing happened with
the K as happened in the (burning) flat, which to
someone not expecting it would be pretty scary. It was
exactly the same.
I thought that I
would never find anybody again and why hadn't I died as
well, why hadn't I managed to get her out of that room?
I thought it was my fault, I blamed myself for ages. I
had a half-hearted idea of taking loads of pills and not
waking up but what's the point in that? I've already
been to that place once and they wouldn't have me then,
so why would they have me the second time?
Concerned friends and parents made me
go into counseling and therapy and to see psychiatrists.
I was put onto various things like Prozac, but I was finding
that my own "extra treatment" (the ketamine) was
doing me a lot more good because K is very cathartic. I
was doing it because it made me feel better, except the
first time when it was quite a shock. It made me feel a
lot less unhappy knowing that she was still there in one
way or another. It would have taken a lot longer for me
to recover if I hadn't taken K because it gets rid of a
lot of hurt instantly ... It's very reassuring in a way.
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