Taking ketamine sucks. I actually tried with the nasal sprays before and I literally threw the spray bottle in the garbage because of how miserable that was. I didn't even get a meaningful experience out of it, but I burned the ever living fuck out of my throat from how bitter the stuff was. I heard IM injection works far better, but it's probably gonna take a long time for me to work up the courage for that.
(Also, I have DID so I experience other personalities all the time!)
I'm genuinely surprised, for me it's been doing medative self reflecting work for ages. I buy the shitty powder on $monerosite and systematically prepare a bunch to get into the "pre hole state" with banger ket music in the headphones and closed eyes.
It brings 5d chess into my psychology or something
I don't think the nasal route is good for me. Brain doesn't like it, body doesn't like it, it just feels extremely miserable. I think I tried it before the ketamine spray, but it would just dry out my nose and it was really painful and it just felt so awful that I couldn't manage to dose myself enough to have a good effect before I just couldn't bear to take any more. It's awful and terrible and I hate it.
Which sucks, because I really feel like dissociatives would be nice. I've taken memantine orally and it was nice, although it took really long to wear off, and also after a while it made me throw up all over my expensive tech, which was very not fun. Ketamine though I haven't found an adequate way to take.
I've never had ketamine. I've had memantine, but its half-life is ridiculous.
I self-medicate a variant of what's now available in the USA as 'Auvelity' but is just a ratio'd mixture of dextromethorphan and bupropion. The bupropion is there to slow down the metabolism of the DXM via its CYP2D6 pathway, but bupropion gives me anxiety/insomnia so I use something called berberine phytosome which isn't as effective but still works on CYP2D6 at a lower level, but no side effects.
All the other anti-depressant classes never worked for me but still gave me extremely shitty side effects.
There's a lot of anecdotal reports on DXM/Auvelity for both prescribed (variable outcomes, but for some people its the first thing that's ever worked), and recreationally its been around for ages sometimes referred to as the poor mans ketamine...
Not DID here, but schizo-affective. I've read things like meditation can actually have negative affects on dissociative disorders. Dissociating in order to re-integrate to a better place seems a somewhat reasonable strategy but I think mental-health/medication effects and understanding of how differently the same medications can affect different people is only just beginning to be realised by psychiatry now.
At least now there's even genetic testing for Auvelity - if you're already a poor CYP2D6 metaboliser due to a shortened version of a gene on a specific chromosome, they won't prescribe it to you. On the other hand you could be an ultra-metaboliser.
(Also, I have DID so I experience other personalities all the time!)