For recreational users, ketamine offers a means for escaping the pressures of daily life. During the holiday season, daily life pressures will likely increase considerably. Using ketamine to cope with mounting family obligations and buying gifts while trying to get into the holiday spirit can be a recipe for disaster.

While ketamine may not lead to physical dependency, the risk of psychological dependency remains. For anyone struggling with ketamine addiction, understanding how this drug takes over the mind can go a long way towards preventing your holidays from being ruined.

Ketamine’s Effects on the Brain & Body

Ketamine produces anesthetic-type effects and is commonly used in veterinary medicine for this purpose. Rather than blocking pain sensations from reaching the brain, ketamine blocks all incoming information from the body to the brain, according to New York University at Steinhardt.

Ketamine works by blocking glutamate production, an essential neurotransmitter chemical responsible for regulating electrical activity in the brain. When used on a repeated basis, users come to depend on the “out-of-body” experiences ketamine causes as a way to cope with everyday life.

5 Ways Ketamine Addiction Can Ruin Your Holidays

1. Detachment

With ketamine addiction, the drug’s anesthetic effects eventually start to affect a person’s overall disposition and emotional state. Consequently, users become more and more detached from the world around them over time. With the mounting stressors that come with the holidays and the likelihood of increased ketamine use, feelings of detachment only worsen. Under these conditions, it’s hard to feel as if you’re a part of the holiday festivities going on around you.

2. Psychotic-Like Behaviors

It’s not uncommon for someone experiencing a ketamine “high” to exhibit psychotic-like behaviors, such as hearing voices and seeing things that aren’t there. According to Reuters Health, these effects can persist for hours after the drug wears off. Users may experience flashbacks of previous drug episodes or develop increasing feelings of paranoia long after the drug “high” wears off.

3. Loss of Consciousness

Not unlike XTC and Rohypnol, ketamine effects can bring on a total loss of consciousness, which accounts for its designation as a “date rape” drug. In large enough doses, users enter what’s known as the K-Hole, which leaves them completely vulnerable to their surrounding environment. In too large a dose, serious medical complications, such as seizures and chest pains can develop.

4. Priority Shifts

Once ketamine addiction takes hold, a person’s priorities shift as getting and using the drug takes on greater importance in his or her daily life. As much of the holidays entail spending time with friends and family as well as buying gifts for them, ketamine’s effects can quickly derail a person’s good intentions leaving friends and family hurt and disappointed.

5. Overdose Potential

Ketamine exists as one of the most powerful hallucinogens around. According to the Texas Department of State Health Services, dosage amounts as small as 2 to 20 milligrams can produce the K-Hole effect. Without an actual scale, it’s easy to overestimate dosage levels, placing users at high risk of overdose.

Treatment Considerations

As happy a time as the holiday season may be, it’s nonetheless wrought with stress and pressures specific to this time of year. Stress in general acts as a catalyst for increased drug use, which greatly increases the likelihood of ruining holiday occasions.

If you or someone you know struggles with ketamine addiction, please feel free to call our toll-free helpline at 800-934-1582(Who Answers?) for more information on ketamine or to get information on treatment programs in your area.