My Personal Vendetta Against Ketamine
I've had it and maybe you have too
I first read a version of this essay live at my semi-monthly event SLOP Salon. The next one is June 11th and you can get tickets here.
Hi horsegirls ,
It’s Mo aka DJ Gay Panic, and this(!) is The Deviant Dispatch. I’m blogging from my corner of the NYC “underground” to bring you subcultural musings, scene updates, and queer shit. There will be typos.
You’ve read the title of the essay, so you know what I’m here to do. The idea has me a little spooked, enough that I’ve been sitting on this post for over a year. Harm reduction, breaking down social stigmas, and a “live and let live” attitude are the cornerstone of nightlife culture. I largely see the benefits of said philosophies and agree with them on principle. I also have to get this off my chest.
Ketamine is Elon Musk’s drug of choice after all.
It’s long been the drug of the moment1, of the scene, of my era, and (unfortunately) of my friends. Like all the drugs before it, it’s effects on nightlife are palpable and not always positive. On the dancefloor or at a party, it should be a seasoning at best. This goes out to everyone who has made it their main course. I’m about to scrooge out.
(almost) Every single person I know who does ketamine, I prefer them before they take the bump than after. Several bumps? I can’t help but ask questions. Do you wanna be here? Are you having fun? What are you trying to disassociate from here? No one is MAKING you stay at the club. and if you are doing some kind of work that requires you to be there (promoter, dj, ect) then I need you to clock the fuck in.
There are too many dance floors with people mindlessly swaying, or as Meatball says “standing to the left of themselves.” What ever happened to having fun IN your body. On a dancefloor? I need you in the club working out your demons and crafting a sense of mischief, not lobotomizing yourself.
Cue 72 divas saying “honey, I’d rather have the lobotomy.” Everyone LOVES joking about getting a lobotomy these days. Sure an uncomplicated existence sounds tempting for the individual, but what about all the other people left behind who needed your madcap energy, who found charm in your chatter, who could empathize with your concerns?
Things are bad enough without cool girls making themselves MUTE.
Howl saw the brightest minds of his generation lost to madness, but at least madness has a sense of vitality and life. I’m watching the greatest minds of my generation subject themselves to purgatory instead of trying to build a heaven.
Unfortunately lots of people would rather be in purgatory than hell, a feeling I can understand. The first time I tried ketamine it was the summer of 2020. I had gotten home from my thrift store job at 3pm to find my roommates dancing on the roof while a friend DJ’d. They seemed smiley and more wiggly than normal, and neither were the kind of people who’d normally engage in mid day dance party. I joined them (being a diva who loves a dance) and was surprised when one of them pulled out a ketamine bag. Thinking “fuck it” I took a tiny bump.
Relaxation almost immediately took hold. I remember swaying across the roof, shamelessly mirroring the goofy dance of my roommates that I previously thought was a bit. “I see why people are into this” a passing thought remarked, continuing “If you’re too afraid to dance, this will make you feel at ease.”
In 2020 and 2021 it made sense that a dissociative party drug that worked well for sitting on the couch would take off. The “real” world was filled with a mysterious killer disease and we weren’t sure how it spread. We had a leader who was utterly flopping at handling the plague at hand. There also wasn’t much a person could do, so why not escape a little. But it’s 2026, and the fascists want you to dissociate and become pliable. Don’t comply in advance!
Feeling anxious about the cadre of fashionable hot witty people in front of you at the party and worried you won’t measure up? Consider facing your anxiety and striving to meet them on their level instead of just handicapping yourself further. You might surprise yourself with what you’re bringing to the table, especially if they are dissociating on Ketamine.
Sure Ketamine makes you feel unconcerned with how you’re acting, but that will in fact wear off. In the meantime, the dialed divas in the room are clocking your crutch.
What fun is a drug that renders anyone unable to tell a joke? I miss ENERGY. Wake it up people! What if we turned the vibe AROUND? Let’s try exercising their demons instead of pacifying them. On other cocktails, the divas get chattier, louder, more ACTIVATED. On ketamine they just go inside themselves. COME OUT AND PLAY.
I miss eye contact. Why are you staring off into space? I want to wink at the handsome stranger in Carhart, not watch him shuffle around slack-jawed2.
Ravers are fond of the idea of the nightclub as Community, a place for people to come together in a liberated space and take those connections into the daytime to reshape the world. In order for that lofty idea of clubbing to work, you have to be going to the club to connect. If you are in a k-hole in the club, you are not connecting with other queer liberated people! Those people are looking at you wondering “Is that diva okay? She always wanders around like a zombie.”
Everything is good in moderation and annoying without it, especially Ketamine. This is true for the person on coke who won’t stop talking over you, the drunk starting a fight, the stoner who can’t remember what you just said, and the acid freak who can’t stop giggling. Your drug use should be about enhancing your world, not escaping from it.
Xoxo,
Mo
I first read a version of this essay live at my semi-monthly event SLOP Salon. The next one is June 11th and you can get tickets here.
The new drug of the moment might actually be GHB, which I got into in this essay. Actually the new new drug of the moment is 3mmc. or 4mmc. We’ve gotten so far down the drug pipeline that people are doing algebra.
OK this guy might be on GHB not Ketamine but regardless WAKE IT UP BRO
I'm with you. I want my fellow dancers alive, not zombified.