What's it like being with strangers in a room together? How far away are they? Do they annoy you?
Short/TL;DR = basically everyone just zones out and sleeps. Once the meds kick in you are in a sedated state similar to surgery anesthesia.
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So there was another woman there all week, she has been going there for many years and I had a couple conversations with her and her father. They were pretty cool and they had some useful tips and advice based on their experiences.
(For example, the male nurse sets the drip at a faster pace, so on days he is there, I can expect it to kick in faster and be a harder/heavier experience as opposed to a more drawn out pace. Let's say the effect is similar to the difference between taking shots of hard liquor vs drinking beer. Knowing this, I chose the day he was there to add the gummy to the mix and had a fucking blast and tripped HARD.)
Once the IV drip starts (maybe 5-10 min after arrival) I would relax, put on my headphones and zone out. She seemed to be basically doing the same.
We both wear sunglasses when we arrive and look to get comfortable and chill, listen to music.
The chairs are spaced out reasonably far apart, so she was maybe 15-20 feet away.
No one sat in the chair directly adjacent to me.
Maybe because I am a pretty big dude or I have a really really high opiate tolerance (I don't know if that affects ketamine tolerance to be honest) I was able to function to a certain extent on some days, sit up, operate my tablet and phone, play chess, etc. But from my observations everyone else appeared to just sleep and or rest the whole time. All the other patients that I saw were females, and 5'5 or less.
We are supposed to be taken out in a wheelchair, presumably in part for liabilty reasons, as the treatment can REALLY affect balance and motor control, but I was actually stable enough on me feet to walk out on my own most days. One of the nurses will not allow that at all, the others were fine with it once they saw I was steady on my feet, though they did walk with me just in case.
Both the doctor and the nurses seemed pretty surprised to see me walking around, I got the impression that is not a common occurrence. And as I mentioned in an earlier post, at one point while I was playing chess during the treatment a nurse came over to me and told me to stop, with an implied tone of "what the fuck are you doing and how are you even awake, let alone operating a tablet and playing chess?" (And winning!!)
So yeah, everyone was cool for the most part.
No one talked aside from during the first few minutes or maybe the last few upon entry/exit, basically because you are high as giraffe pussy.
