Consciousness outside of the brain

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How many people actually have life-altering experiences though [besides quitting the drug] from ketamine and LSD? Typically, if they envision similar happenings as the NDE experiencer, after the drug has wore off, they realize what happened, and it does not haunt them for life [save for a chemical imbalance]. Some people find it so real that they completely reform their religious beliefs; from Atheist to whatever denomination. Some are so entranced by their experience, they want to commit suicide to "return to the light." I do not believe LSD or Ketamine have these effects, besides, again, as a result of a chemical imbalance.

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I dunno, Ketamine is pretty rough stuff, check this out from the Good Drugs Guide:At low doses, K is a mild if weird stimulant. At medium to high doses, it becomes a very powerful paralysing psychedelic. It effects are like a combination of cocaine, cannabis, opium, Nitrous Oxide, and alcohol.When Ketamine separates or dissociates the mind from the body, the brain is freed from the usual business of reacting to sensations from the body. Perception increases to fill the gap vacated by the senses and gives rise to Ketamine's more mind-expanding effects.onset
The K effect is very rapid. In 10-20 minutes you may find yourself hardly able to move and, at higher doses, even approaching out-of-body and near-death experiences.peak
At the height of the experience, you may experience dazzling insights, hallucinate and even feel yourself communicating with forces, entities and elements you were never conscious of before.Users often fall into a deep trance state. Their eyes may move sightlessly from side and side, and their bodies may assume bizarre postures.Try to tell someone about it and you're likely to mumble monosyllabic and nonsensical inanities.Some people find it a life-changing and even spiritual experience. Others find it a lonely and unemotional experience. Whatever you make of it - it's intense.comedown
A Ketamine trip usually only lasts between 45 and 90 minutes, regardless of dosage. The experience can be much shorter if you have high tolerance.The effects wear off very rapidlyafter effects
If you've ever had an operation under anaesthetic, you'll recognise that lousy post-operative feeling after a strong Ketamine trip. There are few other after-effects other than this general drowsiness.You might feel wiped out, a bit achy, and not ready for anything too loud or too complicated. Sometimes you may feel rather disorientated or even a bit shell-shocked, as Ketamine is a very extreme experience at higher doses. Many people feel energized after a Ketamine experience and have a strong urge to move around, dance or stretch.Long term, some users can be so overcome by what they regard as the superior reality of Ketamine-land that they can retreat from the real world into the K-world. We're not kidding.
See Tales From The K-Hole.setting
At high doses, because its effect is essentially an internal and introspective experience, external stimuli like loud music or TV are not particularly satisfying, nor conducive to a good trip.This is not the case at low level doses, when it acts more like a stimulant.in the brain
Ketamine's effects on the brain are well documented. It mainly binds to and blocks glutamate receptors (also as N-P receptors) all over the brain. Glutamate is an excitatory neurotransmitter. It turns on cell activity and is part of the computer-like on / off mechanism that underlies brain activity.Ketamine blocks glutamate activity, giving rise to either entire cell bank shutdown in some brain areas or changes in the way cell clusters integrate or interpret incoming data in others. Overall, the result is the much famed K-Hole effect: certain brain parts go into temporary hibernation, mainly the senses and physical sensations, while others - imagination, and other unnamed perceptions from the depths of the mind - are amplified.---It seems pretty clear that NDE-like experiences can be induced chemically. This strongly supports the contention that such experiences as are reported are actually just subjective experiences of strange brain chemistry, rather than an actual mystical phenomenon.This message has been edited by contracycle, 02-22-2005 06:06 AM

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So do the people who experience NDE's while clinically dead just have similar brain chemistry as those who use ketamine and have a ND-ish experience? How often does someone who uses ketamine have something similar to a NDE? Years ago, I knew numerous people who did Special K constantly, and excessively, and not one of them ever reported anything similar to a NDE.

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Well your first question is hard to answer; I suggest instead it is more reasonable to approach it the other way. If ketamine has these effects reliably enough that it is consistently reported - even if consistently reported by only a minority - then we can use observation of the drugs effects to suggest the brain chemistry of the NDE. To me, the part that talks about banks of the brain shutting down is a likely candidate - that is, the NDE experience may only be a property of having parts of your brain switched off whole the reaminder is switched on - which might be precisely what happens during brain-death.Secondly, as mentioned above there seems to be a radical difference in effect depending on the dosage. I know ketamine is a party drug, although I've not taken it myself, and I can only presume that manufacture and distribution for this market specifically keep the dose so low it does not trigger catatonia - that would be no fun. I do know some people who took a ketamine variant they got out of a military field medical kit, and I don't think that dosage would have been set as high as catatonia either (it did not affect them that way).The main virture of the good drugs guide, and similar organs of their ilk, is that they are actually repositories of, umm, consumer testing. Its not academic deduction about what the effects should be, but reportage of what the effects are.