Ketamine & The Self I Made By Deleting

👆 you can listen to me read this article

---

I took a medium-high dose of ketamine last night and got a rare chance to observe a specific mental process that my mind usually keeps hidden from itself.

Nati & I parked Lucky the campervan in the Apennines in Tuscany. This is our home for a few days.

As I lay on the couch, cloaked from the outside world by eye-mask, headphones and blanket, I cast my mind’s eye backwards, recalling the hike I took earlier in the day. My afternoon hike took me up a stunning valley, through narrow canyons, past thermal springs, out beyond a marble quarry and up into the alpine forest.

When I’m hiking alone, my mind relaxes into a kind of default-open state. At some basic level, my consciousness is immersed in a continuous flow of sensory data: I’m seeing-hearing-feeling-smelling-moving-thinking, there’s an uninterrupted channel of information that’s broad and deep, the boundaries between my inner and outer experience are indistinct.

On top of this undifferentiated continuous data channel, my attention is working actively to cluster information into specific frames. Things to notice. Objects, relationships, characters & plots. Mental photographs, memories, vignettes. It’s like: the instantaneous realtime experience of the present moment is infinitely rich, but immediately after the moment, there’s a kind of pruning process. My mind takes the torrent of data and edits it down to a narrative.

This is what I noticed while lying on the couch: there’s the experience itself, and then there’s the story I tell myself about the experience. The two are extremely different. The story is made by deleting most of the data and highlighting a few pieces.

High on ketamine, replaying the walk in my mind, I got such a surprise! Like I caught myself red-handed, right in the act of memory repression. I saw plainly how my mind was sorting through the memories and choosing which ones to suppress. I watched in real time as a specific memory was being censored. I had a brief encounter on the trail that provoked some fear & shame. I was there obviously, I know that it happened to me. But just an hour later, I could feel that part of the story being edited out. If Nati had asked me about my hike, I wouldn’t have mentioned it. If I had journaled about the hike the following day, I probably wouldn’t have noted this moment.

Here’s what happened.

I’m walking up the valley, unselfconscious, wandering mindlessly, enjoying the geology – wow, did you know glaciers made it all this way in the last ice age, almost down to the Mediterranean –and wow isn’t that cliff with its asymptotic sedimentary layers just like an ocean wave crashing at 1 billionth of the usual speed – and oh what’s that flower I haven’t seen one of those before –all of a sudden I snapped out of the wide open expanded awareness and switched into a completely different mode: contracted, self-conscious, under threat.

I spotted a dog on the path up ahead. I was attacked by a dog in 2020 so I’m still hyper-vigilant.

This dog was big, shaggy, wolfish, some kinda mongrel-shepherd-cross. I had about 17 thoughts in a split-second, assessing the situation. The dog is off the lead. Probably there’s an owner nearby by but I haven’t seen him yet. The dog is big enough to hurt me. I don’t know if I’m safe, I just know I’m defenceless. I don’t know how to communicate with the owner because he probably doesn’t speak English. Assuming I will meet him in a minute, I don’t want him to know I’m afraid. I’m ashamed of being scared of dogs. And it seems kinda disrespectful to assume this guy doesn’t know how to keep his dog under control. All these thoughts happen within a second or two. Fear, shame, confusion. So I decide the easiest thing is to just turn around and walk away. The dog will know I’m not invading their territory. I have not seen the owner yet so I can just get the fuck outta there, go back down the valley, safe from the dog, and safe from an embarrassing interaction with the owner.

So I turn around and walk downhill for twenty thirty seconds maybe, and then I think again. The dog owner can see me now. His dog is still off the lead and the guy is not indicating any signs of concern, he's not worried about the dog misbehaving. I realise my plan to get away unnoticed is dumb: the guy can clearly tell I suddenly showed up in front of him on the trail and then immediately turned around.

So instead of walking further downhill, I decided to just stop. I sat on the little stone wall next to the trail. I learned this years ago: when you don't know what to do, do nothing.

I felt a bit awkward so I pulled out my phone and pretend to fiddle with it, I guess to give myself some excuse for sitting in a random spot. The guy walks past, his dog gives me a glancing sniff. I try to think of the Italian words for "beautiful dog" but it’s all coming up in Spanish so I say nothing.

Another 30 seconds, and they're out of sight. Nothing happened. Just a mundane everyday moment of getting a little spooked & clumsy.

I carry on up the trail. Through the tunnel. Past the waterfalls. Take a couple of photos. Pick out a nice walking stick. 40 minutes later, I turn around, time to head back home to the campervan before it gets dark. The whole way down the hill I keep thinking how I'm so happy with my stick, it's perfect! Strong, lightweight, straight, slightly tapered. I drag it on the rocks to sand down the rough edges, make a nice round tip at either end, clean up some of the knots. Eventually I get back home, and rest the stick by the back door. I’m so proud of it. A perfect walking stick! Who wouldn’t be excited!?

It was only during the ketamine trip, 30 minutes later, that I realised the stick was not for walking, but for protecting myself against dogs. I feel a lot safer when I have something I can use to keep them at arms length. But I’m ashamed to admit it, so I pretend to myself that the stick is for walking, even though the track is extremely easy going, and this thing obviously serves no function beyond self defence.

Under the ketamine influence, I could see the gaping holes between the experience, and the story I tell myself about the experience. I could see all the parts of the story that I was censoring out. No dog. No fear. No shame. No moments of weakness. Just a beautiful walk. And hey look at this cool stick!

It's so wild to see myself in the active process of repressing memories, editing the story, taking out the discomfort and just leaving the beautiful scenery.

So I cast my mind further back, looking for this pattern. Surely I’m doing it all the time, right? That thought triggered an insight cascade, because, oh shit, when I go looking for the mechanism of "hiding memories from myself", there are millions of them! Just last night, I woke at 3AM feeling some fear about the class I’m running this week. I didn't tell anyone about my fear, not my co-host, not Nati, not my journal. I just blacked out the whole experience. Who me? up for 2 hours in the middle of the night watching YouTube videos that remind me of my dad rather than feel the fear of messing up this class I’m running next week? Sorry who? You must be thinking of some other guy.

This is happening multiple times per day, it’s just an everyday habitual process, usually made subconscious. I have a kind or mental trash collection routine, that takes moments of fear or shame and quickly sweeps them into the dustbin before anyone sees. There you go, no problem, see? My sense of self is maintained by continuously deleting all the contradictory evidence. See, I’m cool, confident, relaxed, that’s just how I am I guess.

And here’s the punchline. What’s really quite amusing about the whole situation. This fucking stick. I was so proud of it! It makes me wonder how many other “““defence mechanisms””” I carry around with me daily, proudly on display, unaware that the pride itself is a clever misdirection that prevents me from noticing the insecurity they protect me from!

Anyway, never mind all that! Have you seen any good TV lately?