The Ketamine Crisis

Hijacked Culture, Addiction, and the Future of Psychedelic Healing

“He’s Gone”

“Brother… what do you mean he’s gone?”

“Shane had an accident last night. He had been using ketamine heavily as a way to cope with mounting stress in his business and personal life. He left on his motorbike, probably high, and ended up killing himself.”

This was a snippet of a conversation between me and a close friend about our brother — someone I had supported at moments as a client — and his tragic passing.

Since that time in 2020, Over the past several years, dozens of people have privately shared stories with me about witnessing the destructive effects of chronic ketamine use in partners, friends, and colleagues.

Some of these stories include profound injuries while under the influence. Others are far darker — situations involving psychological breakdowns, murder, murder–suicide, suicide, and experiences people would describe as spiritual possession.

I cannot say with certainty whether ketamine caused Shane’s accident. What I can say is that it had become a regular coping mechanism in the months leading up to it and that his close friends and family saw significant behavioral changes with the introduction of it into his lifestyle.

After writing on this subject a few times on social media — receiving both monumental support and strong pushback — I decided to finally do a thorough breakdown of the dangers of ketamine in long-form content.

So here it goes…

Disclaimer and Orientation

My intention is to share an important orientation toward ketamine as a compound through the framework of my own consciousness and lived experience.

Firstly, let it be known that my intention is not for anyone to feel judged or shamed. This article arises from a place of care, concern, compassion, guardianship, and direct experience.

For the sake of brevity — and not sounding like a résumé — I will not be sharing a list of credentials to placate the skeptical or hyper-intellectual reader. I prefer to remain in authenticity.

My work has been shaped through 20 years of mentorship, apprenticeship, and accountability to the traditions and teachers who have guided my path. Spanning modalities such as bio-energetics therapy, EFT, transactional psychology to more energy based lineages, mystery school teachings, and traditional / ancestral healing lineages, both from the East and First Nations.

I will also share openly that I have my own flaws, and limitations as a human being and expect to remain a work in progress for the rest of my life.

My perspectives arise from a multidisciplinary orientation and my direct lived experience working with leaders and communities professionally over the last two decades.

I am not a journalist bringing forward a purely academic argument. Nor am I a weekend warrior who received a mail-order shamanic certificate.

The work I do with people has not come from textbooks, but from deep guidance, support and initiations I received directly from mentors and elders who have walked a path long before me — souls who guided me through layers of grief, trauma, coping strategies, self-deception and toward the wholeness I believe each of us has at the core of who we are.

This article comes from a deep devotion to authentic trauma healing, unglamorous shadow work, an inner guidance around cultural guardianship and my path as a lineage carrier.

I do not claim to have all the answers by any means, and I want to clarify something important :

Some people have undoubtedly experienced real relief through clinical ketamine therapy. Their experiences deserve respect.

Clinical ketamine therapy has shown promising results for treatment-resistant depression in controlled medical settings.

My personal view is that there are healthier, more natural alternatives. My main concern is not with carefully supervised medical use, but with what happens when a powerful dissociative synthetic drug becomes normalized as a casual recreational “medicine”. My concern is the rapidly growing normalization & dangers that recreational ketamine use poses on the physical body, on psychological states, collective spiritual evolution and our larger cultural landscape.

My perspectives are informed by witnessing the impacts of recreational Ketamine abuse on individuals, relationships, projects and communities first hand.

Bringing a multidimensional perspective to any controversial topic is bound to ruffle feathers — especially when the subject matter intersects with sensitive topics such as addiction, dependency, identity, and subcultural mythologies.

Within this exploration I will share threads of awareness informed by the wisdom traditions of my teachers and mentors, to whom I hold deep respect. I also dive into the data & cited research on the physical dangers later in this article.

I will also acknowledge my bias.

The lineages in which I trained are highly suspicious of synthetic psychedelic substances. I also consider myself somewhat of a purist regarding plant-medicines & have personally walked a more traditional path of ceremony & initiatory rights when it comes to such compounds.

Additionally, it feels true to share that I’ve been abstinent from psychoactive plants for the past two years and believe more and more in the importance of grounding and the utilization of other comprehensive, holistic & integrative methods of healing in conjunction or as a replacement to psychedelic healing. I am finding myself more and more compelled to assist in moving the culture toward less reliance on chemical shortcuts for “perceived” spiritual growth, as I return to my roots in Qi Gong, Meditation & Breath work I am reminded daily that we truly can get high on our own supply.

My relationship with plants today are primarily through Gong Fu Cha (traditional Chinese Tea ceremony), Traditional Chinese Medicine, Ayurvedic herbs and minimal functional medicine supplementation. Essentially herbal regimes that are grounding, stabilizing, and fortifying to the nervous system or assist the body’s detox pathways, and neurological health.

I will state that I am not closed off to modern science or medicine, regardless of my deep love & study of holistic healing and lineage based ancestral healing. Personally, I have grown to appreciate innovation as the co-founder of Whole-Being Longevity; where I’ve teamed up with my colleague Gregory Lazelle, a functional medicine doctor, network chiropractor & structural movement specialist. Our combined work helps leaders gain mastery over their health, nervous systems, performance and life purpose from a very grounded & integrative approach; incorporating both ancient and moderns systems of healing / optimization.

My colleague Dr. Lazelle’s hypothesis is that a lot of depression cases are arising from a type of neuro-inflammation and that Ketamine gives a temporary relief of this inflammatory response. However, like most pharmaceuticals, they don’t resolve the root cause of inflammation, rather treats the symptom. The mental health crisis our world is facing is an area we discuss often and deserves a fully co-authored book, however when it comes to Ketamine and Depression, I’ll let him expound on his research another day as it is still in development.

In the meantime, there are several, larger cultural conversations to be had about the over-consumption of psychedelics and the colonization of spirituality — what I often refer to as the spiritual-industrial complex.

This article touches on some edges of that conversation and I would love to keep unpacking some of these layers and themes with readers in on an ongoing basis.

A Spiritual Framework

Before I address the ketamine crisis more directly, I want to share the broader worldview from which some of my concerns arise.

Even if you reject the spiritual or cultural arguments I put forth, I would urge readers to stay for the physical data alone, which is quite alarming.

(References at the end of the article for that section).

Many spiritual traditions suggest humanity is currently moving through a period of profound individual and collective spiritual transformation.

This perspective appears in many wisdom traditions, from Indigenous prophecies & ancient calendar systems to mystical teachings across civilizations around this unique time we find ourselves in.

These traditions speak about a narrow window where humanity must evolve spiritually and culturally before certain planetary thresholds are crossed.

In my research, there are essentially three main timelines for humanity, depending on how we collectively respond in the coming years.

Each timeline is fed by the choices we make, individually, tribally and collectively.

The three broad trajectories for our collective future are as following :

• A collapse of social systems into chaos (eg: Mad Max)

• A hyper-centralized fully controlled technological society

  (extreme eg: The Matrix or minority report)

• Or a more balanced world where technology, nature, and human consciousness evolve together from an embodied spiritual ethos. (eg: The more beautiful world our hearts know is possible, ie Charles Eisenstein)

The path, and methodologies I incorporate in my healing & mentoring practice emphasize deep personal responsibility, and I believe can assist the third potential timeline.

This includes resolving karmic issues, ancestral trauma, unresolved psychological & subconscious wounds and all manners of conditioning.

The purpose is to free trapped life force so we can participate more consciously in the evolutionary energies moving through our planet.

When we resolve these patterns, we reclaim more of our co-creative power in service to all of life.

We move out of hyper-stimulation, out of overly narcissistic cultural conditioning, and unconscious coping strategies that perpetuate suffering in ourselves and others.

Instead we move toward a balanced relationship with nature, our inner most self / soul, the divine, intimate relationships, community, purpose, planet and web of life itself.

It is a path of dismantling indoctrination and trauma patterns so the soul becomes the primary decision maker in life.

One of the aims of this individual work is to translate it collectively into a culture rooted in:

• Relationality beyond transactionality (reciprocity)

• Symbiosis with Nature (harmony)

• Village consciousness (inter-dependence)

• Internal enoughness (wholesomeness)

• Reverence for life (a personal relationship with the divine)

The Threat of Transhumanism

One potential disruption to humanity’s natural evolution is the ideology (and some would say agenda) known as Transhumanism.

Transhumanism proposes the integration of human biology with advanced technologies such as neural implants, artificial intelligence systems, and bio-engineering in pursuit of enhanced cognition, longevity, and control over human evolution.

Within this ideology there is a deep deception that technology itself is the means to evolution. This ideology is perpetuated by the upper echelon, presenting technology as our saving grace, while it out sources our inner authority as a species.

The more integrative spiritual relationship to technology is that it becomes informed by and guided from, our natural spiritual evolution, not as a replacement for it.

When we skip steps, when the uninitiated implement such profound magic such as AI (yes this is a form of magic — super computing all runs on crystal technology ;) — or other technologies, formulations or compounds — The cost may be enormous.

Empathy, spiritual connection, and relational intelligence could be sacrificed in favor of technological integration, irreversable DNA & brain developmental alterations in the coming generations from outsourcing imagination, centralized bio-metrics data collection and other serious concerns raise the alarm around how close we actually are to a full shift in reality as a species. It is part of why there is an exponential moral dialog around AI ethics; because the presence of AI in our world now expedites this timeline negotiation, and can either catalyze awareness or assist its devolution.

The transhumanist ideology is built largely on a hyper-reductionist worldview — one that reduces life entirely to matter and dismisses the spiritual dimension of existence. Pharma also mirrors and favors this reductionist worldview.

Whole-centric systems, Indigenous cosmologies and ancient wisdom traditions all offer the opposite perspective : human beings are not separate from nature.

We exist within a living universe where matter and spirit are intertwined.

Many ancient civilizations integrated science and spirituality seamlessly, and to this day awe scientists & traditional archeology with its limited consensus realities. The presence of many of these ancient masonic anamolies communicate a profound gap between our interpretation of “modern progression” as we fail to even remotely replicate their symbiotic, geometric perfection with our modern technology.

Our current modern culture, quite simply has largely severed this relationship and its natural life affirming alignment in favor of entropic & extractive systems. This loss of an integrative worldview contributes to the profound cultural disconnection, mental health crisis & eco-system destruction we see today.

From this perspective, widespread ketamine abuse is less of a root problem and more a profound symptom of this deeper cultural & spiritual disconnection.

A symptom of the deep loss of rites of passage or initiations as a culture, and how the realities of indoctrination can deeply infiltrate counter-cultural spaces that once emerged in response to an outdated paradigm. These counter cultural spaces attempted to stand for a more life-affirming world, yet begin to gradually devolve toward depravity & feed the very military industrial world they once opposed. This conundrum exists in many sub-cultural contexts and extends beyond the focus of this article alone.

The Dangers of Dissociation

From a spiritual perspective, the soul incarnates to learn and evolve through an embodied experience.

Each Soul carries a seed or blueprint of potential that requires the right nourishment to actualize within their incarnation.

When a personality becomes overly dominant, too focused on control, force or resistant to growth, the soul may manifest disease patterns as a signal to bring awareness or trigger unavoidable transformation.

If that signal is ignored, death itself can become the mechanism of transition and evolution.

In other words, when a personality refuses to evolve, larger forces intervene.

This is where I see the first danger of prolonged Ketamine use, as well as the abuse of psychedelics.

Ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic with psychedelic-like effects

When its use becomes abusive, the repeated act of leaving the body can communicate something profound at the spiritual level :

A deep unwillingness to be here.

Repeated dissociation from the body may gradually reinforce a psychological pattern of avoidance rather than integration.

In my personal life, the three people I have lost that were gripped in ketamine abuse were all using it to numb profound pain.

Eventually they chose, consciously or unconsciously, to fully check out.

Cultural Implications

In my view, ketamine has functioned as a kind of Trojan horse, allowing pharmaceutical models to move rapidly into spaces that were once centered around traditional plant medicines, consciousness evolution and improving society.

Specific sacraments that have been stewarded by Indigenous cultures for thousands of years run the risk of synthesization, over commodification, extraction and policy control. This cultural shift is not only concerning for these cultures, but for our ecosystems and for the impact that synthesization can have on shaping consciousness as a whole. Psychedelics and the expansion of consciousness has become, unfortunately another cash grab industry and we need to be highly discerning around this.

During the second boom of the counter cultural momentum in the western psychedelics movement, one pioneer & thought leader, Terence McKenna, shared a voice of warning:

“Ketamine is not a spirit I would want to make a contract with.”

He witnessed the unique kind of psychosis ketamine could induce — something that can occur with other psychedelics as well if integration is lacking, but more prevalent with “K”, because of its emotional numbing properties and addictive potential.

One common argument I hear is:

“If it’s so addictive, why is it being promoted as therapy?”

My concern is simple:

Pharma infiltration.

Ketamine has spread rapidly through many alternative subcultures, from the tech world to the spiritual wellness, coaching and personal development communities to deep into the transformational festival landscape; from Ubud, Bali to Austin, Texas, it’s recreational use has increased dramatically.

Its normalization within social environments raises serious concerns.

Ketamine may even be conditioning or priming the nervous system to be compatible with transhumanist ideology. Again from a multi-dimensional perspective, the more imaginations, the more co-creative energy that is focused toward a specific potential future, the more our life force energy flows in that direction & manifestation.

So what could be the agenda behind having tons of powerful leaders not only dissociate from their bodies, but make it a cultural trend to do so?

Each bump alters the energetic field of a space — from an shamanic perspective — it opens multi-dimensional “portals” through use. “Portals” are access points to the spiritual dimension, that traditionally only those with high-initiations would understand the responsibility of stewarding.

The likelihood of an Ayuaschero opening a bottle of Yaje’ at a social event is highly unlikely (although who knows these days) -- they understand what that could do to the morphogenetic field of that given atmosphere.

Unlike traditional ceremonial medicines, ketamine is often used casually in social environments where there is little to no container, preparation, or integration. In my experience, this kind of unstructured use can significantly destabilize psychological states and group dynamics.

From an ancestral wisdom world view, opening such energetic spaces with compounds casually would be considered very dangerous on a spiritual level and in my healing practice and world view, entity possession is a very real phenomena. It is something we often see, especially when tied to addictive behaviors, significantly altering a person’s capacity to regulate their nervous system (increased reactivity), or be in charge of their choices (highly impulsive).

A common response is:

“I’ve been doing it for years and I’m fine”

Are you?

Physical and Psychological Risks

The myth of the “safe psychedelic”
Ketamine is pharmacologically different from classical serotonergic psychedelics.

Beyond cultural and spiritual concerns, there are also significant physical, neurological & psychological risks associated with chronic ketamine use.

We already live inside of a serious dopamine hijacking culture / society and now ketamine is being spread as both as a common party drug and as an alternative therapy for depression.

Research suggests ketamine activates dopamine signaling within the brain’s reward circuitry, which plays a central role in addiction and motivation.

Repeated stimulation of dopamine pathways can lead to:

• Compulsive use

• Reward system dysregulation

• Increased addiction vulnerability

• Altered motivation and cognition

Ketamine activates dopamine circuits in the nucleus accumbens, one of the brain’s primary addiction centers.

Over time this can lead to dopamine burnout.

The result is a gradual loss of meaning in life without the substance.

Like with most addictions, shame and dependency begin to emerge.

And slowly, the person becomes less and less present and less and less capable of operating in day to day life without it.

From a bio-energetics perspective, we treat addiction as a “replacement for self-nurturing”. The subject of an entire article or book on the holistic approach to healing addiction would be needed, but I will plant that perspective, as most of us in western society are addicted to something.

Severe Bladder Damage

The hidden bladder crisis
Ketamine cystitis is one of the most destructive drug-related urological syndromes.

One of the most documented medical consequences of ketamine abuse is ketamine-associated cystitis (KAC).

Medical literature notes:

“Frequent recreational ketamine use is associated with significant urinary tract side effects, severe urinary tract damage, most notably ketamine-induced cystitis.”

Regular use increases cystitis symptoms three to four times.

Damage occurs through:

• Destruction of bladder epithelial cells

• Chronic inflammation

• Fibrosis and collagen buildup

Symptoms may include:

• Severe pelvic pain

• Constant urination

• Blood in the urine

• Bladder shrinkage

In extreme cases the damage becomes irreversible.

Some patients require bladder removal surgery.

Kidney Failure and Systemic Damage

Ketamine-induced bladder damage can also progress into kidney disease.

Medical reports document cases where chronic use resulted in:

• Stage 3 chronic kidney disease

• Ureter obstruction

• Hydronephrosis

• Kidney failure

Even after stopping ketamine, some patients require long-term medical interventions such as ureter stents.

Public health systems are beginning to see a surge in these cases.

Hospital admissions related to ketamine-induced bladder damage have increased dramatically, particularly among young adults.

Summary of Long-Term Risks

Chronic ketamine use has also been linked to:

Cognitive decline
Changes in neuronal structure and signaling.

Memory impairment
Reduction of synaptic proteins associated with learning.

Psychiatric disturbance
Including paranoia, dissociation, and psychosis-like symptoms.

Physical dependence
Despite popular narratives claiming ketamine is non-addictive, patterns of compulsive use are increasingly documented.

Closing thoughts and perspectives

When I think about this issue, I don’t just think about all the statistics. I don’t just think about debates online between people that have differing views on the subject, psychedelic therapists with rapport and training vs unintegrated tech shaman bros running around in speedos with feathers in their hat looking “put people onto the magic of Ketamine”.

I think about my friends, especially Shane.

I think about the phone call I got from my dear brother, and the statement :

‘He’s gone.’

I think about the beautiful young man who was struggling with deep emotional challenges, who was committed to a traditional path of plant medicine and started abusing Ketamine between ceremonies to cope. Who went to an ayahuasca ceremony in one last attempt to try to heal his addiction and ended up jumping off a water fall taking his own life while the Shaman was on the phone with his Girlfriend.

I think about the young man I assisted at a party in LA, who asked me for help. We did an entity clearing and he reached out 6 months later to thank me and let me know how intense he had been struggling before that and that he was still sober from our healing intervention.

I think about popular culture influencers normalizing and promoting the recreational consumption of Ketamine on their platforms and how deeply that pisses me off.

I think about the culture I want to bring children into, the best parts of the regenerative, transformational festival and wellness worlds, without all the hyper-capitalism, competition, inflated identity and substance abuse.

I think about the larger implications for our planet when so many uninitiated “practicioners” are initiating others with compounds that open up the multi-dimensional & spiritual worlds.

I think about how many people hide behind (all types of medicines) because they want the power, position and don’t have the embodied integrity or patience to develop true responsibility for stewarding someone’s consciousness, Psyche and Soul.

I think about all the people turning born again because the new age has become so half baked, and all the people in the mainstream that could benefit from authentic spirituality, traditional wisdom, and healing modalities but will be repulsed because of a disembodied representative.

Abuse can happen of any substance, whether it be plant or synthetic. And addiction is an extremely confronting subject to look at and be with; especially when it is culturally endorsed / enabled.

I don’t think this epidemic will shift anytime soon –- unless people start to get really honest with themselves and each other. Until our communities start to speak about the very real negative impacts in their day to day lives and actually start to share openly about them.

If more leaders are vocal, if more people are courageous enough to give voice to their struggles, without fear of repercussion from our Burner friends, I think it will help us as a community begin to create safer spaces around this and other important subjects that impact us all as a collective community.

Every generation inherits substances that test its maturity.

The question is not whether people will continue to use ketamine or not.

The question is whether we have the wisdom to understand what it is actually doing to us.

My closing questions, suggestions and invitations to you, dear readers — (and I would love to hear from you) –— are the following :

1. What does ketamine abuse say about our culture and society?

2. Have you or someone you loved personally experienced Ketamine addiction and have you / they recovered?

3. Do you have a lived experienced you want to share? Consider being vocal about this issue on your platform and referencing this article along with your direct lived experience

4. Do more research around what is happening in the psychedelic space, the greed and infiltration that has entered that space, Ai’s involvement etc and how it poses a real threat to traditional systems of healing and natural medicines

5. Do more research on the real threats of Transhumanism (I highly recommend Greg Braden’s 2 part episode on Know Thyself podcast)

6. I highly recommend the Emerald Pod-Cast episode “So you want to be a socercer in the age of AI?”

7. Consider the impact of your choices when you participate or endorse a culture that may be over indulgent or escapist in its shadow frequency

8. What does asking for help look like, and can we start to have real dialogs about addiction in our communities?

Regardless of whether you resonate or disagree with me or my perspectives;

I truly wish you well in navigating our current world as it transforms rapidly around us.

In service, and in wholeness,

-Luke Kohen

Photo Courtesy of Andrew Malcom

About the Author

Luke is a pioneer of integrative spirituality & holistic healing with a passion for self-mastery, human optimization & culture change. He brings a lived experience spanning 20 years immersed in apprenticeships across multiple lineages and modalities that inform his service with leaders, ventures and projects.

Luke Kohen is the co-founder of Whole Being Longevity and Benevolent Culture Collective. He is a keynote speaker and systems change advisor, a poet, storyteller and singer songwriter. LK travels the world sharing his gifts supporting leaders and communities move toward a more wholesome planetary culture and develop deeper coherence personally, relationally & within organizations.

References :

1. Kokkinou et al., 2018 – Molecular Psychiatry (systematic review)
Shows ketamine increases dopamine levels in several brain regions including the nucleus accumbens.

Link: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28972576

2. Hancock & Stamford – British Journal of Anaesthesia

Study demonstrating ketamine increases dopamine efflux in the nucleus accumbens.

Link
https://academic.oup.com/bja/article/82/4/603/288364

3. Role of Mesolimbic Dopamine Pathway in Ketamine Effects

Link
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36516891/

Review on ketamine misuse

Morgan & Curran – Addiction Journal
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1360-0443.2011.03576.x

Major review

Ketamine-Induced Cystitis: A Comprehensive Review

Link

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36118982/

Ketamine cystitis surgical reconstruction study

Link
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29230940/

Early case report identifying the syndrome

Link
https://jmedicalcasereports.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1752-1947-2-219

Ketamine cystitis progression

Clinical report

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/bjpsych-open/article/ketamine-cystitis-following-ketamine-therapy-for-treatment-resistant-depression-case-report/01BB529DA0602E6602132D2B7F21A184

Cognitive Decline & Brain Structure Changes

Cortical thinning study

Link

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33841212/

Memory impairment study

Link
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25538631/

Systematic review of brain damage

Link

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35370568/

Ketamine produces psychotomimetic effects resembling schizophrenia in experimental models.

Source

https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.01356

Public Health Evidence of Rising Cases

Recent reporting of increasing bladder damage cases.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/dec/30/surge-in-ketamine-cases-hits-urology-wards?utm_source=chatgpt.com

https://people.com/party-girl-usd1200-ketamine-habit-makes-her-pee-jelly-11707490?utm_source=chatgpt.com