Ketamine

From the latest issue of Man's World

This article was first published in Man’s World Issue 8 on page 282.

K has completely replaced coke in my circle of aging LA chumps. There’s been a heat wave. 96 or above every day for weeks. You snort it on a sweltry Friday afternoon with your Israeli contractor in the bathroom of a pinball bar in Eagle Rock. You snort it in the backyard of a Peruvian starlet’s surprisingly-down-to-earth Frogtown craftsman, drooling on yourself as her surprisingly-of-the-people friends recount the Battle of Chavez Ravine. You snort it with the Armenians from your gym at a downtown rave, only to come out and see your Alfa Romeo smashed, your Dodgers hat the only thing missing. You snort it in the passenger seat of your best friend’s Tesla, parked in a Venice lot, smoking, Netflix on the touchscreen, just a few more precious moments before retreating to wives and babies. 

For me—someone who is “difficult to be around”—ketamine is a performance enhancing drug. All drugs are. The sassafras root births ecst…