This page is being written due to the lack of information I could find pertaining to the availability and legal status of ketamine in Mexico. The following account is fictional, and any characters, places, or events referenced to are constructs of my own mind. Any similarity to actual people, places, or events in purely coincidental. Certain drugs may be illegal where you live and places to which you travel, and this could land you in jail. Be careful. Drugs can be powerful and thought provoking tools. Approach them with respect and caution. Use them responsibly and you may just become bedazzled, amazed, and/or find purpose and meaning in yourself and/or your relationship to this multi-verse. Be forewarned...The following information is provided for entertainment purposes only. Enjoy...

  A few weeks ago, a friend and I had the good fortune of arranging 12 daze of vacation on the Baja Peninsula of northwestern Mexico. A few weeks prior we had obtained some ketamine in the states, and it had come over us while under the influence of this amazing psychedelic that it was our duty, no, our obligation to look for the pot o' gold at the end of the rainbow, and fly south to Mexico, where it was rumored this fascinating drug could be bought over the counter. After weeks of searching the internet for any scrap of information pertaining to the accusation of this wonderful substance "south of the border", I was surprised at the lack of available knowledge in the public domain regarding this particular subject. Ahhh..a new mission.. To boldly go (where I'm sure others have gone before), and to spread the tale of our mishaps and adventures, in regards to our previously mentioned (god?) appointed mission. I hope this information will be of help to others who also get drafted for this mission. I will also cover some of the basic travel and safety information relevant to having a good time in Mexico. I in no way condone the use of ketamine or any other drug. All those who do so do so at their own risk. Do your own research. Lycaeum and Erowid are great places. Also the risks involved in buying very grey area drugs in foreign countries like Mexico are very real. Watch your back! But with a bit of know how and common sense, one could safely foresee enjoying a few inter-dimentionaly charged daze exploring the inner workings of your mind abroad.
 
 

  We arrive at the border, wide-eyed and anxious. My beat up rattle-trap of an explorer made it and we were about to cross the invisible line into another world. We had done our research, and had some idea of what to expect. You should only drive your car into Mexico after obtaining Mexican car insurance as American insurance is not valid, and only if you are real comfortable behind the wheel, as people drive a bit loopy. A car accident in Mexico is considered a felony. We crossed the San Ysidro border into Tijuana with no problem and followed the signs towards our destination..a small resort town on the northwest mexican baja coast. This town has become a popular tourist and resort destination within the last few years, and is host to swarms of American kids on the weekends, who come down to take advantage of the 18+ drinking age. We followed the toll road until we saw our exit. This put us in the northern part of town. We slowly made our way down the main street, completely in culture shock. How different it all is from the states. Stop signs are also small and hard to see, and there are more of these than stop lights. The more touristy area is at the south end of town. We made our way down there, in awe of all the "farmacia's", and parked the truck. We didn't have any reservations, but I had the names of a few budget motels in town. After checking them out, we noticed that all were located on the main strip, so we decided to explore a little more. Back in the car we drove further south, about a quarter mile after the last store in town, where we stumbled upon a really chill motel, whose name has been omitted to protect the innocent. No one was in the office so we started taking a look at all the brightly colored buildings, which stretched all the way down to the ocean. 5 minutes later someone was in the office. In Mexico you can haggle about almost anything. We haggled our way into 7 nights in an ocean front room for $250. Not bad considering all the major hotels in town run $70-100 a night. After some quick unpacking and relaxing, we walked up the beach, into town. We had heard ketamine was still a controlled, prescription drug, and could only be obtained in pharmacies after getting a prescription from a "liberal" (read: pay them $) mexican doctor, but we thought we'd try around any ways. As expected, none of them would sell it to us. Then, in a stroke of luck,  we happened to stumble into a "veteranaria/farmacia", of the variety commonly found in any mexican city. "Uh..ketamine?" we asked.."What kind?" the man replied, as he pulled three kinds off the shelf.."Uh..how much?" we inquired. "This one (ketaset) is $35, this one (ketamex(or..ketavet?)[sorry, i was blurry] is $25, and this one (ketamina) is $17" he replied. I recognized the first and the third, so i said I'd take one for $35, and two for $17. "$69" he said, so we paid the man, smiled, and walked out of the store.  At that moment I thought, "That was one of the coolest things I have ever done in my life.", and I've done a lot of cool things! We shuffled down the street, giggling with excitement over our new purchase. Hehe..$17 a vile! It's $100 a vile "if" I can find it back home. Wow! At this point I remembered something I had read about ketamine being available in pet stores without a prescription. We went to another pharmacy and bought some syringes. Make sure you ask for the ultrafines for insulin, or you may get something much bigger. They were about 35 cents each. At this point we were very excited, so we returned to our motel room to gather ourselves. I felt like a little boy at christmas unwrapping my new toys from their boxes. We closed the blinds, and turned off the lights. I plugged in some christmas lights, as these are much safer than candles, and turned on some chill drum n' bass. With the sound of the ocean waves in the background, we settled in for a night of inter-dimentional mind exploration.  I won't go into the details of our trips over the next 5 dayz, as this is not what this page is about, but I will say that I played god (even though I don't believe in him), visited the edge of the universe (even thought I don't believe in that either), and created universe upon universe, lost in the Network of Creation. Of course none of these things comes even close to explaining the richness of experience we had during those five infraspiritual dayz.

   A couple days later we returned to the city to buy more ketamine, as we had nearly exhausted our supply. This time we bought 6 viles, including 2 of the magic brand Ketamex(vet?) (which we later decided was our definite favorite..(i dunno it's got a green bull on the cover..)). We returned to the motel to drop off our stash, and realized we should probably go get more needles, and some ice for our cooler, as we are vegan and had brought all our own yummy foods with us. This is the word of warning! Be careful! After buying our needles and ice we started walking down one of the side streets towards the beach in broad daylight. All of a sudden we heard a loud voice in a microphone behind us. We turned around and it was the police, getting out of their car. They asked us what we were doing, and told me to turn around, and that they were going to frisk us. My heart started racing. I, as an American citizen am used to having some sort of rights (humor me), and I always stand up for them when I can. I am normally protected against this sort of unjustified search. Even though this sort of thing could also happen to me in the states, at least I have some sort of rights to stand up for. Here I had none. After doing all my research in the US before we came, I was still never able to find the exact legal implications of possessing ketamine or paraphernalia in Mexico. I knew it was a controlled drug in Mexico, possession being only legal with a valid prescription, of which we had none. At that point I was very happy we had stashed our new viles back at the motel room, but we still had needles on us. They asked us lots of questions, and searched all my pockets. They then proceeded to look in the bag my friend was holding and found the needles. My heart missed a beat. Thoughts of spending the next few years of my life in a Mexican prison were racing through my head. Outside of the US, Mexico is first among nations at having the most Americans in jail. They immediately lifted up our sleeves, looking for track marks. I played the "innocent american tourist", as they asked my friend about the syringes she was carrying. "I'm diabetic, they are for insulin" she replied. For some reason, after some Spanish mumbling, they bought it and told us to be on our way. Wooh! A little to close for me. I have spent time in jail before, and it wasn't a place I wanted to return to, especially not in Mexico. We scurried along the beach back towards our motel room with police on ATV's and people with binoculars everywhere. I was starting to get a bit paranoid. As soon as we returned to our motel room, I threw all the ketamine and needles in a bag, and put the bag outside in the garbage can. I couldn't relax, as the whole experience had really shaken me up, even though in the back of my head, I knew we were out of danger. "What if they did suspect something, but didn't say anything, then just let us go to see where we went. Maybe they saw the room number on my key when they were searching me" I thought. I was definitely getting paranoid. A few minutes later a bunch of cars pulled up outside our motel room, and a bunch of people with binoculars were standing around. 5 or 6 cop cars were driving down a side street perpendicular to us (thump! thump!). All of a sudden some poor mexican guy takes off running with all his might. Cars and police are everywhere, and he gets chased down right in front of our motel room. Woah!.. hold on a second..let me catch my breath!..Regardless to say it took me 24 hours before I worked up the courage to go outside and retrieve our stash from the trash can, and when it was gone I was done.

  A day later while cruising through the city looking at nurseries and other places (where we found amongst others things Salvia and San Pedro), we stumbled upon our our sacred ketamine store. We walked inside to inquire about the legal status of ketamine in Mexico. The man behind the counter replied that ketamine was (semi) legal in Mexico, yet if they suspected abuse, you could be arrested, even if they couldn't prove it. I told him about our little encounter with the police. He replied by saying that the way things work in Mexico is that if you get stopped by the police with anything on you, they will threaten to arrest you and take you to the station. At this point you are to give them $20 dollars each. Of course I had heard this before, but after hearing it from a native, I believed it to be true, although I personally would never like to encounter this situation. There's just too much uncertainty involved. This left me nonetheless with a sense of calm as I said thank you and exited the store. At the time I had no idea why the whole ordeal had happened. We were having such a perfectly magical time on vacation, the people, the culture, the city, the beach, the drugs, everything. "Why?", I pondered did it happen. Then it hit me. In case you haven't gathered, my friend and I really like ketamine. We value the experience enough to drive over 2500 miles roundtrip to find it. It is hard for us to come by in our home town, and when we do, it is either in powdered form, or very expensive. Of course we wanted more, as any experienced ketamine user could tell you. The experience is so completely rich, bizarre, and fulfilling...who wouldn't? If we hadn't had our little run in with the police, then there was a good chance we may have aborted the rest of our vacation to explore this drug even more. But we had other plans. We spent the rest of the week playing in the ocean, riding ATV's, and enjoying the sun which had eluded us all week. That weekend we partied the old fashioned way, with tequila, and went out to some of the really well built clubs in town. I wish the music had been as cool as the clubs, but it is only our personal opinion that we prefer electronic music. We also danced to live traditional Mexican music, and had a blast. We did lots of shopping in the local markets, and found some cool hammocks, blankets, and other knick-knacks, for a good price. We fell in love with Mexico, the music the people, everything! We even became addicted to rice and beans..hhhmmm. On Sunday we took a day trip south to Ensenada, a really nice drive, and a pretty chill town. Upon returning we tried to acquire some valium for the next part of our trip, but ran into the same problem as with the ketamine, not without a prescription. So we bought some over the counter muscle relaxers locally known as "soma". They seemed to work just fine. We had wanted to bring ketamine with us on the next part of our trip, but considering the whole ordeal of the previous week, we decided against it, as we would be driving pretty far into unknown territory. We said goodbye to the beach and our wonderful motel room, where so much had happened the week before. Inter-dimensional space travel. Disembodied consciousness. Total dissolution of self into the ongoing process of creation and the eternal now. Wow! We prayed to no god or goddess in particular that we could one day return.

  In retrospect, there are a few things I would do differently if I returned to Mexico to purchase ketamine. I would drive down to obtain the drug and needles, so as to avoid unnecessary walking. I would also dress more like a tourist when acquiring it, not like the shlompy spaced-out neo-hippie/raver I was looking like at the time, as I think this played an important roll in why the police stopped us. I would make sure to carry extra money in $20 bills at all times, to pay off any necessary bribe. There are obvious dangers involved here. Any attempt to do what we did could turn out alot worse, and you could find yourself somebody named Paulo's bitch in a mexican jail for the next few years of your life...you do so at your own risk. I think if one were to obtain a prescription in Mexico, you may be ok, but don't take my word for it. I also believe the punishment for possession of a controlled drug as opposed to an illegal drug not to be as severe. Do your own research, and weigh the risks yourself. But with a little common sense and know-how, I believe one could safely enjoy themselves and ketamine in Mexico. Another word of warning I have involves the drug experience itself. During one of our 150 mg., self-guided trips to the other side, we decided to videotape ourselves while under the influence. Later while reviewing the tape, and laughing at ourselves, there came a point where I started to scream, pretty loudly "Leeeeeettttttttttssssss do it!" I'm assuming this was at a point where "I" was caught in the "We", and "We" were were in the "process of creation", although I have no recollection of screaming at all. This could have attracted unwanted attention, even the police, as it took place at about 3:00 in the morning. Make of it what you will, but the dangers are still there. We typically do not use sitters with ketamine, and that was the only time anyone screamed, but I'm just telling you this as something to consider.

  The final part if our trip brought us to Guadalupe Canyon . Be careful when driving thru the city parts on the way, as people drive like maniacs,  but anyone who enjoys nature, has a little extra money, a taste for adventure, and a car in good running condition (preferably 4 wheel drive), should take the time to explore this beautiful place in the northeastern baja peninsula. After a spectacular, breathtaking drive thru some of the most amazing scenery I have ever seen, is the turn off for Guadalupe Canyon. 35 miles further off-road, on what is absolutely the most bumpy road I have ever been on, lies the canyon. The canyon is a natural oasis in the middle of a wild desert, mountain area. Covered in palm trees, it has a natural hotsprings, which is pumped out individually to the seven different campsites. We stayed at El Mirador, which gave us our own private hot tub located on the very edge of the canyon, a shade palapa, where we hung our hammocks, soaked in the water, and mellowed out and reflected after a very long week. There are also waterfalls and caves in the near vicinity. On the day we explored the waterfalls there was no one else around so had our own private lagoon complete with a natural shower. Amazing! After two nights, we said goodbye to all the cactus, lizards, mice, and other wild critters, and slowly made our way back to reality. We got totally searched at the Mexacali border. I figured as much. Nonetheless we made it back. For better or for worse. Be careful. Safe travels. Peace.
 

shlompy azz veganoid..2001

"Paradise is not a place..it's a state of mind"