Ketamine Addiction, Gay Men and Trauma: One Man's Story [WATCH]
In the third episode of “UNCLOSETED, with Spencer Macnaughton,” Lucas Pearson talks about how he used ketamine to cope with familial rejection after he came out to his Christian parents.
UNCLOSETED, with Spencer Macnaughton is a new podcast by Uncloseted Media, an investigative LGBTQ-focused nonprofit news publication. Follow and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. YouTube // Spotify // Apple
This story talks about addiction and substance use. If you or someone you know needs help, resources can be found here.
Ketamine use is on the rise among Americans. But if you’re a gay man, that probably comes as no surprise. Gay and lesbian adults are almost four times more likely to use ketamine than their heterosexual counterparts, and a 2011 study from the U.K. found that queer men were over three times more likely than queer women to use the drug.
For many gay men—who disproportionately suffer from trauma and other mental health disorders—ketamine can offer short-term relief. But longer term use can have the opposite effect.
When Lucas Pearson first tried ketamine at 23 years old outside a nightclub in Louisville, Kentucky, he felt a sense of euphoria melting away his anxiety, depression and “sense of pain” he carried with him growing up as a gay kid in a religious household. At first, the drug was an easy escape that numbed Pearson from reality. Then, it became an addiction that impacted his mental and physical health, fueling feelings of paranoia and fear and leading to self-isolation.
In the third episode of “UNCLOSETED, with Spencer Macnaughton,” Pearson shares his story with ketamine addiction and his journey with recovery.
Watch the full podcast above or read the transcript below.
Spencer Macnaughton: Hey everyone, welcome to UNCLOSETED with me, Spencer Macnaughton. We’re thrilled to have somebody on who we featured in a recent story looking at gay men and ketamine addiction, and the intersection it has with trauma. And that person is Lucas Pearson, who was featured in Sam Donndelinger’s article about the topic. Lucas, thanks so much for coming on.
Lucas Pearson: Hey, thanks for having me, Spencer.
SM: Let’s get right into it. For listeners who are hearing your story for the very first time, can you kind of take me back to the first time you were introduced to ketamine and then walk me through spark notes—I know it’s a long journey—of where it led you.
LP: Yeah, so I was introduced to ketamine back around, it was 2014, 2015. And I was at a local bar here in Louisville, Kentucky. I was out with friends, and I just so happened to come up to a guy that asked me if I wanted to try a drug. At that time, I was still fairly new to the drug scene. And I was pretty open-minded to trying new things, so I went ahead and said yes. And this guy had like a little spoon on a necklace, and he ended up pulling a pretty good-sized bag out of his pocket and scooped some out and said, “Here you go, you’re snorting this.” And I didn’t really even ask what it was. I just said, “Okay, sure. I’ll give it a try.” And then, of course, after I ended up inhaling the drug, I asked him what it was at that point, after I’d already done it, and he told me that it was ketamine. And that was my first introduction to ketamine, and at that point, I started to feel really loosened up a lot. Things were starting to slow down a little bit and I liked the feeling of it. I really liked the feeling of it, and they had a dance floor, so I ended up walking into the dance floor area, started to dance a little bit, and start to get into that groove and really just lose myself in the music. That’s when I really started to, you know, know that this drug was something I wanted more of because it really did just kind of take away everything around me, and that’s all that mattered, from all the pain that I went through growing up and all that past trauma. It was something that I really enjoyed just kind of separating myself from reality.
SM: Tell me a little bit more about what allured you to it so much, what made it so good specifically for you, the high associated that you got in the initial phases with ketamine.
LP: I think for me it was really just getting into that space of not really having any care or worry, that numbing feeling that it gave me, to where I really just did separate myself from anything going on around me to a point that I didn’t even know, at some points, where I was in existence, because I would do that much of it. And I liked that feeling of just not really being here.
SM: People talked in the article, and you did too, about a state of dissociation where you feel like you’re not with reality. Explain that a little bit more to people who don’t really understand.
LP: Yeah, there were times where I’d be around people on it, and we would kind of get lost together in it. I really enjoyed being in this “lost world,” like an undiscovered type world, is what it felt like. And then there’d be times where I’d zap back into it, into reality, and would know at that point, I was like, “Wow, I’ve been gone for quite a while,” in this feeling of not really caring or knowing that I was even gone, I guess you could say.
SM: And when you mean “gone,” just like completely not feeling like you’re experiencing reality?
LP: Right, yeah, it was just like another type of dimension, it felt like I was in.
SM: Got it. And take me back from that first night at the bar where you were given the key from somebody, and then fast forward. How did it become a problem for you? Something that you would describe as an addiction, I think, right?
LP: Yeah, so I did it off and on after that point, but I had other drug addictions as well. And I started to use it with those other drugs, and so it became something that was a good addition to other drugs. I did a lot of stimulant drugs, so it was something that would help bring me down or neutralize my high for a while. That’s when I started to really know that I liked it a lot more, and then it became a thing where I was using it without all of those other drugs. It was just like, my brain was like, “This is what you need.” It was one of those drugs that was the easiest way for me to separate myself from reality.
SM: It’s so interesting you say that because I was just about to read my next question, which is from Sam’s really well-reported article that ketamine was invented in 1962, and as a dissociative drug, it induces a sense of “detachment from one’s body producing a trance-like state marked by pain relief, amnesia, euphoria, and a distortion of reality.” And I’m curious, we talk a lot about trauma in the gay community. So many LGBTQ people experience trauma from their past. And I know you’ve had some, and again, I’m gonna ask you about that, but like how did it help your trauma in the short term?
LP: I think for me it was just that sense of almost forgetting the trauma that was there, because at this point I hadn’t done any sort of therapy, really, to possibly help with that trauma. I thought that this was a way for me to escape that sense of pain that I had carried with me for, you know, up from childhood all the way into adulthood. So I think for me it was just, not necessarily healing from it, but it was a sense of forgetting about it.
SM: Maybe more of a Band-Aid kind of thing.
LP: Yeah.
SM: And tell me about the trauma growing up. I know, I read in the article, you were born in a conservative Christian environment. Tell me about your upbringing and what that was like for you as a closeted gay kid. I could imagine there were parts of that that were really hard.
LP: Yeah, it was really tough. You know, I had three siblings growing up and grew up in a small town up in Indiana. We grew up in a very religious household, and from pretty much an early age, my mother and my stepfather were always very vocal about anything to do with LGBT community. They were very much against it. You know, “men shouldn’t marry men and women shouldn’t marry women,” and so on. And, you know, it was always related back to what it says in the Bible.
SM: “It’s a sin, it’s unnatural,” these types of things.
LP: Sodom and Gomorrah, all of those things. And I knew from an early age that I was gay, I knew that.
SM: How old would you say?
LP: I was probably about anywhere from 8 to 10.
SM: Yeah, I was 8. I remember I knew I was 8. Yeah.
LP: But I also knew at the same time that it was wrong to be that way, according to what I grew up with, and that’s what I was taught is that it was wrong. And so I always felt so ashamed of who I was, and it was, it was not easy. I always had to pretend to be somebody else to please those around me. So that kind of carried on into my teenage years, and that’s when I really picked up substances for the first time; it wasn’t ketamine yet, but you know, whatever I could get my hands on.
SM: But you came out to your mom, right? You came out at 16. Is that right?
LP: Yes.
SM: And what was that like? Tell me about that experience.
LP: So I sat down with her at the kitchen table, and I knew it was gonna be bad. I just knew my mother was a very reactive type of person to anything, it seemed like, so I knew it was not gonna be a great experience. It was really hard for me to do it, and I couldn’t even say it out loud at the time. I ended up just having to write it on a piece of paper because I was just so anxious. You know, like, this is it, your whole life’s going to change now because it’s going to be out.
SM: Crying, maybe?
LP: Yeah, there was a lot of crying. And so I handed it to her, and basically her reaction was, “You know, we’ve been praying about this,” and she kind of stormed out of the house at that point and got on the phone with multiple family members and told them. So that was a hard experience for me, to not even be able to really tell anybody but her, because she had outed me to the family, and it definitely did carry over into you know my adulthood years, and even now sometimes I still have a little bit of struggle of being myself. I try to be myself as much as possible, but sometimes it’s still difficult to just be me.
SM: Yeah, I could imagine. And your stepdad was, is this right? He was a pastor at the local church?
LP: My grandfather was.
SM: Your grandfather was a pastor. So it’s a deeply rooted religious family. So, you know, I know my boyfriend, for example, he comes from a very “Bible Belt” place, very same thing, no contact with his parents. That’s trauma, right? For somebody who’s not religious, listening to this, like how does that feel on the inside, in between your ears when you experience such intense rejection, related to something that is unchangeable in you, but integral to who you are?
LP: It’s really difficult. It’s difficult to, you know, and I’ve had trouble, being a people pleaser too, always wanting to please everybody else and make everybody happy, but at the same time now like trying to find my own inner happiness and peace, and it is difficult to explain to somebody, like, “This is who I am, and I can’t change who I am, this who I’m always going to be.” And I think there was even some insinuation from my mother when I got sober that, you know, “Well, you’re sober now, so you’re gonna be straight now, right?” And I had to explain to her that’s not how this works. That is still me. That has nothing to do with my drug addiction, you know?
SM: Yeah, and I want to get back to the recovery, because there is a very golden side to the story, too, that I definitely want to focus on. But first, you know, take me to where it got bad. I think a lot of people, you’ll hear, “Oh, you can’t get addicted to ketamine or it’s not something you can get addicted to,” but you really can, right? And I know everyone has their version of rock bottom, how would you? Can you take me to your, if you’re comfortable with it, your rock bottom, like when did it get at its worst? And like, how does that manifest when you’re taking it that much? I’m assuming you’re not getting that euphoria you got on night one anymore.
LP: No. And there’s different types of ketamine that are out there. It’s not all the same. And so I was always seeking out the purest level of ketamine that I could find. And for me, it became, I wasn’t just using, I was dealing out on the streets. I think that’s when I started to hit rock bottom was, you know, “I need to sell this to get enough for me.” And it got to the point where I was not really even socializing with anybody. I really started to distance myself from people and isolate, and that’s, for me, when it started to get really bad because I was more worried about “When can I get high again?” versus “When can I spend time with people?” Or “How can I get more high if I’m starting to run out?”
SM: When you’re taking it that much, we had some people in our story, perhaps you too, talk about the physical and mental effects. How did the ketamine start to impact you physically and mentally?
LP: So physically, I didn’t know really how much it was affecting me until I got clean from it. I was so tired almost every day. And so for me, like I was always tired all the time, and I thought it was just normal to feel that way: very, very tired and just kind of in a weird headspace of not really being able to function, not being able to really do normal day-to-day tasks that a normal person should be able to do, right? But for me, I couldn’t really do a whole lot of those things. It was hard for me to get through a day at work.
SM: And mentally, was it still helping the trauma, or was it doing something else?
LP: It started to get pretty bad, actually. It was not helping the trauma anymore. I actually started to get incredibly paranoid. So I got to a point where I was always thinking that everybody was out to get me. And I would have hallucinations and things. I went into psychosis many times.
SM: Wow. What’s that like? Take me back to an example of that if you’re comfortable.
LP: I was hearing voices a lot. I was hearing things outside my windows, I was hearing things outside of my bedroom, like pounding on my doors, just all these things that was like, “Man, somebody’s here to get me” type of thing. And it kept just getting worse and worse and worse. That was probably one of the points of me realizing, like, I gotta do something different.
SM: Yeah, and in Sam’s research and her story, she found that chronic ketamine use can cause inflammation, ulceration and damage or scarring to the bladder, liver, kidneys and gallbladder, and also have mental side effects, which are essentially the reverse of what it does in the short term, which is exacerbate trauma, exacerbate anxiety, depression and all the other mental health disorders that it’s supposed to help treat, or some people would say it might be able to help treat. Okay, so you kind of get to this space—that sounds horrible, by the way, and I’m sorry you went through that. How do you get out of something like that? Because I know so many folks, it’s really, really, when they’re experiencing addiction, hard to get out of it. What was your journey there?
LP: So I was in my room. I spent a lot of time in my bedroom. That’s just where I felt most comfortable, even when I was losing my mind; that was my place of safety, I guess. And I just had this moment of clarity of realizing that I was totally alone. And it was not going to end well if I kept going how I was going. And I’d been through, you know, getting locked up, going to drug court, all of these things, but it was really that moment of just feeling entirely alone. It was definitely a moment that I knew I had to change and do something different. And so that’s when I called up a friend of mine that I knew had been sober for quite a while. And, I was like, “Hey, you know, is there any way that you could help me out, like maybe take me to, you know, some sort of meeting or something about recovery?” And so he said yes, and picked me up and that’s what we did. And that was like a huge deal for me. And I felt like super at home with the people that I was around when I went to this meeting. It was nice to know that I wasn’t actually alone, there’s a lot of people that deal with very similar addictions. So it was nice to finally see that in person and talk about it and know that I didn’t have to end my life that way.
SM: Thank God you didn’t, and I’m so happy you’re here, and being a voice for other people who might still be struggling. I wanna read you some more stats, a few more stats which you already know, but obviously, there’s a huge connection to ketamine in gay men. A 2025 study found that gay and lesbian adults in the U.S. are almost four times more likely to use ketamine than their heterosexual counterparts, and a 2011 study from the United Kingdom found that queer men were over three times more likely than queer women to use the drug.
LP: I think a lot of gay men, we like our dance parties, we love the raves and those sorts of things. I think that there are those people out there that can use it and go about their life and be fine. But, I always try to let people know that, and maybe try to be more aware of how much you’re using it because if it’s becoming like a daily thing, maybe there’s more that you need to look at, like, “Why am I using this much?”
SM: Well, and one of the things that Sam unpacked in the article is like we do have so much trauma, gay men. I think definitely like there’s a party scene, there’s obviously a chemical drug substance use issue at large among gay men, chemsex is a thing. All of these things are things, right? But then, when you think about ketamine, and you think about the trauma, like there’s so many people who grew up with similar backgrounds and upbringings as you have in these “Bible Belt” communities or in these hyperreligious communities where there’s just rejection, right? Do you think there’s something about ketamine, especially that where it helps trauma, that plays a little part in that explanation for those statistics being so high?
LP: I think it’s different for everybody, and as far as the trauma thing goes, I know there’s a lot of ketamine therapy clinics now, and you can have it just shipped to your house, from my understanding. I think it’s just a good idea to be aware of the side effects, but I’ve heard it’s worked for people with trauma.
SM: Yeah, yeah. And one thing I definitely don’t want this interview to do is negate the fact that it does help some people, and there are studies out there that show low doses under clinical settings and when done properly, it can alleviate depression or even suicidal ideation. But also to your point, it feels like there’s quite a “Wild West” right? Like we found clinics that said it would ship it to your house, and that it would literally alleviate every single mental health condition under the sun, and there was no mention that you could get addicted or there were side effects, at least on the homepages. What do you think about that? It is kind of a “Wild West,” these ketamine clinics right now, eh?
LP: I, for me personally, someone who is addicted to it, that’s probably like my last resort is to order it from a medical clinic. I think most, a lot of people know, too, if that’s the way you’re gonna go about it, you probably already have an idea in your head of, “Am I doing this for healing and trauma, or am I doing it for other reasons?” But I think it’s great if people are able to find relief through it. I think that’s wonderful. For me, it just didn’t work out that way.
SM: Yeah, I think it’s a whole separate story about the regulation and the clinics and everything like that because I think a lot of the people who get addicted, they start, you know, it’s either recreationally or a mix of both. What did you learn about yourself through recovery?
LP: When I first got sober, I went through some really intensive trauma therapy—
SM: Okay.
LP: —in the first several months. And that was extremely critical, I think, for me long-term staying sober, was to walk through all of that trauma with somebody who was not there to pass judgment, but just to listen. And that was a huge deal for me because it was that weight that I had been carrying around for so long, and to finally just spill it all out to somebody who was a complete stranger, but was a licensed medical professional. It was great to be able to do that and I knew, for me, I had to do that in order to stay sober long term.
SM: Why do you say that? Why did you need that to stay sober?
LP: For me, it was those thoughts that continued to race around in my head. I was very good at burying all of my feelings inside and not talking about it to anybody, and just telling everybody “I’m okay” when I really wasn’t. I really do believe that trauma played a huge part in why I was picking up drugs to begin with, to numb out those feelings, so I didn’t have to face them and deal with them for a long time. So I think to finally face them and deal with them was a critical part for me to, hopefully, not pick up substances again.
SM: And what were some of the tools, especially from trauma-based therapy, I’ve never gone through any, I’ve done therapy before, but never trauma therapy. Like, how is it different? Like, what are some things in that process that were really useful that you did, or tools you learned, or things like that?
LP: He had me write out a lot of my thoughts on paper, and there’s just something about writing it out on paper that really helped me a lot, just to like, see it, visualize it, and be done with it. And he also recommended me to build a community of people around me, like healthy, good people. And not necessarily just sober people, but people who are doing things other than just hanging out at a bar. He recommended that. Now I’m able to go out into settings where there might be people drinking and there might be dancing going on, but I’m not triggered by it anymore, and I enjoy being around people that are enjoying their lives, and just finding that positivity is what he really encouraged me to do from other people.
SM: That’s awesome. And I bet, because I feel like a lot of trauma can really affect self-esteem and confidence, and a sense of who you are, did the therapy help with that, too?
LP: It did. It did a lot. I think the biggest thing that’s helped with self-esteem and courage is something else that the therapist recommended, was to start getting out and getting exercise daily. And it took me a while. I was maybe 10 months into my recovery journey before I really started to get exercise, and now it’s part of my daily life. I find some way to exercise every day now, and it’s really helped me a lot to gain a lot of self-esteem back and feel a lot better about who I am, both on the outside and the inside.
SM: And for people, there’s obviously a ton of people, including many gay men, who could be listening to this or struggling right now and kind of questioning this, and a lot of those folks might be people who had trauma too. What would you recommend to them if they’re thinking, “Maybe I don’t want to be in this position? Maybe I don’t want to keep doing K?”
LP: For me, it was just admitting, you know, that I needed to change something about what I’m doing in my day-to-day life, and that’s a first, huge step. When you finally are saying to yourself, “I don’t maybe wanna be this way anymore, I don’t wanna do this anymore.” I think that’s a huge step. And then I would say: reach out to people. Reach out to people that you know are going to be willing to listen and maybe give you some good suggestions, rather than people who are just going to downplay the fact that you maybe want to change something about yourself.
SM: I know it took Sam a long time to find you, somebody who would speak on record about this, right? And a lot of people don’t want to. Why do you say, “Yes, I want to speak about this”?
LP: I think for me, it’s the possibility that I may just help a single person from just talking about what I’ve been through. If I could just help a single person and just get the word out there that you don’t have to be ashamed of who you are. Somebody once told me that your struggles are what really do make you stronger, and you don’t have to go through it alone. There are definitely a lot of resources out there, there’s a lot of people that you wouldn’t even think would be willing to help you or listen without judgment. But you’d be surprised when you kind of start to get the word out there that you’re wanting to change what you’re doing, it’s pretty incredible. So I would say just don’t be so afraid to speak up about it.
SM: I’m really grateful that you came on. And this was a really important conversation that I think will likely help more than one person. We’re going to put a lot of those resources for folks struggling right now in the episode notes. But Lucas, thank you so much for speaking with me today. You can find Lucas’ entire story and Sam Donndelinger’s investigation on Uncloseted Media. It’s called “Gay Men, Ketamine and Trauma, A Therapy or a Trap?” Lucas, thank you so much.
LP: Thanks for having me on.
SM: And for those who want to follow and subscribe to us on all platforms, you can find us wherever you get your podcasts. Don’t forget to like and subscribe.
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