Lamin Fofana – Unsettling Scores · Album Review ⟋ RA
Moody, cinematic ambient music that probes the depth and devastation of the climate emergency.
Since his family moved to Guinea, after fleeing civil war in Sierra Leone, experimental producer and composer Lamin Fofana has gone from harnessing the roots of Detroit techno to exploring uncharted regions of contemporary sound art. By cultivating a practice he calls transmuting text into sound, Fofana has used the works of poets who address themes like migration, displacement and colonial thinking to inform and invigoriate the spirit of his music and the resistance it represents. His latest album, Unsettling Scores, addresses how a lack of meaningful action surrounding the climate emergency has severe implications for Black life. Take, for example, Caribbean islands where there has been a six-fold increase in the number of children displaced by storms. Over seven tracks of densely textured ambient music, Unsettling Scores meshes eerie organic sounds and industrial ambience into a cataclysmic sensory experience. As dry soundscapes give way to walls of hissing static that land like rain, it’s almost as if you’re witnessing rapid environmental change in real time.
Fofana paints sometimes barren, sometimes lively landscapes that range from rural to urban. On opener “Tune Of Departure,” whirring synthlines sound like they’re scanning previously inhabited land for signs of life, while ghostly keys conjure an air of displacement. “Erosion / / Whispers ‘a laminated shout'” unfurls like a wet monsoon. In the first half, pads shimmer like heat distorting the air, only to make way for micro-percussion that sounds like torrential rainfall hitting zinc roofs. Fofana’s gift for blurring the lines between organic and electronic are on full display here—this is detail-oriented ambient music that demands close listening.
Not everything on the album is ambient or arrhythmic though. The closer “Oily (Resurfacing)” offers something close to dance music. Resonant dripping sounds and the churning of machinery form an upbeat techno track that seems to imply that, in spite of the damage to Earth’s climate that we’ve witnessed on the prior tracks, the exploitation of Earth’s resources will continue regardless of the consequences.
The true doomer centerpiece of Unsettling Scores is “A Symbol of the Withdrawn God Redux,” an 11-minute rework of another track from 2016. Here, hammering sounds and grainy organs combine into a landscape of gritty industrial noise, with choral pads adding a hint of the celestial. The title plays on the concept of the withdrawn high god, or deus otiosus in ancient West African religions. After all, only a laissez-faire god could allow the mudslides, hurricanes and general devastation this track meditates on to continue uninterrupted. There’s a cinematic edge to Fofana’s style of ambient music, which disguises high stakes and existential dread with what can feel like peaceful quietude. Unsettling Scores both soundtracks and prods the status quo, a premonition from beyond the climate emergency’s point of no return, to a future where nothing has really changed and everything is worse.
Tracklist01. Tune Of Departure
02. A Symbol Of The Withdrawn God Redux
03. Erosion / Whispers “a laminated shout”
04. Broken Time Of Transition
05. Rehearsal Of Truth
06. The Ocean After Nature
07. Oily (Resurfacing)
Woman, Life, Freedom has become a protest slogan in Iran – and it’s also the name of a dance compilation made by Iranian DJs
You’re at an underground rave. The location’s a secret to everyone except the hundreds of people crammed inside.
All around you, people are dancing. The music is loud and the vibes are good.
But in Iran, raves aren’t just a night out. They’re an act of defiance.
A wave of protests has swept the country since September, when 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in police custody.
Demonstrators – many of them women – want to get rid of Iran’s strict religious leaders and rules that limit what they can wear or do in public.
In response, the government has been cracking down on protests. Hundreds have been jailed. Some say they’ve been tortured for confessions and others have been sentenced to death.
The penalties for speaking out can be harsh, but Iranians are still finding ways to oppose the current system.
And one of those is dance music.
‘A huge risk’
“You would basically think that you are in a warehouse in Europe or in the US somewhere when you go into these underground parties,” says Aida.
“Because nothing really looks different.
“But it’s a huge risk for the people who attend, the people who organise and the DJs.”
Image caption,
DJ Aida says music and dancing are a sign of freedom
Aida, 30, is a DJ and music producer who was born in Iran and relocated to Canada aged 12.
She still has relatives and friends in the country, and watching from afar made her want to do something to help.
So Aida has teamed up with fellow DJ Nesa Azadikhah to produce Woman, Life, Freedom – an electronic compilation by a group of female Iranian women, producers and musicians.
They hope the album will raise awareness of the protest movement back home, and plan to donate the money it makes to organisations helping women in Iran.
Nesa left Iran, where she was born and raised, five months ago to tour Europe.
She has organised public events back home, but they couldn’t be too lively as dancing is regarded as an illegal, indecent act.
Nesa and Aida explain that smaller-scale shows involving ambient music and visuals are permitted as a “cultural experience”.
But both say dancing is a symbol of freedom for them.
Image source, Nesa Azadikhah
Image caption,
Nesa Azadikhah used to be based in Tehran until recently
Nesa’s first experience of going into a club was a feeling of being “without stress, with peace and freely listening”.
“It’s a really emotional experience because it’s something we really don’t have in Iran,” says Nesa.
“But at parties I feel that way all the time.
“I wish that this could be possible and that this could happen over there.”
Aida agrees: “When I go to clubs, and when I’m playing in clubs, and I’m thinking about Iran, it’s also a similar feeling.”
‘A better future’
Both Aida and Nesa expect their compilation will be heard in Iran and might even soundtrack an underground event.
“It will be listened to back home.
“There is dancing and there is life as we know it happening underground in Iran. And so maybe not publicly, but these things do happen,” says Aida.
But they also want it to make others feel the same way Nesa did on that first visit to a club.
“It’s also this sense of hope for a better future and hoping that this can change over there,” says Aida.
“That the sheer amount of talented people in Iran can freely really show their talent and explore their passion.
“The same as we can out here and not have to run into these issues, not have to risk their lives, not have to sacrifice their performances because of these restrictions and rules that exist.”
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We all know that our sense of taste plays a huge role in how we perceive food, but did you know that our sense of hearing can also have a significant impact on our experience of flavor? The science behind how sounds and music affect the way we perceive food is truly fascinating.
Recent studies have shown that the sounds we hear while eating can influence our perception of sweetness, saltiness, and overall taste. For example, the sound of a crunch when biting into a crisp apple can enhance the perception of its sweetness. Similarly, the sound of a sizzle when biting into a hot and juicy steak can enhance the perception of its savoriness. These sounds, known as “oral-somatosensory,” are able to stimulate the brain in a way that enhances the overall taste experience.
But it’s not just the sounds of food that can affect our perception of flavor. Background music can also play a role. A systematic review of research literature by Oxford professor Charles Spence found that individuals tended to rate a sweet drink as sweeter and more pleasant when they were listening to happy, upbeat music, while they rated the same drink as less sweet and less pleasant when they were listening to sad, slow music. Spence discovered similar results in wine tasting, noting that “the change and fluctuations of musical parameters (such as tempo, musical mode, and timbre) specifically altered the perception of a wine’s taste (particularly sweetness and bitterness) and smell (i.e., which scent of the wine’s bouquet emerged the most).”
The tempo and volume of music can also affect our perception of food. Fast-paced music is found to increase our perception of sweetness and saltiness, while slower jams have the opposite effect. Similarly, louder music is found to increase our perception of sweetness and saltiness, while softer music has the opposite effect.
But why does this happen? It is believed that the emotional state triggered by the music we hear plays a role in how we perceive food. Happy and upbeat music can make us feel more positive and relaxed, which in turn can make food taste sweeter and more pleasant. On the other hand, sad and slow music can make us feel negative and stressed, which can make food taste less sweet and less pleasant.
Another theory is that the tempo and volume of music can affect our eating pace. Faster-tempo music and louder music can make us eat faster, which can increase our perception of sweetness and saltiness. Similarly, slower-tempo music and softer music can make us eat slower, which can decrease our perception of sweetness and saltiness.
Chefs around the world have begun to take note of these studies and incorporate audio as a part of the culinary experience(s) in their restaurants. The most well-known example of the same is a dish known as “The Sound of the Sea,” which was created by Michelin-starred chef Heston Blumenthal with help from his Experimental Kitchen. The dish utilizes the science of sensory memories to enhance the flavor and experience of the food. The dish itself consists of sashimi, tapioca “sand,” and seafoam presented in a conch shell, along with an iPod preloaded with recordings of ocean waves and gulls chirping.
The sound evokes memories of being by the sea and adds to the perception of the freshness of the fish, as well as the overall emotional experience. This dish is a signature offering at The Fat Duck restaurant and has generated significant worldwide attention.
The science behind how sounds and music affect the way we perceive food is still being studied, but one thing is for sure: the relationship between sound and taste is complex and multi-dimensional. Restaurants and food manufacturers are starting to take notice of this phenomenon and are incorporating it into their businesses. Some restaurants play specific music to enhance the taste of their dishes, while food manufacturers are experimenting with packaging designs that contain QR codes that direct to songs or playlists that are meant to be played while the consumer relishes the product.
The integration of sound and music into the dining experience can have a significant impact on how we perceive food. From the ambient noise in a restaurant to the specific sounds paired with a dish, the audio environment can alter our perception of sweetness, saltiness, and overall taste. As our understanding of this relationship grows, it will be interesting to see how chefs and food manufacturers continue to utilize sound in their creations. The next time you cook a nice meal, take the time to pick a song you like to go with it; it might just change the way you perceive the dish.
Have you ever wondered what thorny Cacti sound like? Or if they can even create a tone audible to human ears? Well, now you can listen to real-life Cacti in action courtesy of audiovisual artist Love Hultén.
The multi-faceted creative utilizes tech-forward wires to extract data from the desert plants through a custom-built sound machine that he handmade. How does he do it, you ask? First, Hultén clips the appliance onto the Cactus thorns and listens closely for their natural sound frequency to kick in.
The result is an eerie tune that gives off a haunting attitude, and the artist chose to create distinct songs from every sound. Titled “Desert Songs,” Hultén analyses the Cacti’s natural vibrations and records the electrical current transmitted from the plants. So while the Cacti work together to create synchronized melodies, they might have just made the album of the year.
Listen to “Desert Songs” above.
Elsewhere, the YCMC-exclusive New Balance 990v3 takes a hike.
Prepare for heavy hitting bass, seriously catchy loops, and supreme lead sounds – we’d like to welcome Production Master to RouteNote Create!
If you’re like me then you’re always on the hunt for huge sounds. Sounds that drop jaws, scrunch up bass faces, and make people swing their hips with their arms in the air. Well, I have some good news for you!
Production Master’s reputation almost always precedes them. Their catalog of samples features sounds from many renowned artists including Drumsound & Bassline Smith! In fact, Production Master is the producer collective behind Philosophy Recordings – an EDM record label with a reputation for great sounds.
The collection of producers in the Production Master fold brings dazzling presets and sample packs straight to your DAW. Their focus is on EDM music, including styles such as Trap, Deep House, Dubstep, and Drum & Bass. On top of those infamous styles, Production Master offers sounds suited to Big Room music, Melbourne Bounce… the list really does go on!
Ultimately, if you’re quest is one to find professional EDM samples that are ready to use straight out of the box then Production Master is about to rock your world. Let’s take a look at some of their sample packs!
Tantrum Desire
If you’re a fan of Drum & Bass then chances are you’ve heard of Tantrum Desire, and you may have seen them perform. Well, they’re undoubtedly one of the biggest names in DnB, and with a plethora of tracks on channels such as UKF and remixes for Laidback Luke, Rusko, Skrillex, Utah Saints, and more, who wouldn’t want to get their hands on their samples?
Now, the ‘Tantrum Desire – Technique Essential’ sample pack allows you to download their signature sound at the click of a finger. In this mind-boggling, groundbreaking monster of a DnB sample pack, Tantrum Desire has created an enormous collection of explosive basses, epic leads, energizing synths, extra-tight drums, and unbelievably versatile drum loops. As a result, you can instantly spice up your DnB productions.
Tech House Hype
You can almost feel your studio turning into a club just by how lively the cuts are in this pack! Expect to find funky melodies and dark ambient loops, rich piano stabs, minimal techno top loops, chord synth stabs doused in reverb, moving soulful chords, rhythmic percussion, thumpin’ kickdrums, hard-hitting claps and snares, subtle moving basslines, vocal ambient cuts, FX and much more!
Afterlife – Modern Deep House & House
It’s time to get ready for your next deep house hit with ‘Afterlife – Modern Deep House & House’. The sounds that await you in this pack will give you a great opportunity to create a radio-ready track in no time! You can get creative with the astonishing loops & perfectly tailored sounds in this pack and create irresistible movement on the dancefloor!
Iconic Chart Topping Trap
This pack gives you the tools to create unavoidable, chart-topping beats. Iconic Chart Topping Trap is loaded with vigorous drums, aggressive drum loops, blazing 808s, ecstatic FX loops, and a ton of inspiring melody loops. Furthermore, the loops contain lit keys, wavy pads, saucy plucks, and a whole lot more!
Ski Mask G-House & Bass House
Ski Mask – G-House & Bass House is an exciting pack offering the latest house movement infused with old 90s school riffs. This pack gives you a plethora of sounds suitable for G-House, Bass House, Jungle Terror, Hybrid Trap, Dubstep, and other bass music subgenres.
Psystyle – Psytrance Vs Rawstyle
Psystyle – Psytrance Vs. Rawstyle offers a divine mix of psychedelic psytrance sounds and aggressive, raw style samples to create a one-of-a-kind rave gem. Inside you will find the most intrusive raw style kicks, bold psy kicks, destructive screeches, vigorous vocal loops, crystal clear drum fills, energizing synth loops, otherworldly atmospheres, raw glitches, FX elements, and so much more!
Retro Wave – Synthwave And 80’s Retro
‘Retro Wave: Synthwave & 80’s Retro’ is an XL pack that will take you back in time! This pack will surely satisfy your senses if Synth Wave is the musical style that you are gunning for. On ‘Retro Wave: Synthwave & 80’s Retro’, Production Master focused on an authentic experience of the classic Synth Wave characteristics.
Created with infamous analog synthesizers such as the Yamaha DX7, Roland Jupiter-8, and Virus TI, Production Master used genuine 80’s sound production & processing techniques to bring this pack to life. This pack is chockfull of vintage analog sounds, loops, and one-shots just as they would sound in 1980-1989.
Evil Nightmares
With distressing sounds and intimidating loops, Evil Nightmares is the most unsettling cinematic soundbank you’ll find. Filled with deeply disturbing braams, horrifying drones, cinematic drum loops, and creaking strings, you’ll experience sonic horror like you never have before. Add chilling vibes to your productions or create the creepiest soundscapes for trailers, games, radio, or television with this frightening cinematic soundbank.
Alchemy – G-House & Bass House
The Alchemy (G-House & Bass House) sample pack delivers you the ultimate collection of Bass House sounds. You’ll find it’s packed with steady basses, premium drums, and supreme vocals, and it really is a perfect fit for every Deep / Bass or G-House producer!
Filter through its many premium loops & one-shots including EDM keys, spaciously fluorescent pads, an artillery of ambiance and effects, and, of course, some heavy-hitting bass sounds.
Nemesis – War Of The Gods
Now, Production Master state that ‘Nemesis – War Of The Gods’ is their “most ambitious pack to date”. While that may be true, this cinematic sample pack offers a world of orchestral possibilities world with over 2 years of work in one neat package. Several cinematic composers right out of Hollywood took part in the making of this project, and various singers with an opera background feature in the recordings.
‘Nemesis – War Of The Gods’ will take you on a journey of blockbuster proportions. Find vocals, a catalog of live instruments, sound effects, soundscapes, and orchestral percussions right here! Unfortunately, the RouteNote Create edition does not include the Kontakt instruments.
Check out Production Master’s catalog of sounds and much more on RouteNote Create! Download 100 royalty-free one-shots, loops, FX & full sample packs right now for $2.99!
Just last March, experimental electronic collective P.E. released The Leather Lemon LP. Today, they’re announcing the 100% improvised NOPE Tapes Vol 1, which the band recorded live in Brooklyn last November. The full tape will be available next month, and P.E. have shared a track from it called “Branding Crisis.” Read More “P.E. Share New Song “Branding Crisis”: Listen”
Lætitia Tamko, better known as Vagabon, hasn’t imparted her musical gift since 2019. Her previous release Vagabon, debuted to a chorus of critical acclaim – with fans and critics alike slapping up the genre-bending sound she dishes out in spades.
Coming back to bite, Vagabon offers up a new track “Carpenter”, dreamed up along with the producer Rostam. Having lent his production chops to the likes of Vampire Weekend, Haim, and Clairo – this co-production credit sets the song up for greatness.
“Carpenter” springs into motion with pulsating percussion, as Vagabon’s liting vocals float the song along. The production simmers under the surface, punching through periodically to reach for air. The body-moving beat is Afrobeats-esque, while the bass is heavenly. With hypnotic repetitions such as “Lean your body on me once more/ Lean your body on me once more/ Leave your body here” Vagabon leads you by the hand into bodily ecstasy.
Shining light on the track’s conceptualisation, Vagabon chats to us all about it. Reflecting on her time away from the studio, collaborating with others, and the most memorable moments of her career – Vagabon bares it all.
Head below to read the interview…
Hey! How are you doing? Where are speaking to you from?
I’m doing well, thank you. I’m speaking to you from California.
Can you tell us about your new single “Carpenter” and what inspired the song?
I wrote “Carpenter” about the need for time. Needing time to adjust, needing time to grow into ways we’d like to be.
How did your collaboration with Rostam come about for “Carpenter”?
Rostam DM’ed me one day and asked if I wanted to come by his studio. I played him some stuff, and he loved “Carpenter”, which was already done and sent to mixing at that point. But I wanted him involved so I sent him the files, and he added some special touches.
Your self-titled album received a lot of critical acclaim and press coverage, what was it like creating music on your own again after that success?
“Carpenter” is the first song I’ve released in 3 years but I never really stopped making music after the self-titled. If I wasn’t making it, I was thinking about it.
Can you give us any hints about what we can expect from your upcoming album?
It’s playful!
You have been featured on a number of other artist’s tracks, like Monako’s “Hollow Moon” and Courtney Barnett’s “Reason to Believe.” How do these collaborative experiences differ from creating your own music?
“Reason to Believe” made me realize people love covers. It makes sense, there is a built-in community for songs that already exist and are widely loved. I love collaborating though and would like to do more of it, when I have the time.
Your song “Home Soon” was featured in the film Antebellum, how did that opportunity come about?
The directors of the film were fans of my self-titled album which “Home Soon” was on. The film version of “Home Soon” that ended up in Antebellum was made with a full orchestra, and is a really special recording that I’m really proud of.
You have a unique blend of genres in your music, what musicians or genres have had the biggest influence on your sound?
I listen to all sorts of things: ambient music, African music, pop music, folk music etc.
What does it mean to you to “celebrate your heritage and community” through your music?
To be myself.
Your song “The Wild” was featured in the film Turning, how does it feel to have your music featured in a film soundtrack?
I’m glad to have been involved!
You mention that “Carpenter” is about “that humbling feeling when you desperately want to be knowledgeable, you want to be advanced, you want to be mature, forward thinking, and evolved,” Can you expand on that idea and how it relates to your overall creative process?
It’s rewarding to take on the things that challenge us. With “Carpenter”, it’s about being confronted with your limitations. That’s a feeling we are all familiar with, needing time to let things sink in.
How has your music evolved since your debut album Infinite Worlds?
I genuinely feel like the listeners are a part of this journey with me and are deeply in tune with the evolution of my music over the years.
You have been an advocate for representation and inclusion in the music industry, can you talk about what that means to you and why it’s important?
representation and inclusion is important in any industry. I don’t find it my responsibility to hold, however. What’s mine is to move through this life in a way I’m proud of.
Can you talk about a particularly memorable moment or experience from your career so far?
I played one of my favorite festivals, Primavera Sound and after my set, me and my band walked over to watch Bjork under the night sky in Barcelona.
In addition to your music, you have also been involved in visual art and design, how does that influence your music?
Feeling inspired, whether by a film, or a set, or a play, or a piece of furniture, it all goes into a memory bank that can one day influence something I make.
What advice would you give to other musicians who are just starting out in the industry?
Having (good) community will keep you going.
Finally, what’s next for Vagabon?
More new music, a new live show and other things I can’t talk about just yet!
Starting life with the working title “Mountains Of The Moon,” Mark Hollis’ lone solo album was initially conceived as the follow-up to Talk Talk’s glorious Laughing Stock. However, after Hollis split the band in 1993 and retreated further from the daily grind of the music business, Polydor issued the record as simply Mark Hollis on January 26, 1998.
Listen to Mark Hollis’ solo album on Apple Musicand Spotify.
Essentially, the album was a Talk Talk record in all but name. Longtime producer/co-composer Tim Friese-Greene wasn’t involved in its recording, but frequent Talk Talk collaborators such as guitarist Robbie McIntosh, percussionist Martin Ditcham, and harmonica maestro Mark Feltham were present during the sessions, while Laughing Stock engineer Phill Brown again manned the console.
The recording process
Sonically, too, Mark Hollis was a further refinement of the pigeonhole-defying fusion of jazz, folk, and ambient music that Talk Talk first alchemized on 1988’s beguiling Spirit Of Eden and continued to explore on Laughing Stock. The fact that Hollis’ own listening pleasures were by now well beyond the realms of rock and pop also fed into his creative stream.
“I wanted to make a record where you can’t hear when it has been made,” he told Dutch magazine Music Minded in April 1998. “Two albums that I really like are Sketches Of Spain and Porgy And Bess, records that Miles Davis made with Gil Evans. They used arrangements and a loose manner of playing [their instruments] for a clear atmosphere and suggestiveness. I wanted to create that as well.”
During the lengthy studio sessions, Hollis also made further sonic advancements by placing greater emphasis on acoustic instrumentation and paring recording techniques back to their bare minimum.
“We only used two microphones,” he told Music Minded. “We searched a long time to find the right balance. Recording in its purest form, really, like in the old days. I also very much like the character and realization of acoustical instruments. [I wanted] to let the sound of the room be heard – the production was, in this case, to relax the musicians and give them a chance to find their own interpretations.”
An unlikely inspiration
As the methodology suggests, Mark Hollis added up to an intimate and intensely personal experience. Its primary stock in trade were its hushed, haunted hymnals (“The Colour Of Spring,” “Westward Bound,” the stark “Inside Looking Out”), though “The Gift”’s subtle, jazzy groove reflected Hollis’ love of Miles Davis and John Coltrane, and the woodwind-enhanced “The Daily Planet” felt delightfully quirky. Arguably the record’s stand-out, however, was “A Life (1985-1915)”: an elusive, suite-like affair stretching over seven minutes and which was inspired by the tragic death of a young soldier during World War I.
“It was based on Roland Leighton, the boyfriend of [nurse, writer, and pacifist] Vera Brittain, who died within a year of the start of the First World War,” Hollis revealed in an NME interview supporting the album’s release. “It’s the expectation that must have been in existence at the turn of the century, the patriotism that must have existed at the start of the war and the disillusionment that must have come immediately afterward. It’s the very severe mood swings that fascinated me.”
The critical reaction
Mark Hollis’ ethereal beauty attracted rave reviews similar to those that greeted Talk Talk’s Spirit Of Eden and Laughing Stock. Respected UK publications such as NME and The Guardian weighed in with four-star critiques, while Melody Maker caught the record’s vibe perfectly, when they declared it to be, “Open, restful and at times fantastically beautiful… a sound whose ambience is as natural as breathing.”
Fans holding their breath that Hollis might return to the live circuit, however, were disappointed. In Music Minded, he emphatically dashed any such hopes when he said, “There won’t be any gig, not even at home in the living room – this material isn’t suited to play live.”
Mark Hollis’ legacy
With such an unequivocal statement, Mark Hollis walked away from the music industry and never made another album prior to his death, aged 64, on February 25, 2019. His withdrawal wasn’t because he was a tortured artist, but simply because he preferred quiet seclusion and spending time with his family. Perhaps he also felt he’d said everything he needed to say after he’d realized his solo album.
“The way I think about it is to try and make an album that is unique,” he told NME in 1998. “To make an album that could exist outside of the period in which it’s written and recorded – that’s the aim.”
He achieved that objective. Mark Hollis’ solo album is as subtle and dignified a swansong as any musician could hope to muster. Sparse, beautiful, and otherworldly, it’s the consummate postscript to Talk Talk’s transcendent body of work.
Mark Hollis’ solo album has been reissued on 180g vinyl.
For the latest music news and exclusive features, check out uDiscover Music.
uDiscover Music is operated by Universal Music Group (UMG). Some recording artists included in uDiscover Music articles are affiliated with UMG.
Earlier this week Apple officially released iOS 16.3 updates for iOS, iPadOS, and HomePod. The update brings several noteworthy changes and enhancements to these devices, headlined by support for hardware security keys for Apple IDs and the global rollout of Advanced Data Protection.
iOS 16.3 also paves the way for the new second-generation HomePod, which is scheduled to be released on February 3. But even if you don’t plan on dropping $299 for Apple’s newest smart speaker, you’ll be pleased to learn that iOS 16.3 includes enhancements for the first-generation HomePod and the HomePod mini. Watch my hands-on video walkthroughs for a visual breakdown of what’s new.
What’s new in iOS 16.3?
Hardware security keys for Apple ID
iOS 16.3 brings a few big new security-focused features to the iPhone and iPad, headlined by support for third-party hardware security keys. Alongside your Apple ID password, hardware security keys can be used in iOS 16.3 as the second factor in a two-factor authentication setup. Thus, third-party hardware security keys replace the six-digit codes that are sent to trusted devices, which otherwise serve as the second factor.
Apple notes that more than 95 percent of active iCloud accounts now use its standard two-factor authentication, but iOS 16.3 affords users the ability to harden this protection even further.
Video: iOS 16.3 changes and features
To be clear, most users will be fine sticking with the standard six-digit code-based two-factor authentication, but for users with particularly high profiles — celebrities, government officials, 9to5Mac bloggers — opt-in third-party hardware key support can strengthen account security even further. Because hardware keys are physical authentication devices that the user has in hand, they can prevent even an advanced attacker from obtaining a user’s second factor via a phishing scam or other attack.
Although hardware keys serve to harden security, they may not be as convenient as traditional six-digit codes sent to verified devices. To use hardware keys, a user must physically have access to the key, and if all keys are lost, then you will not be able to access your account, although you can still fall back on six-digit codes if you remove your keys.
To learn more about hardware security keys, stay tuned, because I have an in-depth video in the works that explains everything. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more.
Global rollout of Advanced Data Protection
In iOS 16.2, Apple rolled out its new Advanced Data Protection feature to customers in the United States. Starting with iOS 16.3, Advanced Data Protection is now available to customers globally.
The opt-in feature provides end-to-end encryption for additional data categories stored in iCloud, meaning that Apple no longer possesses the keys to decrypt these categories. Enabling Advanced Data Protection means that these data types can only be decrypted from a trusted device that functions as a key, like a customer’s iPhone.
Updated Emergency SOS call procedure
If you’ve ever accidentally initiated an emergency SOS call from your iPhone, apparently you are not alone. Apple has updated the emergency SOS call procedure to make it more difficult to accidentally call emergency services.
In previous versions of iOS, simply holding the Side button and either of the volume buttons for 10 seconds would automatically call emergency services. In iOS 16.3, Apple requires users to release the buttons in order to proceed with the call.
The new Emergency SOS workflow
This update seeks to prevent accidental calls from situations where your iPhone might be inadvertently wedged in a confined space causing the Side and Volume buttons to be pressed. Of course, you can disable this emergency call method by going to Settings → Emergency SOS and disabling the newly-renamed Call with Hold and Release switch.
Along with this update, you’ll also notice a slightly reconfigured UI that illustrates which buttons to press, along with a pulsating light from the camera flash. Users will notice an additional Call Quietly switch within Settings → Emergency SOS. Enabling this switch will silence the warning alarms and flashes when initiating Emergency SOS for a more low-key activation.
Additional bug fixes
Fixes an issue in Freeform where some drawing strokes created with Apple Pencil or your finger may not appear on shared boards
Addresses an issue where the wallpaper may appear black on the Lock Screen
Fixes an issue where horizontal lines may temporarily appear while waking up iPhone 14 Pro Max
Fixes an issue where the Home Lock Screen widget does not accurately display Home app status
Addresses an issue where Siri may not respond properly to music requests
Resolves issues where Siri requests in CarPlay may not be understood correctly
iOS 16.3 also includes lots of new security fixes for various vulnerabilities.
Support for second-generation HomePod
Last Tuesday, Apple surprise–announced its second-generation HomePod, which is scheduled to be released next week on February 3. iOS 16.3 brings support for the new full-sized HomePod and is a requirement for users wishing to configure the smart speaker.
In my video walkthrough below, I briefly discuss the new HomePod and talk about everything new in this update.
Video: HomePod 16.3 changes and features
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HomePod mini temperature and humidity sensor activation
Even if you don’t plan on purchasing a new second-generation HomePod, iOS 16.3 provides new features. The HomePod mini shipped with dormant temperature and humidity sensors, but they weren’t activated until the release of iOS 16.3. Once you update to the latest iOS 16.3 update, you’ll notice a new temperature and humidity reading under the Home app’s climate section and within each HomePod’s detailed view. You can use these sensors to view current readings, ask Siri about them, or use them with automations to trigger other smart home products.
Remastered ambient sounds for HomePods
Everyone knows that you can play Apple Music on the HomePod, but did you know that you can also request ambient sounds like white noise and rain? In iOS 16, ambient sounds have been remastered, and you’ll now find a direct link to these sounds that can be added to alarms, scenes, and automations. In all, you’ll find seven ambient sounds to choose from, like fireplace, forest, night, orientation, rain, stream, and white noise.
Recurring Home automations using just your voice
You can now create a recurring automation with your voice by saying something like “turn on the desk lamp every day at 10pm.” Once you do, you’ll see the respective automation appear within the Home app’s automation tab.
Siri confirmation tone for completed requests
Siri arrives with a new confirmation tone in iOS 16.3, which indicates when requests are completed for accessories that don’t visibly display a change, or for smart home items located in other areas around your house.
Updated volume controls on HomePod
You’ll find more granular volume controls when using the buttons on the top of your first-generation HomePod to adjust its volume. You should notice that there’s more “dynamic range” between absolute zero and lower volumes.
Sound Recognition
Although this feature is not yet available, the HomePod mini will be updated later with sound recognition support. This feature is currently available as an accessibility setting within iOS 16, as found in Settings → Accessibility → Sound Recognition.
When enabled, Sound Recognition allows your iPhone to listen for specific sounds, such as fire alarms or smoke alarms, household sounds like glass breaking, a knock on the door, or a kettle, people sounds — babies crying, coughing, or shouting — and even sounds from cats and dogs. You’ll then receive a push notification whenever your iPhone recognizes these sounds.
Sound recognition support for second-generation HomePod and HomePod mini will be available later this spring. The HomePod version of Sound Recognition appears to be a pared down version when compared to the iOS 16 accessibility setting.
In a future update, your HomePod will be able to detect smoke and carbon monoxide alarms and send you a notification to alert you. Apple notes that sound recognition will require the new Home architecture update, which Apple pulled back due to some issues but plans to make available again soon.
9to5mac’s Take
iOS 16.3 is a major new update with lots of new noteworthy changes and feature, not just for iPhones but also for the HomePod. And, even if you’re not interested in all of the new bells and whistles, you should strongly consider upgrading due to the number of security fixes included with the release.
What do you think about iOS 16.3, and how has your experience been with it thus far? Sound off down below in the comments with your thoughts.
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Three years ago, Jared* a 31-year-old venture capitalist, sat in a purple recliner wearing an eye mask, ambient music pulsing through his Beats headphones. As a nurse inserted an IV into his left forearm, he took a deep breath and waited for the ketamine entering his veins to transport him to a different reality.
Jared has dealt with debilitating depression, anxiety, and ADHD for much of his life and hoped ketamine would be his silver bullet. The infusions at the ketamine clinic in his West Texas hometown were a Christmas gift from his grandmother. “She said, ‘What do you want?’ I was like, ‘I want to not be depressed.'”
Ketamine, also known as K, is an anesthetic commonly used as a sedative and painkiller in human and veterinary medicine. It’s also taken as a party drug, especially in the rave scene. When snorted at low doses it provides a goofy, calming buzz; at higher doses, it numbs the body and can lead to intense psychedelic experiences. In recent years, research has suggested ketamine can also be used to treat depression. Though the US Food and Drug Administration approved an antidepressant ketamine nasal spray in 2019, it hasn’t officially given IV ketamine the green light for mental-health treatment. But at least as early as 2010, doctors and clinicians were beginning to prescribe the drug off-label — a legal and relatively common practice — to patients with particularly stubborn depression symptoms.
Jared, whose VC firm invests in cannabis, ketamine, and psychedelic therapy startups, had been taking antidepressants for more than a decade. He’d recently embarked on what he described as a “plant-based journey” to improve his mental health. He’d tried underground MDMA, psilocybin therapy, and ayahuasca ceremonies with a shaman from the Shipibo tribe in Brazil. So when a local ketamine clinic opened promising to treat a laundry list of conditions — depression, anxiety, PTSD, migraines, fibromyalgia — he figured it may not be a plant, but why the hell not?
For weeks after Jared’s ketamine treatment, it was as though a dark curtain had lifted. His mind, usually hyperactive, was calm and focused. “I was like, oh, this is a fucking super drug.”
But the infusions were expensive: $400 for six initial IV doses of 65 mg a session. Jared knew a guy who could sell it to him directly for $100 a gram (on the street, ketamine is typically sold in powder form and snorted, like cocaine), so he figured he might as well cut out the go-between. After all, he had used psychedelics extensively and spent years researching drugs. He started taking ketamine on his own. “It helped me,” he said, “until it absolutely didn’t.”
Soon, Jared’s cravings for ketamine became overpowering. “I would try to sneak bumps in while I was driving with my girlfriend when she wouldn’t see it,” he said. “Whether I was on a plane, or in a grocery store, I would find a way.” He became reliant on ketamine to make him feel calm and present; when he wasn’t on K, his tolerance for discomfort or anxiety was basically nonexistent.
It took him a long time to accept that he had a problem, partly because he was hearing about the miraculous benefits of ketamine everywhere. At a fundraising dinner, one of the executives hosting the event spoke openly about how using ketamine had been a game changer for his productivity, and “nobody even batted an eye,” Jared said. At a speaker session at Soho House that he attended last year, a CEO coach talked about prescribing it to corporate leaders to boost their performance. For Jared, who at that time was snorting about a gram a day from the moment he got up to the moment he went to bed, this rhetoric “validated what I was doing.”
Meanwhile, his life was falling apart. He had started behaving erratically, lashing out on work calls and acting aggressively with business partners and colleagues. He was lying to his girlfriend about his use, and their fights were escalating. Things came to a head one night at Burning Man when, mixing ketamine with cannabis, he had a psychotic break and flew into a violent rage, smashing his face and arm through a glass mirror, despite his girlfriend’s unsuccessful attempts to restrain him.
The fact he could have hurt his girlfriend was the impetus Jared needed to acknowledge he was addicted to ketamine. Until then, he said, “I thought I could keep using it for the rest of my life.”
About five years ago, more and more of my friends started using ketamine recreationally. The drug seemed to be ascending in New York nightlife in a way it hadn’t since the ’90s. Baggies were passed around at parties as casually as a bottle of Jameson. Ketamine was shaking off its horse-tranquilizer stigma; instead, many of my peers saw it as a healthier alternative to drinking or cocaine. Plus, the drug’s lack of hangover and short high (30 minutes to an hour versus an hours-long LSD or mushroom trip) meant young professionals could indulge without compromising their productivity the next morning.
In 2019, I wrote a piece for New York magazine positing that if every era had its drug of choice, then ours was ketamine. “Perhaps the end of the decade marks the dawn of the dissociation generation,” I wrote. “In 2019, escaping isn’t just something you do for fun. It’s a survival tactic at a time where the world feels so inescapably stressful and out of control.”
Ketamine has long been a staple of rave culture, but recent research into the drug’s therapeutic benefits has changed its reputation.
Harry Durrant/Getty
A year later the coronavirus pandemic hit, and for some, a bump of ketamine to loosen up at parties became a bump of ketamine to escape the doldrums of quarantine. “Some people get into witchcraft. Some bake bread,” a 30-something journalist in New York City told Vice of her pandemic coping tactics. “I’m doing ketamine.” A cursory scroll through TikTok showed ketamine had become something even more potent than a party drug: a meme. One video shows couples leaning in for a kiss as the iconic Kay Jewelers jingle, “Every kiss begins with Kay,” becomes “Every kiss begins with ketamine.”
Recreational ketamine use is difficult to track, but Joseph Palamar, a leading researcher on club drugs, says he has seen a steady increase in the substance’s popularity in recent years. Palamar conducted surveys at New York City nightclubs and festivals from 2016 to 2019 and found the share of attendees who said they’d used ketamine in the past year more than doubled during that time.
Over the years, the drug’s reputation in the medical community has also started to change. In the mid-2000s, several studies found that ketamine immediately boosted the mood of patients with treatment-resistant depression. Given that existing medication for depression can take weeks to work — far too much time for a patient considering suicide — this represented a potentially lifesaving breakthrough.
In 2019, the FDA approved a derivative of ketamine called esketamine, marketed as Spravato, as a prescription nasal spray to treat depression. In February 2022, a (fairly small) double-blind trial published in The BMJ suggested that ketamine “rapidly induces remission of severe suicidal ideation in adults,” with effects lasting more than six weeks in most patients. Other studies have shown the drug’s promise in treating things like substance addiction, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, and eating disorders, though when the research expands beyond depression, “the quality of the data definitely drops off,” Dr. Gerard Sanacora, a professor of psychiatry at Yale and director of the school’s Depression Research Program, told Medscape. While we don’t know everything about how ketamine works, scientists know that depression and chronic stress can cause the synaptic connections between nerve cells in the brain to weaken. Ketamine can help strengthen these damaged neural pathways, effectively helping to rewire the brain.
In a field that’s had few pharmacological innovations to offer since the 1980s introduction of SSRI antidepressants (such as Prozac), which work to increase levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin, ketamine seemed like a game changer. Countless articles heralded it as a wonder drug. “I Was Paralyzed by Severe Depression. Then Came Ketamine,” read a 2021 New York Times op-ed article, one of many similar pieces published in the past few years.
The money followed the science. The fact that ketamine was already being used in hospitals as a painkiller and a sedative made it an easy place for psychedelics-curious VCs and investors to channel their dollars. In 2021, the psychedelics-research startup Atai, which is attempting to develop a non-psychedelic form of ketamine to treat depression, raised $225 million in an initial public offering backed by the billionaire Peter Thiel. Loosened restrictions on telemedicine during the pandemic paved the way for startups like Mindbloom and Wondermed to start sending ketamine in the mail. “Before I started” ketamine treatment, “I felt like I had run up a wall in therapy,” reads a Mindbloom Instagram ad that I see on a near-daily basis, featuring a smiling gray-haired woman.
We go on vacation, we go to spas, we get massages for our body, we get away to kind of refresh and disconnect. Why aren’t there things that we do for our mind?
IV ketamine treatment centers charging $400 to $2,000 an infusion popped up all over the country. Coveteur, a site known for tours of celebrities’ closets, did a story on Field Trip Health, the trendy ketamine startup that plans to open 75 clinics by 2024, featuring glossy photos of rooms strewn with rose petals and Tibetan singing bowls. There are now hundreds of these clinics across the US. One in Gainesville, Florida, offers the equivalent of a coffee-shop punch card: Buy 10 infusions, get one for $200, plus a freebie for referring a new patient. Smith Family MD, a South Carolina telehealth clinic run by Dr. Scott W. Smith, prescribes the average patient one 200 mg lozenge every three days for six months. It charges a $250-a-month flat rate, with an estimated $40 to $100 additional monthly pharmacy cost and is able to prescribe in multiple states. On Reddit, where Smith is a frequent poster, he writes that his goal “is to make ketamine treatment more available, affordable, and convenient,” adding: “Viva la revolucion!”
The revolution appears to be underway. Mindbloom, one of the most prominent ketamine telemedicine startups, was founded in 2018; by fall 2021, the company was valued at $229 million.
Dr. Scott Smith, who runs a telemedicine clinic in South Carolina, wants to make ketamine treatment “more available, affordable, and convenient.”
Gavin McIntyre/The Washington Post
“I think in five or 10 years, things like ketamine that are very well studied, well tolerated outside of the mental-health space, will be part of your wellness regimen,” said Richard Chang, the chief growth officer at Hudson Medical, which offers ketamine treatment. “We go on vacation, we go to spas, we get massages for our body, we get away to kind of refresh and disconnect. Why aren’t there things that we do for our mind?”
All the pieces are in place for ketamine to become more available and widely used than ever before. But as an industry emerges around the drug, some scientists and treatment specialists remain skeptical. A 2021 article in the American Journal of Psychiatry noted that the “opportunity and hope” ketamine provides “exist alongside the urgent need to clarify the long-term efficacy of these agents, as well as significant unanswered questions with respect to safety.” Experts have begun to call out the industry’s lack of regulation and aggressive marketing tactics, while even some former ketamine evangelists have started to wonder whether we’ve fully grasped the drug’s potential for misuse.
It’s something I’ve wondered about, too. In the three years since my New York magazine article came out, I’ve watched as several of the friends who inspired that story began to struggle with their ketamine use. Other people in communities where ketamine is prevalent told me they’re seeing the same thing. Kelly*, a DJ from San Francisco, said she and many of her friends increased their use dramatically during the pandemic. She recently estimated that more than 10 people she knew — including her — were exhibiting symptoms of addiction.
An employee at a prominent psychedelics advocacy organization estimates that dozens of the people in her party scene are what she called “high-functioning ketamine addicts.” In December 2020 her best friend, who’d become addicted to ketamine during lockdown, died after ingesting ketamine and Xanax. While deaths from ketamine are rare and aren’t monitored nationally like those from other drugs, the national Poison Control recorded 67 accounts of ketamine “exposures,” which encompass a range of adverse effects, in 2021. That number, though still small in absolute terms, was up 81% from 2019.
The US has a checkered history with so-called wonder drugs. Arthur Sackler’s aggressive marketing push helped earn Valium the nickname “mother’s little helper” in the 1960s; a few decades later, the Sacklers and Purdue Pharma made billions convincing Americans that opioids were as harmless as M&M’s. The original ketamine compound has no patent, which means less Big Pharma money is steering the conversation. But there are still plenty of well-funded VCs with a vested interest in making ketamine as prolific as Prozac — and not thinking too hard about the consequences.
Ketamine is much safer than opioids, which can cause physical dependence and come with a high risk of overdose. “Ketamine used as directed in an appropriate clinical setting very rarely leads to any dependence,” Mindbloom says on its website. Of course, not all use takes place under proper medical supervision.
There’s no widespread data on how many people go from therapeutic ketamine use to buying on the street. But Patrick O’Neil, who works as a drug counselor at the Cast Centers in California, seemed surprised when I asked how many of his handful of ketamine-using patients discovered the drug after visiting a clinic. “All of them,” he responded.
It’s been some of ketamine’s earliest adopters — people most excited about psychedelics as a movement — who have started to sound the alarm about the drug. The employee at the psychedelics advocacy organization said the likelihood that ketamine is much more addictive than conventional psychedelics like LSD or psilocybin needs “to be front and center when you’re interacting with that drug.”
“It’s a failure of our movement,” she continued, “that this isn’t widely understood.”
Nushama Psychedelic Wellness Center was founded in 2020 by the fashion designer Jay Godfrey and a cannabis entrepreneur named Richard Meloff. The flagship location in midtown Manhattan feels like a cross between a boutique med spa and a high-end workout studio. Plastic flowers hang from the ceiling, and the wallpaper depicts a kaleidoscope of dancing nymphs. In the clinic’s library, Aldous Huxley’s “The Doors of Perception” sits alongside Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search For Meaning” and Tim Ferriss’ “The 4-Hour Workweek.” Nushama provides a starter pack of six ketamine infusions, plus a booster, for $4,500. It doesn’t take insurance.
The lobby at Nushama Psychedelic Wellness Center in midtown Manhattan. Nushama prescribes an initial course of six IV ketamine infusions, plus a booster, for $4,500.
Courtesy Nushama and Costas Picadas
Dr. Steven Radowitz, lean and silver-haired in a black cashmere half-zip, guides me into a room full of beanbag chairs. He was the in-house physician for Goldman Sachs for more than a decade before he discovered kabbalah, a form of Jewish mysticism, and eventually a new calling in psychedelics.
Radowitz thinks most people can benefit from the insights ketamine therapy provides. His rationale isn’t particularly scientific. He theorizes that we’re all born happy, before the stresses of life pile up and cause us to become “misaligned.” The goal of ketamine therapy is “to become more in balance with who we are,” he says. “It allows us to dim the effects of this overthinking, overprocessing, the intellectualization of life, and allows us a deeper sense of self. It is a spiritual experience.”
Radowitz acknowledged that ketamine has potential for misuse, but he pointed the finger mainly at telehealth providers. He believes the dose of ketamine he provides is so high that the experience is less reliably euphoric — and thus less habit-forming — because of how trippy and emotionally intense it can be. “I don’t think psychedelics have ever been shown to be addictive,” he told me.
Exactly who’s eligible for ketamine treatment varies by provider. Some clinics require a prospective patient to have a formal treatment-resistant-depression diagnosis and be referred by a psychiatrist; others pitch ketamine more broadly as a cure-all for the struggles of modern existence. Nushama, which says it requires a formal diagnosis, touts ketamine on its website as a treatment for depression as well as “other ailments of the spirit.” In November, amid a wave of layoffs in the tech world, Field Trip Health offered a month of free treatment for anyone who’d lost their job.
Finding a ketamine clinic to give me a sample in New York City was shockingly easy. Four of the eight clinics I reached out to were immediately receptive when I asked for a trial infusion for an article I was writing. I chose Lenox Hill Mind Care, an “interventional psychiatry clinic” that treats patients with “highly treatment-resistant psychiatric conditions” and, apparently, journalists. After a 20-minute phone evaluation and a review of some lab results from a physical I did in 2020, I headed to their office on the Upper East Side. There, I sat in a reclining chair and began my infusion.
Dr. Steven Radowitz, Nushama’s cofounder and chief medical officer, was the in-house physician for Goldman Sachs for more than a decade before he found a new calling in psychedelics.
Courtesy of Nushama and Costas Picadas
As a custom playlist of five trance songs reverberated through my headphones, I felt myself being pulled further and further away from the room. For the next 40 minutes my mind wove through different visions: my childhood home, the Amazon rainforest, outer space, a rave in an abandoned warehouse. The experience felt both deeply personal and embarrassingly cliché. (The Amazon? Really?) Afterward my hands tingled and I felt nauseous for most of the day. While I can’t say I had any life-changing revelations or felt my anxiety ebb, it was a fun, novel experience. If it didn’t cost thousands of dollars, I probably would’ve gone back for round two.
While some clinics like Nushama offer higher-dose psychedelic trips, others provide talk therapy while patients are on ketamine. Then there are the telehealth clinics that opened during the pandemic, many of which prescribe maintenance doses in the form of ketamine lozenges for people to use at home. In 2021, another article in New York magazine helped readers choose which clinic was best for them as though they were picking a restaurant for date night, with tips like “Field Trip and Nushama are ideal for anxious first-timers” and “If you don’t have a psychiatrist, try Mindbloom.”
Dr. Charles B. Nemeroff, a psychiatrist who is a leading voice on ketamine, told Medscape that he thought fewer than 5% of clinics adhered to the safety standards that he and the Yale psychiatry professor Sanacora recommended in JAMA Psychiatry in 2017. “The vast majority of these clinics aren’t run by psychiatrists,” he said. “Yet no one has stepped up” to regulate them.
Right now, most clinics and telehealth operations that offer ketamine go the off-label route. Spravato, the esketamine nasal spray patented by Janssen Pharmaceuticals, is overseen by an FDA drug-safety program called Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy, meaning it has to be used in a doctor’s office and is available only for those who have tried oral antidepressants. (It’s also expensive, though it can be covered by insurance.) But the regular version of ketamine has no patent. By prescribing it off-label in the form of IV or lozenges, clinics can easily avoid all that red tape; it’s much cheaper, it’s widely available, and it can be prescribed for pretty much anything a clinic deems appropriate.
Zachary Phillips, a compounding pharmacist in Atlanta who’s been working with ketamine since 2011, says some of the clinics he supplies are “essentially very expensive drug dealers.” He says he tries to work only with clinics that have a psychotherapist on staff and drops providers that start sending in new patients for high doses on a regular basis.
Some people note that we have limited evidence to support using maintenance doses of ketamine over long periods. Celia Morgan, one of the UK’s leading ketamine researchers, told me she had serious reservations about people — particularly those with a history of addiction — having ketamine sent home with them, pointing out that tolerance to the drug increases quickly.
There are now hundreds of ketamine clinics across the US. One in Gainesville, Florida, offers the equivalent of a coffee-shop punch card: Buy 10 infusions, get one for $200.
Julia Rendleman/The Washington Post
The Ryan Haight Act (named for an 18-year-old who died after being prescribed Vicodin via telemedicine) typically limits controlled substances being prescribed online. But during the pandemic the act was suspended, and it is set to remain so until at least April. As a result, numerous ketamine startups have pivoted to telemedicine, where they can prescribe ketamine easily with minimal oversight. While telehealth providers are pushing to keep the suspension in place, some states are arguing against it. “I think we’ll look back one day and say, ‘We should have handled that differently,'” said Phillips, the pharmacist, “which has happened so often.”
It was the same routine every day: Nadia* left the hospital where she worked, and as she approached her apartment, her nose would start to run. For the last few blocks of her walk, she’d try to convince herself that this night would be different — “I’m not going to do it,” she’d tell herself, “I’m not going to use ketamine when I get home” — but by the time she’d walked in the front door, thrown down her keys, and reached for the sunglasses case where she kept her supply, the wheel was in motion, she said. “I’m going to do it either until I pass out or until it’s gone.”
Nadia is a physician at a major New York City hospital. For nearly a year and a half, she’s been using about a gram to a gram and a half of ketamine every day. She started taking it for fun at parties and concerts on weekends, but before long she was using it alone. It took a toll on her body. She needed to pee constantly, and the nostril she used to snort had become enlarged and inflamed, making her nose permanently asymmetrical. But she couldn’t stop. “It was all I could think about, and it was all I wanted to do,” she said.
Nadia was particularly drawn to the feeling of the k-hole, the dissociative high that comes from taking a large dose of ketamine. Lying on her floor unable to move, she felt as though she’d left her physical body while her mind explored a higher plane. “It’s like the fourth dimension that nobody can see but everybody knows is there,” she said. “It feels like an escape where you’re totally at peace.”
Initially, she found the ability to flip between normal life and the parallel universe of the k-hole to be therapeutic, but over time it started to feel more sinister. She realized that being in a k-hole felt like her idea of death. “I started thinking about the fact that I like the feeling of being dead,” she said, “more than I wanted to go live my life.”
Even as her use started to increase precipitously, she didn’t consider that she might be putting herself at risk. Ketamine was prescribed as an anesthetic all the time. “Doctors, at least, get very comfortable with it,” she said. Nadia had taken antidepressants for years; ketamine, she figured, was a more efficient solution, even if she purchased it illegally.
While Nadia says she never got high at work, the drug started to consume her evenings and weekends. When she was using most heavily, Nadia was spending $600 a week on ketamine. She had always been the person who overprepared for every meeting, who meticulously planned her studying schedule. Now she found herself missing days at work, forgetting to follow up with coworkers and patients, and sleeping through shifts.
Nadia could feel her memory and cognitive abilities declining; a few months into heavy use, she noticed she could barely focus enough to read an email, let alone a book. One day, when she was high, she sliced her hand open while baking brownies because she was holding the knife upside down, the sharp edge pressed into her skin. “At the time,” she says, “I didn’t even feel it.”
After about a year, Nadia’s sibling confronted her and pressed her to get help. While Nadia had downplayed her use, her sibling noticed that she seemed to rely on ketamine to get through every activity, even family phone calls. They asked her whether she really knew what ketamine was doing to her. “Your brain is the most important part of you,” she remembers them saying. “What if everything you’re doing is hurting you, and you don’t even know it?”
Nadia began combing through research papers to find out more about the drug that had become her lifeline. She found plenty about ketamine’s potential to treat depression and remodel the brain in positive ways. But she couldn’t find a single solid study that outlined its addictive potential or its long-term effects.
She was, she felt, in uncharted territory. “We know how many people are alcoholics,” she said. “But nobody knows how many of us there are.”
Like Nadia, most of the people I interviewed said when they started using ketamine, they didn’t think it was possible to become dependent on it. Matt, a 25-year-old from Denver who used ketamine heavily and asked to use only his first name, said when he went to rehab in California, the clinicians either hadn’t heard of ketamine or didn’t take it seriously. To get adequate treatment, he began telling people he was addicted to opiates.
We know how many people are alcoholics. But nobody knows how many of us there are.
When I wrote my New York magazine story back in 2019, I was under the impression that ketamine addiction was uncommon, mostly because nobody was talking about it. Researchers I spoke with emphasized that the drug is not physically addictive, meaning it has no withdrawal symptoms. This is significant; the withdrawal symptoms from opioids and alcohol, such as seizure and delirium tremens, can be horrific and life-threatening in themselves and are a major reason people are unable to quit. The fact that ketamine had the potential to be “psychologically” addictive was framed largely as an afterthought.
Yet psychological cravings aren’t something to be dismissed lightly, people who use ketamine told me. James Dear, who now speaks about ketamine-use disorder on his “Break The Chain” podcast, moved from England to Australia, and eventually to New Zealand, where ketamine is harder to get, to escape his addiction. “It feels like ultimate desperation,” he said. “It feels like someone’s clawing at the inside of your mind with just the absolute burning desire to get it. You have to have it.”
Much of the research on ketamine and addiction comes from outside the US, particularly the UK, where the drug has long been a party-culture staple and a public-health concern, and Asia, where it became the drug of choice throughout many countries in the late ’90s and early 2000s. Government data indicates ketamine was the most oft-misused psychotropic drug in Hong Kong from 2006 to 2014. At the time, Hong Kong researchers published papers on ketamine’s negative effects on the brain, and the link between the drug and a chronic bladder condition called urinary cystitis.
Huajun Liang studied ketamine use in Hong Kong before moving to the US, where she’s now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Maryland at Baltimore. She worked on ketamine studies through the 2010s, including one that suggested people who used ketamine had poorer memory and executive functioning than those who didn’t, and another that showed high rates of depression and psychosis in people who used ketamine. Yet she says that, in her experience, Western countries tend to be skeptical of the research coming out of Asia. Ketamine “is addictive,” she said. “I don’t know why people kind of forgot.”
In the Western world, much of the research on ketamine and addiction has been conducted on rodents. A new study in the journal Nature concluded that ketamine failed to “establish key addiction-like behaviors in mice.” The study also indicated that if mice had a negative experience with ketamine, they stopped taking it.
Keith Trujillo, who researches ketamine using lab rats, explained that rats communicate pleasure through ultrasonic vocalizations: chirps too shrill for humans to hear. When they’re happy, they’ll chirp away — for instance, when they’re given meth (rats love meth). But when the rats are given ketamine, the response is mixed. “That tells us that there may be something fundamentally different in the way that ketamine makes individuals feel, and we see that in the human literature as well,” Trujillo said. “People will say, ‘I’ve had some great, great times on ketamine, but I’ve also had some awful times.’ And sometimes that awful time will drive them to quit.”
It’s true that, unlike some drugs, ketamine doesn’t provide a uniformly pleasurable experience. For plenty of people, taking a little too much and ending up in a k-hole is enough to turn them off forever. But for people like Nadia who find reality itself to be unpleasant, dissociating feels good. Samuel Kohtala, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki who studies ketamine, said that mouse models could tell us only so much and that different kinds of people take the drug for different reasons. He wonders whether certain people, particularly those who are anxious or depressed, may be especially prone to addiction.
These, of course, are the exact people ketamine is advertised to. Many studies found “75% of people who tried IV Ketamine got better,” read a promotional email I got from the ketamine provider Pasithea Clinics last month. Call today, I was told, “to start your journey to a better you!”
Although we have no concrete data on the relationship between positive media coverage of ketamine and rates of recreational use, almost everyone I talked to said they turned to ketamine, or started using it more intentionally, because it had been positioned as a mental-health treatment.
Eric*, 22, was found to have depression and began taking SSRIs when he was a high-school freshman. In about 2019, he started hearing about ketamine’s potential as an antidepressant. The drug was common in the bass-music scene in Denver, where he lived. Though he’d tried it at parties and concerts, the glowing articles he read encouraged him to start using it more regularly. “They’re using it for therapy, so it can’t be too bad for you,” his reasoning went.
Going to a clinic never occurred to Eric; an infusion cost thousands of dollars, while he could get a bag on the street for $80 to $100 a gram, and he was broke. He tried to create a “clinical setting” for himself, reading up on the therapeutic dose and turning off all lights to deprive his senses. The experience, he said, was “really insightful and profound.”
Eric’s use was manageable for a while, but it increased rapidly in 2020 during a time when his mental health was poor. “I started shooting for the hole every time,” he said, thinking, “fuck it, I’m going to get some K and teleport to this other dimension.” Soon he was using 2 to 3 grams a day and up to 7 on nights out. He had cut off most of his social relationships, and he noticed his brain seemed trapped in a fog. His passion in life had always been making music, but ketamine made that impossible. Urinating, which he needed to do constantly, became painful.
He started experiencing debilitating episodes of “K cramps,” severe abdominal pain caused by ketamine use, which he called “by far the worst pain” of his life. The most recent wave came a few months ago; he passed in and out of consciousness and threw up while convulsing on the floor. When I spoke with Eric in the fall, he was going into an appointment with a surgeon to discuss treatment for a bilateral hernia from the cramping episode. “Despite all that, I’m still using,” he said. “Nothing has really taken hold of me like ketamine has.”
A protest against the Sackler family, which along with Purdue Pharma made billions convincing Americans that opioids were as harmless as M&M’s.
Stephane De Sakutin/Getty
Eric’s experience isn’t unique. Heavy ketamine use can take a brutal toll on the body, and it can do so remarkably quickly, in some cases after just a few weeks. On the KetamineAddiction subreddit, which has 1,800 members (400 more than when I started reporting this article a few months ago), people describe peeing blood, seizures, hallucinations, permanent kidney damage, and the so-called K cramps. The Global Drug Survey, a large independent and anonymous survey of drug use around the world, has found that one in four people who report using ketamine regularly also describe symptoms of what has become known as ketamine bladder syndrome. In the worst cases, it can lead to incontinence, kidney failure, or people needing their bladders or gallbladders surgically removed. But many doctors in the US simply don’t know enough to screen patients for ketamine-related health issues.
On Reddit, the overall tenor of the posts is desperation. “I hate it so much but I just can’t get myself to stop,” one person wrote. “I wish someone would put me in prison for the next month” because “then maybe I’d be free.”
Redditors encourage one another to quit, talking others through stages of detox and relapse. “It’s 9AM on day 8 of being off ketamine. Every single moment of the day is pure agony. I feel constantly on the edge of a massive panic attack and have suicidal thoughts from the moment I wake up to the moment I fall asleep,” writes another: “I hope this hell of an addiction to nobody. I hope we will all survive this.”
In spite of everything I was seeing and hearing, I hesitated to cast ketamine in too critical a light. It shouldn’t be hard to acknowledge both truths at once: that ketamine is exciting and potentially lifesaving, and that it can also be dangerous. But America is a difficult place to have a nuanced conversation about drugs. The opioid crisis continues to ravage the country after pharma salespeople spent decades convincing doctors and patients that prescription painkillers weren’t addictive. On the other hand, we’re just beginning to course-correct from decades of policy shaped by the war on drugs, when millions of people — mostly people of color from low-income communities — were incarcerated. The messaging from this era “continues to have a shadow over research,” Trujillo said. The last thing he wants to see is a wave of anti-ketamine alarmism, which he said could “prevent individuals who could benefit from seeking it out.”
For the time being, the pendulum seems to be swinging in the opposite direction. Last fall, Summit Series, a leadership conference for entrepreneurs that has hosted Richard Branson and Bill Clinton, kicked off the festivities with a “guided Wondermed ketamine-assisted sound and breathing meditation.” Attendees were encouraged to show up with their own prescribed Wondermed lozenges.
Jared says he hasn’t taken ketamine since he smashed his face through a mirror at Burning Man. He’s gone back to searching for a plant-based depression cure. He says he’s been running a lot and recently experimented with a new treatment called NeuroStim that injects stem cells into the brain. “I have a cold plunge that I do every day, and I sauna a lot,” he told me. His VC firm is still invested in a ketamine clinic based in Austin, Texas, but it’s important to him that the clinic doesn’t allow patients unfettered access to ketamine at home.
Jared fears that more stories like his might cast a pall over the psychedelic movement. “I think ketamine could be the thing that sets us all back,” he said.
But sharing stories like Jared’s may be the only way to encourage more research into a drug that’s rapidly becoming a major player in mental health. Across the board, people who’ve used ketamine told me they still saw amazing potential in the drug, despite it ravaging their lives and bodies. Many blamed themselves. If only they’d been able to use ketamine “correctly,” they said, they would’ve seen amazing benefits without any of the downsides. “I do wish I could have controlled it,” Eric said.
Nadia says she’s been mostly drug-free for three months, though she relapsed on New Year’s. She was seeing an addiction counselor, but she had to discontinue the appointments when her healthcare benefits stopped covering them. She still struggles to resist the cravings for ketamine. At night she sometimes rereads old text-message threads with her drug dealer as though she’s grieving a breakup.
While Nadia knows she shouldn’t touch the stuff, she still thinks ketamine can help others. “If you’re going to jump on something in the early phases of it coming into our collective use, then you have to accept that there’s consequences and there’s long-term outcomes that we haven’t been able to measure,” she said. “But on the other side of that coin, I love ketamine. And I have conversations all the time where I’m like, you know, you should do ketamine.”
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