San Francisco Frontiers - Ketamine 'epidemic' among UK youth raises alarm

"I would never, ever have imagined that this would happen to us as a family," said his mother, Deborah Casserly, still grieving for Barney who died in April 2018, aged 21.

Ketamine, an affordable recreational drug that induces a sense of detachment from reality, has reached unprecedented levels of popularity among young people in the UK, with some experts even calling it an "epidemic".

The extent of the crisis prompted the government in January to seek advice from an official advisory body on whether to reclassify ketamine as a Class A substance.

That would bring it in line with other drugs such as heroin, cocaine and ecstasy, meaning supplying ketamine could carry terms of up to life imprisonment.

In the consulting room of doctor Niall Campbell, a leading specialist in addiction treatment at Priory Hospital, Roehampton, Casserly, 64, showed pictures of her son -- a smiling young man with dark hair and bright eyes.

Tearfully, she recalled how her son's life fell apart as his ketamine addiction took hold.

Barney was just 16 when he went to the Reading music festival in southern England and used ketamine for the first time, writing about it in ecstatic terms in his journal.

But he swiftly became addicted to the drug, a white crystalline powder that is crushed and then sniffed. Alternatively it can be swallowed in liquid form.

- 'Excruciating pain' -

"His usage moved from being used in a party context to being used at home alone... a tragic, sad, desperately lonely experience," said his mother.

His family sent him to private rehabs but he relapsed, would use every day, and was in an "excruciating amount of pain".

"He would spend long parts of the day in the bath, in hot water... because the cramps were so bad. He was not able to sleep properly at night because he was constantly getting up to urinate," said his mother.

Barney suffered from ulcerative cystitis, also known as "ketamine bladder", which is when "the breakdown products of ketamine basically cause the bladder to rot", said Campbell.

"Mum, if this is living, I don't want it," said Barney on April 7, 2018. The next morning his mother found him dead in his bed.

An anaesthetic drug invented in 1962, ketamine is used for both human and veterinary medicine often as a horse tranquilliser.

"Some people love that dissociative, detached from reality, kind of effect" the drug brings, said Campbell.

Users "go right down into what we call a K hole, which is just to the point of collapsing and being unconscious".

In the year ending March 2024, an estimated 269,000 people aged 16 to 59 had reported using ketamine, a government minister said.

And among young people aged 16-24 "the misuse of ketamine... has grown in the last decade" by 231 percent, said junior interior minister Diana Johnson, in her letter asking for advice from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.

There were 53 deaths in England and Wales in 2023, according to the Office for National Statistics.

- Highly addictive -

"It's really commonplace now, it's everywhere," said Laiden, a London drug dealer using an assumed name.

"It's a cheap drug with a strong effect on people and people aren't concerned about selling it to youngsters," added Laiden.

Ketamine costs between £20 and £30 ($27.50 and $41) a gram while cocaine, which remains his top seller, is around £100 a gram, he said.

"This epidemic is having a huge effect on the nation," said Campbell.

Ketamine is very addictive and "by the time they get to see us, the party's over. They're not out in the nightclubs. They're sitting on their own at home, secretly doing this stuff, killing themselves", he added.

But others argue that ketamine can have healing benefits.

Married therapists Lucy and Alex da Silva run a psychedelic therapy wellness centre in London, and use ketamine prescribed by doctors in lozenge form to treat depression and trauma.

"We want people to see what the healing benefits of ketamine, when it's controlled in the right way, can do," said Lucy da Silva.

But she agreed there was "a need for education around the dangers of street ketamine and the lives that it's taking".

H.Reyes--SFF