With ketamine use rising across the UK, many people don’t realise how quickly physical and mental health problems can appear with regular ketamine use. As part of our national Know Your K campaign, we've been speaking to people affected by ketamine.
In the beginning, I used it as an escape but then started to use it as a painkiller because of the pain I was getting from using ketamine.
Connor started using Ketamine at the age of 15/16. It started at parties every weekend but eventually he started using it on a daily basis.
“I had an unlimited amount because I was selling it as well,” he said. “In the beginning, I used it as an escape but then started to use it as a painkiller because of the pain I was getting from using ketamine.”
Connor says ketamine was always the drug he thought he’d never use as he thought of himself as a 'superior druggie'. “I used to do pills and cocaine at the weekends, but I never got addicted to any of that because they are uppers and I don’t like uppers – it' only been the downers for me,” he said.
“I started weed at 14/15. And then pills, psychedelics. I started to get involved in the free party culture and ketamine is massive in the free party scene.”
At 16, he started an apprenticeship, and that’s when the ketamine use got bad. “I wouldn’t do any at work but as soon as I finish work, I’d literally park up and get off my head and come home after my mum had fallen asleep,” he said.
“There were days when I used to do 25 grams. There came a time when I was selling it but I was making no money because I was spending it all on ketamine – I was just funding my habit.
“There were times that I managed to come down to 4 mg a day but then it would creep back up to around 12 mg a day.”
He eventually stopped selling ketamine to try and come off it and also because he wasn’t making any money. “The price is just ridiculously cheap now. Cocaine is around £80 a gram whilst ketamine is £10 a gram. When I sold it was £30 a gram, and that was six years ago,” he said.
Connor believes he was a product of his environment. “I hung around with the wrong people. Even now, I don't know anybody sober,” he said.
The ketamine use resulted in sever bladder pain and cramps started. He describes it as “horrific”. He was living with his partner at the time who was also using ketamine. “We were just begging each other to die,” he said.
He was in ICU for eight days last September due to issues with his bladder. “The more hydrated you are, the less pain you're in ... I was drinking water non-stop but the food was making the cramps worse, so I didn't eat for about five days,” he said. “I drank to a point where it flushed all the sodium out of my body and the doctor said I should have died.”
Connor had low sodium, high potassium, bladder infection, and kidney stones. He had a cystoscopy which showed that his bladder had extensive scarring. Despite being in ICU, losing jobs, losing his car license (he was a HGV driver for a while), he continued to use ketamine.
“I hit rock bottom and I kept digging,” he said. “I put my mum through hell and she got to a point where she just couldn't cope anymore.”
Eventually he decided to get help from Turning Point.
He describes the first couple weeks of being sober as horrendous as he wasn't using ketamine to numb the pain. He still gets pain if he becomes dehydrated.
Connor has been abstinent from ketamine for just over a 100 days. “When I first did it, I didn’t know this is where I would end up,” he said. “I’ve spent time with people that have been addicted to heroin have said it's easier to come off that than ketamine.”
Connor says he didn’t know of the dangers of ketamine before he used the drug whereas with something like heroin and cocaine, he says “it’s installed in you from young to be scared of them and that's probably the reason why I haven't ever done crack, heroin or meth or anything like that”.
“Ketamine is not up there with them as a class A drug but it should be,” he says. “The ketamine now is much worse than before – they are more synthetic. I know people that have been doing it for like 10 years plus, and they're now seeing bladder problems. Whereas there's people that have been doing it for six months, and they're seeing bladder problems already.”