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.
I had no quality of life whatsoever towards the middle and end of my using.
Georgia has been in recovery for 18 months. She is a peer mentor at Turning Point as well as a diversion officer at Druglink where she went through rehab and now runs narcotics anonymous and cocaine anonymous meetings.
Georgia started using ketamine when she was 20. Initially she used it every other day and at the weekends. She then went on to use it every day, taking up to 12 to 14 grams a day for around two years.
Before, ketamine, she used cannabis from when she was 15. She also used MDMA (ecstasy). She says ketamine was the drug that “got her” and she stopped using everything else.
“I had no quality of life whatsoever towards the middle and end of my using,” she said.
“I struggled a lot with pain in the bladder. I couldn't walk properly. I was always crouched down on the floor because whenever I tried to stand, I would have massive pain in my bladder and I got incontinence with it.”
Scans revealed that Georgia’s bladder could only hold 80ml whereas a normal bladder can hold 500 ml. She also had scarring and ulcerations with doctors concerned that if it would recover.
Georgia’s ketamine use got worse over Covid when she was furloughed from work.
"I was using it all day. I got down to five and a half stone and was hospitalised. My organs very close to failing because of my weight,” she said.
She says that the area she lived in, Letchworth in Hertfordshire, a lot of people, especially young people, were using ketamine as it’s so cheap.
During this time, she was sleeping rough as well because her mother had asked her to leave home due to the ketamine use.
“It was a very horrible, dark time for me,” she says.
Georgia reveals that she attempted suicide.
“I thought it's either the drugs that's going to kill me or I'm going to end up killing myself,” she said.
“I lost everything, I hit rock bottom. I knew I needed to get some help that would stop the pain that was just awful.”
Georgia is doing much better now and is a healthy weight again. Her bladder is repairing and although she knows it’s not going to go back to how it was before she started using ketamine, she says she can now sleep through the night without having to get up multiple times to use the toilet.
“People know about the dangers of drugs like heroin and though I read I've read some stuff online about ketamine and the bladder, I just thought it was there to scare you, I never thought it would cause real damage. But obviously it is real - it happened to me,” she said.
"Hopefully people will look at it differently now as there's more coming on the news about the impact that ketamine is having and the people that are losing their lives because of the drug.”
Georgia now gets a sense of fulfilment from helping others who are going through what she went through.
"I'm doing a lot of recovery work because that that helps me stay clean and it's also nice seeing other people on their journey and helping them.,” she said.
“I feel so much better now and grateful the suicide attempts didn’t work because my life has completely changed now that I am sober.”