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 was so engrossed in the substance use that I thought they would take my boy away from me. I was so scared of losing my boy because that would’ve been the end of me
Jodie says she was “in the mess” using Ketamine for 17 years. In the beginning she was using it during parties during the weekend and then it progressed over the years.
She was brought up in a difficult environment where a number of her family members were addicts.
She suffered abuse when she was young and then was in abusive relationship as an adult. She was physically, mentally and sexually abused by her ex-partner.
Her ketamine use got worse after she left that relationship, and she was also drinking heavily. This led to psychotic episodes.
With ketamine, she says she could get it “whenever I wanted, wherever I wanted and for cheap. I was doing 12-and-a-half grams over two days”.
She managed to keep working whilst using ketamine. She worked in the hospitality sector, as a van driver and then as a carer.
She admits her ketamine use was dangerous because it could have led to her causing harm to the people that she was caring for such as when giving them medication.
Her physical symptoms made it harder for her to keep a job.
“When I first started taking it, it was very clean – none of us had any problems with our bladders. But as the years went on, people have started mixing (synthetic) it with other things,” says Jodie.
“I’ve seen people who have been using it for a couple of years and their bladder is messed-up.”
After struggling really badly for four-and-a-half years, Jodie’s bladder issues got so bad that she thought she’d have to have a catheter. She was passing bits of her bladder when she urinated. She was crawling back and forth from the toilet as she was in so much pain and often wasn’t able to urinate at all.
She says she wanted help but didn’t know where to turn to. It got to a point where she didn’t want to be here anymore.
She reveals that she’s lost friends who have hung themselves or jumped off bridges as a result of using ketamine.
There were many times when she wanted to commit suicide. She thought her son was better off with his dad.
She admits that she was in “self-pity mode”.
“I was in denial. I thought the world was against me. But it was my own doing. I was blaming everyone else,” she said.
Jodie says she wanted help and didn’t know where to turn to. He aunt, who used to be an alcoholic, recommended Turning Point to her.
“I was so engrossed in the substance use that I thought they would take my boy away from me. I was so scared of losing my boy because that would’ve been the end of me,” said Jodie.
“In the end I looked in the mirror and thought enough is enough. If I lose my son, I lose my son, I will come back fighting for him.”
Jodie says she had a great peer mentor at Turning Point who helped her get into rehab where she was for three months.
“I learnt so much there. I learnt about what was wrong with me, I did trauma therapy. I did what I needed to do to become sober and I here I am, 14 months sober,” she said.
“I’m a peer mentor. I am working. And my bladder is back to normal. No pain. I had an ultrasound recently and everything looked good.”