EXCLUSIVE Inside the 'devastating' ketamine epidemic crippling young Britons
But it appears that the age group has one remaining vice, with many turning to the Class B drug ketamine in the belief it will achieve a 'less dangerous' high.
In England, the number of under-18s entering drug treatment for ketamine problems rose from 335 to 917 between 2020 and 2023, according to the National Drug Treatment Monitoring System.
Among 16 to 24-year-olds, use has increased by 231 per cent since March 2013 and is now at its highest level since 2006, when records began.
Known colloquially as 'Ket', 'K', 'Special K', 'regretamine' or 'Calvin Klein' (a cocktail of ketamine and cocaine), its popularity has soared due to its low price and easy availability. The horse tranquiliser and anaesthetic made up more than a quarter of drugs confiscated at festivals in 2023 in the UK.
Though the debilitating impact of ketamine has long been underestimated, after being associated with a number of recent and high-profile deaths, including RuPaul Drag Race star The Vivienne and Friends star Matthew Perry, it's once again come into the spotlight.
On TikTok, Generation Z have set up inspiring recovery pages as they document their journeys getting clean, raising awareness for the long-term consequences of use, and just how easily it can be to become addicted.
One 22-year-old man told FEMAIL that he began using ketamine regularly while at university, as it was so 'cheap and easy to get'.
He recalled: 'I went into my friend's room and there was just a pile of it on the table.'
Speaking anonymously, he said that he believes the explosion of use of the drug is because 'people just assume it's safe'.
He continued: 'You don't usually die from it, and it feels like being sort of drunk, but different. I mean, you don't feel awful the next day, I mean, unlike most other drugs.
'Naturally, people just assume it's safe. It's not like, Nos, or anything. You don't really hear people dropping dead that often. So I think, yeah, when we're all young and stupid, I think it's the right answer. At that time it was acceptable.
'You don't feel anything. There's no worries, there's no anything you're sort of out.'
While other drugs were also readily available, aside from cannabis, he said K was the most prolific, with people even engaging in 'ket-only nights'.
The young man, who has since started work, said he would spend night with his girlfriend 'doing ketamine and staring at the ceiling'.
While he described himself as a more casual user, he said his girlfriend was eventually sectioned due to her drug use, leaving him 'heartbroken'.
Referring to the addiction, he admitted it was partly why they'd broken up - but many people would never expect it to have such insidious effects, partly due to it being classified as a Class B drug.
The Class B narcotic, sometimes administered in the NHS for pain management and depression, was developed in the 1960s and used as a battlefield anaesthetic in the Vietnam War and as an animal tranquilliser.
It was in the 1970s that it first became widespread at parties. But its use has become so commonplace that the Government recently announced that it was considering reclassifying ketamine as a Class A drug alongside heroin. This would mean that anyone caught supplying it would be handed a life sentence.
On TikTok, many young people are working to battle the ongoing assumption that ketamine is 'less addictive' than other abused substances.
Abby, from Bristol, posts on TikTok to raise awareness of ketamine addiction on her account @tranquilnottranquilised, which is focused on her journey to recovery.
She said that she initially began using it was that she was told it was safe.
'Everyone's experiences are different, but the reality is that this drug destroys lives,' she said. 'It IS (scarily) addictive. It IS (terrifyingly) damaging.'
Referring to the recent news articles about the rise in ketamine being used, she said: 'This is an epidemic of ketamine use in the UK. I'm currently in a group chat of ketamine addicts, and there are 350 of us in that chat and the majority of us are 16 to mid 30s.
'Every man and his dog seems to be on K and the issue is it is an extremely harmful substance. All drugs are dangerous and none come without their harms, but for me, K didn't seem to have any immediate harmful effects. I didn't have any comedown, I didn't have any hangover. It's something that I personally felt safe on. How wrong was I.'
However, Abby was quick to share the reality of a life addicted to ketamine, sharing shocking before and after pictures of her ketamine use.
While she was lucky to be told that scans showed her organs were still in a healthy condition, she said she'd been living in 'chronic pain' while using the drug.
She said tests had showed her liver enzymes were coming back as increasingly elevated. At her worst, she said she was going to the toilet every 10 or 20 minutes, which made her feel 'embarassed and ashamed'.
Her consistent drug use made her become weak, and lose two stone of weight, at some points becoming 'obsessed' with what she was eating as she worried she would set the pain off.
Abby also experienced a phenomenon known as 'k cramps', a severe pain in the upper right abdomen that can feel debilitating.
And it wasn't just physical symptoms, as ketamine also affected her sleep and relationships, to the extent she wasn't leaving the house.
'If I carried on, I was going to kill myself,' she confessed.
'The thing about K is how quickly it does harm, it is rapid. We describe it as an insidious drug. It rots away at multiple organs and it does this really quickly as well.
'With K, you're seeing life destroying devastating, debilitating effects and even death within a couple of years of use and it honestly doens't even take that much'
'It's very easy to abuse, it's short lasting so that means people often go quite a long time being able to function in their day to day lives before they realise they have an addiction.'
She says she knows young people who are bedridden due to it, and those who have been put in induced comas and generally left extremely ill.
'People are dying and you think it won't happen to you, you think you can use it on a weekend, but you will never know,' she said.
'This drug has destroyed my life, it has made me unrecognisable as a person.'
Elsewhere on the social media app, Lauren Anderson, 23, from Scotland, said she is over 40 days clean from ketamine after battling a severe addiction.
Once a keen powerlifter with a good social life, and 'popular, outgoing and fun', Lauren said her ketamine use had left her a 'shell of herself'.
In a powerful statement on TikTok, she emphasised that 'addiction doesn't discriminate'.
She said she had begun taking ketamine when she was around 17 to 18 years old, when she was out with friends.
As she was still able to live a 'normal life' and go to work, she didn't initially think anything was wrong.
But things began to get worse as she started spending all her wages on fuelling her drug habit, even taking money from her mother to spend on her addiction.
Soon, friends started to distance themselves, and ketamine even destroyed her relationship with her boyfriend.
She realised: 'I've lost touch with every part of myself. I am a shell of the girl I once was. I was popular, outgoing and fun, and someone with so much love to give. If I don't make changes in my life, I am going to end up dead.'
Previously, a woman who started taking ketamine while partying at weekends has revealed how the drug took over her life - and saw her so addicted that she even sniffed it from her hospital bed while being treated for its debilitating side effects.
Speaking to the BBC, Casey Innalls, from Portsmouth, who has her own TikTo k account which details her experiences of withdrawing from the drug in a bid to help others, says the death of her father when she was 18 saw her ketamine use begin to spiral.
Innalls says her addiction to ketamine went from being something she might take at a festival to a regular weekend habit to a 14 gram-a-day habit that 'ruined my life'.
Her first video on her account @kcskaddiction was shared in July last year and has since been followed up with often graphic images of how her body was affected by using it - including bloody mucus she's urinated because of the impact on her bladder.
What is ketamine?
Ketamine, also known as 'K', is a powerful general anesthetic that is used to stop humans and animals experiencing pain during operations.
It started being used as a party drug in the late 2000s, with people taking it before raves for a more intense experience.
What are the side effects?
Ketamine causes a loss of feeling and paralysis of the muscles.
It can also lead to people experiencing hallucinations and a distortion of reality, which many call entering the 'k-hole'.
Ketamine may also cause people to feel incapable of moving, or lead to panic attacks, confusion and memory loss.
Regular users can seriously damage their bladders, which may need to be surgically removed.
Other risks include a raised heart rate and blood pressure.
Paralysis of the muscles can leave people vulnerable to hurting themselves, while not feeling pain properly can cause them to underestimate any damage.
How is it taken and what is the law around it?
For medical use ketamine is liquid but the 'street' drug is normally a grainy, white powder.
Ketamine is currently a Class B substance and the maximum penalty for supplying and producing it is up to 14 years in prison, an unlimited fine, or both.
The punishment for possession of the drug is up to 5 years in prison, an unlimited fine or both
The government is seeking expert advice on reclassifying ketamine to become a Class A substance, after illegal use of the drug reached their highest ever levels.
Innalls captioned them: 'These are some gruesome photos as to what I've p***** out of me while doing ketamine due to my bladder being damaged and so inflamed.'
Now in recovery, the young woman says by the time she was 20, she was in the full throes of her addiction.
Describing the first time she took it as a 16-year-old at a house party, Casey says she felt like she was 'walking on the moon' and says ketamine offers a 'totally different feeling to a lot of other drugs'.
In one TikTok posted by Casey, she's frank about how hard it is to withdraw, saying no-one still talks about the hardest parts of recovery, particularly the impact on mental health, saying: 'Everyone always thinks it's sunshine and rainbows. It's not.
'This is where my brain takes me, to the darkest depths of my locked away thoughts.'
Last week, it was revealed that RuPaul 's Drag Race star The Vivienne had died from a cardiac arrest after taking ketamine.
The Vivienne, 32, whose real name was James Lee Williams, was found dead in the bathroom of their home, in Chorlton-by-Backford, near Chester, on January 5 this year, an inquest in February heard.
Their manager Simon Jones said he and the family hoped to 'raise awareness about the dangers of ongoing ketamine uses and what it can do to your body'.
He added in the statement: 'Ketamine usage is on the rise, particularly amongst young people, and I don't think the full dangers of the drug are being discussed.'
He added they hope to work with mental health and addiction service Adferiad to 'raise vital awareness and give information on how to get help if you are struggling with ketamine usage'.
Indeed, use of ketamine among young people has seen a worrying spike in recent years.
With one gram costing £10 to £30 – and around 30 to 75mg providing a single dose or 'bump' – users can get high for less than £2.
Usually consumed as a white powder, it is considerably cheaper than cocaine and MDMA, and less expensive even than vaping.
And it has long had a reputation among its users for being safe.
But the truth is that its use can lead to incontinence, kidney failure and bladder shrinkage – which can require major reconstructive surgery – plus memory loss, lack of muscle control, psychosis and depression.
In some cases, it can be lethal, particularly when mixed with alcohol and other drugs.
Dame Diana Johnson, Minister of State for Crime, said earlier this month: 'Ketamine is an extremely dangerous substance and the recent rise in its use is deeply concerning.'
Her comments came after a coroner wrote to Home Secretary Yvette Cooper in November calling for action over the drug's classification following a man's death.
James Boland, 38, from Manchester, died of sepsis caused by a kidney infection which was 'a complication of long-term use of ketamine'.
Mr Boland - founder and owner of Ancoats Coffee Co in Manchester - had switched from cocaine because he thought ketamine was 'less harmful'.
He was a 'chronic user' of the drug and also suffered serious urological issues as a result of abusing it.
Coroner Alison Mutch OBE warned people in Britain are under a 'false impression' that the drug - which killed Friends star Matthew Perry - is less dangerous than other substances like cocaine.
In November, a devastated mother begged ministers to classify ketamine as Class A, after the death of her 20-year-old daughter who suffered a two-year addiction to the substance.
Sophie Russell, from Lincolnshire, died in September after using the drug daily, which had caused her agonising abdominal pains and incontinence.
Her mother Tracy Marelli said the drug 'destroyed her.'
And In April, midwife Clare Rogers, 47, called for ketamine to be upgraded to Class A after her award-winning 26-year-old student son, Rian Rogers, was killed by the drug.
Ketamine, which is currently a Class B drug, could be upgraded to Class A - the same as heroin, crack and cocaine, as use surged to record levels.
Raising it to Class A would increase those penalties to life for dealing for those dealing the potentially deadly drug and seven years for possession.
The drug was upgraded from Class C to Class B just a decade ago, but now ministers believe even tougher measures may be needed to discourage its use.
In October 2023, Friends star Perry, 54, was found dead in his hot tub at his home in Los Angeles.
It emerged the Chandler Bing actor died from the acute effects of ketamine, having been using it to treat depression.
Dealing ketamine currently carries up to 14 years' imprisonment, while possession carries up to five years.
Private clinics that specialise in ketamine addiction have seen a surge young people seeking treatment, while NHS services have reported similar rises.
Owen Bowden-Jones, a consultant psychiatrist and founder of the pioneering Club Drug clinic, fears some are now using the drug to ease mental health problems.
He suggests that the rise in addiction could be a result of people struggling to access NHS psychiatric services for other issues, such as trauma.
Professor Bowden-Jones told The Guardian that in his experience young people who have 'experienced trauma' are using the drug as an 'emotional anesthetic'.
He added: 'My sense is the vast majority are using it to self-medicate for emotional distress.
'That would suggest to me they found a pharmacological short cut to managing their mental health.'
This is despite the fact that Gen Z are increasingly shunning other types of drug including cannabis, cocaine and MDMA, also known as ecstasy.
The drug increases levels of a glutamate in the brain, a neurotransmitter crucial to mood regulation, learning, memory, and information processing.
Ketamine therapy works by taking an extremely low dose of the drug, to provoke its glutamate boosting effects, and then working through issues with a trained psychotherapist.
By taking the drug, a patient opens up emotionally and becomes more receptive to therapy, advocates claim.
The treatment has attracted high-profile endorsements from the likes of celebrities like of Sharon Osborne, Chrissy Teigen and Elon Musk.
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