I was a Ketamine addict – I spent £1k a month ordering drug on commute but booked into rehab after chilling wake-up call
LIKE many at the end of the working day, Will was always in a rush to get home.
In his late 20s and with a professional job in London, he was well-paid and seen as highly successful.
But he was hiding a dark secret.
Will was hooked on ketamine, the “club drug” at the centre of a spiralling addiction crisis in youngsters across the UK.
According to a wastewater sampling report published by the Home Office last week, ketamine use has risen by 85 per cent over the past year.
Will, 30, tells Sun Health: “I’d drink on my way home and I would order the drugs before I’d even arrived at home so that they’d be ready and waiting.
“Then I could just maximise my evening, basically getting as out of my head as possible.”
Dubbed Special K, K and Kit Kat, the general anaesthetic, which is used on humans and animals, became popular on the rave scene in the Nineties.
A standard dose of ketamine can make a person feel relaxed, dream-like, happy and light.
But for many people like Will, it became a crutch, something he indulged in every night after work to escape reality.
“I wasn’t even chasing a buzz any more,” he says. “I just wanted to disappear, to be in a K-hole as much as possible.”
High doses propel users into a “K-hole” — a state of disassociation that leaves them unable to move or talk properly.
Last week, it emerged that drag star The Vivienne, who won RuPaul’s Drag Race UK in 2019, died after taking ketamine. They had previously been treated for addiction pre-fame.
The Vivienne, real name James Lee Williams, 32, suffered a cardiac arrest and was found dead at home near Chester on January 5.
The performer’s sister Chanel Williams has now pledged to raise awareness of the drug’s dangers.
I’d drink on my way home and I would order the drugs before I’d even arrived at home so that they’d be ready and waiting
Will
It comes after Friends actor Matthew Perry was found dead in his hot tub in October 2023, with a coroner finding ketamine was his primary cause of death.
In controlled medical settings, ketamine has gained a reputation as a groundbreaking treatment for depression and chronic pain.
However, outside of these clinical environments, its darker side emerges.
‘It was mysterious and exciting’
Will first dabbled with the drug when he was 15.
He grew up as a carer for his disabled mum, and his teenage years were difficult.
Already experimenting with cocaine and booze at the time, he says: “Ketamine seemed like the logical next step.
“It was mysterious, exciting, but I didn’t even like it at first.”
Fast forward to his 20s and ketamine became more than just an experiment, with the Covid pandemic accelerating his use.
“Drug dealers don’t care about lockdowns,” he says.
Soon Will’s weekend use bled into weekdays, and when his mum died, late in 2022, things hit rock bottom.
“I was deeply unhappy, drinking daily, saying ‘screw it’ to everything.
“Ketamine became my way of numbing the pain.”
Will could get through 8g of the white powder in a sitting, though he once remembers using an entire ounce (28g).
Despite his £1,000 a month habit, Will managed to hold down a job and a relationship with his girlfriend but admits it was difficult.
I was vomiting multiple times a day, what looked like ground coffee.
Will
He says: “We were living in separate flats at the time, which made it easy for me to start an argument and get space away from judgmental eyes to do what I wanted.
“Any time that she did spend with me, I was basically incoherent, panicky . . . or just talking complete gibberish.”
It was in September 2024, after around 18 months of heavy ketamine use, that Will’s addiction hit its catastrophic peak.
“I started getting really intense cramps, which suddenly hit me like a ton of bricks. I couldn’t stand up, I was sweating.
“My girlfriend called 111, who told her to call 999 because they thought that I was having a heart attack.”
In the hospital, doctors gave Will – then 29 – a stark wake-up call.
THE TOLL 'K' TAKES ON YOUR BODY
KETAMINE can lead to death by putting pressure on the heart and respiratory system.
But its other effects on the body, which are often irreversible, are horrifying, too.
“Ketamine bladder syndrome is one of the worst symptoms,” Dr Carney says.
This is where the breakdown of ketamine in the body causes inflammation in the bladder wall.
It leaves people unable to hold urine and passing chunks of their bladder tissue.
Some users face the prospect of having their bladders removed entirely.
Dr Carney explains: “The lining of the bladder can shrink over time and be extremely painful for those experiencing it.
“This can often lead to lower abdominal pain and pain when passing urine, as well as bleeding.
“It’s usually what has forced people to get help because they can’t tolerate it any more.
“We’ve had young men in agony, wetting the bed.
“Their whole life is focused on where there’s a toilet because they can only hold urine for ten minutes.
“For a teenager or someone in their early 20s, that’s absolutely life-changing.
“In some cases, the bladder damage progresses to the kidneys and people get kidney failure, too.
“This is developing in people who have been using for two years, so it is relatively quick.”
Dr Carney adds that the urine samples of new guests checking into the clinic are often just a “pot of blood”.
This is followed by weeks of agony coming off the drug. An irony of ketamine use is people tend to take more and more to numb the pain of the side-effects it causes.
Dr Carney says: “There’s nothing that we can give which is as strong as a medical anaesthetic (the ketamine). We can use codeine-based products or anti-inflammatories.
“Some antidepressants help at night, but the pain is hard to manage in the early days.
“Most people that come to us, the bladder will improve to the point that they don’t need to have it removed.
“But once you’ve got a bladder that has shrunk to the size of 70ml, that’s never getting better.”
“I was vomiting multiple times, what looked like ground coffee. Doctors said it was congealed blood. I felt like I was dying.
“The doctors were like, ‘You’ll probably be in hospital again before you’re 30 if you carry on’.”
Combined with the despair in his girlfriend’s eyes, their words pushed Will to seek help.
“I didn’t care about myself, but seeing her so upset broke me,” he says.
“I made an oath to myself that I’d quit before my 30th birthday.”
Last October Will checked into rehab at £18,000-a-month private clinic Delamere.
Addiction specialist Dr Catherine Carney, who has worked at the Cheshire clinic since it opened in 2020, says: “When I started my career in the early 2000s, ketamine addiction was unheard of. Now, it’s spiralling.
“I have witnessed people in their thirties who have been forced to walk with a Zimmer frame.”
Once a sidekick to alcohol or cocaine, ketamine is increasingly the primary reason people are admitted for rehab.
“In the last six months of last year, we have seen admissions for ketamine addiction treatment almost triple in number,” says Dr Carney.
“Furthermore, roughly 85 per cent of admissions are adults under 30 years old.
“Ketamine is cheap, accessible and seen as socially acceptable.”
So cheap is the drug that it is popular among schoolchildren.
In just two or three clicks on social media, ketamine can be delivered to your front door
Dr Catherine Carney
“They use it to self-medicate for anxiety or to unwind in the same way that traditionally alcohol or cannabis would be used,” says Dr Carney.
“In just two or three clicks on social media, ketamine can be delivered to your front door.
“People can source it on Snapchat, Instagram and even music app SoundCloud.”
And in a warning to parents, she adds: “Don’t assume your kids are not using it, because it is popular, used quite a lot and is seen as relatively safe.”
According to the Office for National Statistics, 2.9 per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds took ketamine in the year to March 2024, up from 0.8 per cent in 2007.
Treatment in under-17s has more than doubled, from 500 in 2022 to 1,200 in 2024.
Ketamine was classified as a Class B drug in the UK in January 2015, but this year the Home Office called for a review to reclassify it as a Class A substance.
It comes after drug deaths have been reported in the media, including that of mum-of-two Georgia Farnsworth, 26, who was found dead in the bath after two years of ketamine use.
Her mum Sarah said: “It got to the point where Georgia was so incapacitated that she couldn’t get out of bed.
“But she could still order ketamine from her phone.”
After a few days of treatment, patients’ cravings start to lessen and they are able to engage with therapy.
It was then that Will was able to confront the root causes of his addiction.
“It wasn’t just about ketamine,” he says. “It was about my self-image, my grief, my inability to cope with life’s pressures.”
Will is among those fortunate enough to have reached out for help before it is too late.
The number of adults in treatment for ketamine is eight times higher than it was ten years ago, according to The Office for Health Improvement & Disparities, with 3,609 cases in 2023/24.
Will has moved out of London as he tries to rebuild his life, and is now living with his girlfriend. “It’s not easy, but everything is better — my health, my relationships, my future,” he says.
As for ketamine’s reputation as a “harmless” drug?
Will is adamant: “It’s not harmless. “It rewires your brain, it takes over your life.
“Make sure you are the one making the decisions, not the addiction.”
WHERE TO GET HELP
IF you or a loved one needs help you can get help at your local drug treatment service either by seeing your GP or making a self-referral.
The NHS recommends the Frank website; Visit www.talktofrank.com/get-help/find-support-near-you to find your nearest service using your postcode or call 0300 123 6600 to ask for advice.
Your treatment will depend on an assessment and may include therapy, medicines or support groups either at home, in hospital or a rehab centre.
You can also contact charities such as Changing Lives, Humankind and WithYou.