K-HOLE: The Ketamine Documentary | The Hidden Harms of Ketamine

Why Ketamine Needed Investigating

Speaker 10 0:00

This is a ReNew original recording. Hello and welcome to this special episode of Believe in People. My name is Matthew Butler and I'm your host, or as I like to say, your facilitator. This episode is going to be a little bit different. Over the years, I've spoken to many people about addiction, recovery, and stigma. But there's one topic that kept coming back: Ketamine. I felt like it was important to explore northern England, speaking to people with lived experience, professionals, and the people that have been impacted by the hidden harms of Ketamine to find out the truth and why so many people are turning to this drug and exploring its effects. My

Meeting Finley Worthington

Speaker 10 0:39

first stop is Accrington, where I'm meeting Finley, a 26-year-old who has been in recovery from Ketamine addiction for two years. Through his story, I want to understand how Ketamine took hold of his life and the devastating impact it can have on the body.

Speaker 7 0:58

And blood's coming out every single time. Thick, dark blood clots. Every single time I went to the toilet, I'd see blood come out. When people told me it would happen to me, this was the realization that actually you were right and it is happening. And I thought it can't get any worse. And I'm led there, and all of a sudden I need the toilet, and it comes on like that click of the fingers, and you're dying. And I've got up and I've sprinted to the toilet, and I'm expecting the same routine to go a little bit of a blood clot, get it out, then urinate. And it was the same, and the blood clot came out, and I couldn't urinate. The feeling was there, my bladder were full, and I was dying, but it just wouldn't come out. It's like having a piece of glass stuck in your bladder, and it's just cutting through on your way down, and the pain that comes with that. So I started squeezing again. This time I'm I'm going light-headed, and all of a sudden, this big chunk of jelly came out. It's almost like a jelly worm suite with blood wrapped around it and goo and gunk and all kinds of different stuff wrapped around it. That was the first time I felt fear. It frightened me. I don't dare reach out because I think someone's gonna judge me. They're gonna look at me as an addict, as a scumbag, as a thief, as a liar. And I just kept it under wraps, I kept it quiet. And then it progressed and it carried on and on and on. This is the side of things that I struggle to talk about emotionally. You know, I can speak about the damage that I've caused to myself all day, every day. But when I start tapping into some of the things that I did to my family and the people around me, my friends who cared. The damage it caused to my family, it's crazy. I'm led there this one night and my phone rings and with my dad. So I picked it up and I said, Aye, you know. And I couldn't hear anything, and I could just hear the background noise, you know, and it sounded like the telly, so I think, you know, it's pocket dab me. So I put my phone on that speaker and I turned it up. My dad's sobbing down phone. You know, he's crying down form to me. And his words, he just said, You're killing me. And you're killing me, and you're killing your mum. He said, and all I can think about is who's gonna be at your funeral, what music's gonna be played, what church is it gonna be at? And again at the time I thought you're being dramatic. I was seven and a half stone, I was absolutely pale as a ghost. I looked rough. My dad said that they used to sit there and they'd just wait for a knock on the door. Your son's been found dead. I'm so trapped in my own little world in my bedroom, killing myself slowly, thinking that nobody else is worried about me, thinking that they're better off without me, to be quite honest. And everybody's worried sick, and I never knew it. You know, and even now to sit here and think about the worry that I've caused my family. And I look back when the knowledge that I've got now and then worried what he had back then were 100% reasonable. Way too many parents that have had that knock or have gone in and found the children dead.

What is Ketamine?

Speaker 10 4:23

To understand why more people are using ketamine, I first need to understand the drug itself. I'm visiting Bertrand at Kaleidoscope House to meet Josephine Moore, who spent years supporting people affected by ketamine addiction, and has seen first hand how the problem is changing.

Speaker 12 4:37

Ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic. We've used it in hospitals for many years, but now what we're seeing is people using it recreationally. They've gone on a night out and they've used it with a bit of alcohol, a bit of cocaine, a bit of ecstasy, MDMA, and then actually they've really enjoyed that feeling. That escapism, that disassociative feeling where they don't feel reality anymore from a sort of sporadic every weekend use. They've then escalated to start using it on a daily basis. And that's where we find people now with some horrendous health problems and issues that we see today.

Speaker 10 5:11

Ketmin

A Parent Watching Addiction Up Close

Speaker 10 5:12

use among young people has risen dramatically in recent years. Kerry's daughter was admitted to Bertram for treatment. For her story, I'm exploring what it's like for parents watching their child become addicted and why more young people are turning to ketamine.

Speaker 2 5:24

I'm watching her in pain, in the bath, screaming like a woman in labour, seriously. That's how bad it got. To then watch her go out and score drugs, that's what she did. Slept a bit, woke up, went out, scored drugs, came home. What are you meant to do? How are you meant to navigate that? You can't. Not without some sort of support.

Speaker 10 5:49

Do you think there's a correlation between neurodiversity and Kermen use?

Speaker 2 5:54

100% yes. It calmed her in her head. It opened a whole new world to her. It was her best friend until it wasn't. She'd been undiagnosed at school, didn't have the correct support systems. ADHD played a huge part.

Speaker 12 6:10

What we're seeing is people with anxiety, depression, complex mental health needs. People with self-harm issues, suicide ideation. These very young people that we see coming through actually have life-changing issues and injuries with their bodies that are very intimate, that they're then having to talk to professionals about who may not have any idea what they're going through and aren't asking the right questions. They need pain relief. They're crying and screaming in excruciating discomfort. And the only thing that will help them is more ketamine. So we've got this cycle of issues where nobody can get on top of the pain. They will continue to use ketamine because it's of the anesthetic agent.

Speaker 10 6:54

The physical impact of ketamine can be devastating.

Meeting Amber Currah

Speaker 10 6:57

I'm travelling to Morcam to meet Amber, a young mum still lived under consequences years after ketamine caused life-changing injuries that forced her to stop using the drug.

Speaker 4 7:06

I had no idea at all what ketamine could do. I'd never heard anything about how it can impact your body. I think I was sniffing about three grams per day. The pain was just kind of, it was kind of like going up a hill, it was just getting a little bit worse as time went on. And so was my ket use. I started to get a UTI feeling. It was just persistent, it wasn't going away. So I thought I had a UTI, went to the doctors, and it wasn't a UTI. The doctors were still doing ultrasounds, we samples, it was just all coming back normal, so they weren't treating me with anything. Even at this point, I still didn't think it's the cat because I didn't know. I do remember the feeling, like a lump feeling, in my urethra. And I remember having to sit on the toilet once, I think it was for eight or nine hours, and I was just pushing and pushing and pushing, like I was giving birth. And I could feel it like travelling down and then shooting back up and travelling down and shooting back up, and that shooting back up pain that is the most horrific pain I've ever felt in my whole entire life. To go through that just once for eight hours, like that's traumatizing. But I went through that over 50 times. Sometimes it'd take about a week to get out. Well, I've actually got a video that I can show you. When I seen that, I was like, that is 1000% part of my bladder. When I'd have to push these lumps out, I would be crouched on the floor in the fetal position for about sometimes 10 hours, sometimes 12 hours, and that would just get that was just horrible. I was so scared and so traumatized from like how severe the pain was.

Speaker 10 8:50

Did the GPs at any point ask you about substance misuse? Did they outright say, Are you using chemistry?

Speaker 4 8:56

They had absolutely no clue. They didn't mention once to me about could it be this, could it be that? It was nothing. It was just we've done what we can do, there's nothing there. That's why I think education with an awareness, especially in doctors, is so important because if they don't know, then how can they treat that person properly? If I know I've got ADHD, I think that is the sole reason as to why I've even had an addiction in the first place. A lot of people are taking it because either past trauma or neurodivergence.

Speaker 10 9:25

During my research this project, I found that one in six young people surveyed said they'd used ketamine in the last year almost three times higher than the year before. How does ketamine impact those feelings?

Speaker 4 9:36

It makes you feel warm, it slows your thoughts down. It just slows everything around you down, and I think that's why it was like such a go-to thing for me and for a lot of other people. Because of that slowing down your thoughts and just escaping from reality.

Speaker 10 9:48

What's probably the biggest impact that it's had on your personal life?

Speaker 4 9:52

It's affected me in so many different ways. Any relationships, whether it's friends or sexual relationships, partners and stuff like that, that's really hard to navigate. I'm due to get neo-bladder surgery where they're gonna take my bladder out and reconstruct a new one out of my bowels. There's a very lower chance of me having kids again. I'm three years clean in August and I'm still a mess. Like I'm still in agony every single day. I don't want anyone anyone to go through what I've been through. It's just mentally and physically draining. I don't know how I'm still alive.

Speaker 10 10:32

Amber's story is heartbreaking. But is it unusual or are more people experiencing this kind of harm?

Surgeons On Irreversible Bladder Damage

Speaker 10 10:39

At Castle Hill Hospital, surgeons are treating patients whose bladders and urinary systems have been permanently damaged by Kermin. I'm meeting one of the consultants to understand what they're seeing first hand.

Speaker 10:50

It's a cheap drug, it's easily available, and I think people don't understand the potential consequences if they take ketamine at reasonable doses for more than a few months. It can have very lifelong and potentially life-ending impacts, really. It's an easy drug to take, but it's a very difficult drug to stop taking. It becomes a vicious cycle, really. Patients often take the drug to relieve the symptoms from the side effects of the drug, and it just comes worse and worse and worse. They're desperate for a solution. They've been in so much pain. Some of the people I've operated on who've had major operations, and they've all done really well for a few months afterwards. Lives are back on track, symptoms have gone, everything's looking great, and they go back onto the drug, and then that's when the damage really happens. There's not really a joined-up policy for how you deal with these patients. I wouldn't know who to refer someone to.

Speaker 10 11:42

Based on your experience of Kermin, what solutions do you think need to be implemented so that we see changes from all across the UK?

Speaker 11:49

The most important thing is education so people understand how damaging this drug can be to their lives and how it can ruin their lives, and it really does ruin people's lives. If there's enough education about it and people understand the effects of the drug and they recognise the damage it's doing to them, if they stop it early enough, then they can get on with their lives basically. But it's when it becomes a vicious, vicious cycle. You take the drug to help you relieve the symptoms, and it becomes worse and worse and worse, and then it becomes irreversible. The message has to be don't take it, it's a very dangerous drug. I think as a medical profession, we're often not very good at joining services up to support people.

Speaker 10 12:28

It's becoming clear that ketamine is creating challenges unlike anything many services have faced before. Without better awareness among parents, carers, and professionals, the problem is only likely to grow. I'm

Recovery Workers On Supporting Families

Speaker 10 12:40

meeting frontline recovery workers to see how they're responding to increasing numbers of young people seeking help.

Speaker 5 12:46

We started to see an increase in ketamine use about four or five years ago. There's nothing available in terms of support, in terms of pathway setups, because of the level of complexity that we were seeing, it was becoming overwhelming to manage. Quite often people were fallen through the safety net.

Speaker 10 13:07

What would you say to a parent worry because their child is using ketamine?

Speaker 5 13:12

So the first thing I'd say is it's really significantly important that as a parent who's maybe watching their child go through this, that you're accessing support yourself. You getting the right support means that you can give them access to information about Ketaman and how it'll affect them. It also means that you're going to be more equipped to understand what they're going to go through. So when you're seeing things like memory loss, disassociation, disconnecting, the pain that they might be experiencing, you can deal with that appropriately. We've got to name what we're scared of, and we're all scared that this young person's gonna die. We've got to get that out in the open, we've got to name that, and we've got to make sure that you've got the appropriate support for that. There's an impact on the person that's in addiction, but also the people around them, all the people in your family, their siblings, grandparents, aunties, uncles.

Speaker 10 14:03

What worries you most about young people and ketamine right now?

Speaker 5 14:07

The long-term health impacts, both physically and mentally as well. The long-term impacts on their cognitive function and the memory as well. In terms of assessment processes, it's got to be twin-tracked, it's got to be focused on not only the ketamine itself and the substance use, but also the health side of things as well. Even when we see people stopping using ketamine, we still are seeing long periods of time where all of these impacts on the health and the mental health is still happening.

Speaker 10 14:36

The impact of ketamine doesn't stop with the person using it. Families, friends, and entire communities are often left living with the consequences. I'm on

When Services Say It’s Not Addictive

Speaker 10 14:44

my way to meet Louise, whose family has experienced that firsthand, to understand what it's really like supporting someone through ketamine addiction and what happens when you ask for help. Was there a specific moment with your friend when you realised that actually this is serious?

Speaker 3 14:58

Seeing the severity of the self-neglect, he'd lost a significant amount of weight. We were really, really concerned about the drastic change in him within quite a short time scale and was stuck in this continuous cycle of using and wasn't able to stop what he was doing.

Speaker 10 15:16

So you've supported people with drug addiction before. How does ketamine present differently?

Speaker 3 15:22

I don't think I'd ever encountered a drug that caused such significant internal damage within such a short space of time. It's a cycle of addiction, people can't stop using it because they're then self-medicating for the bladder pain because there's no alternative drug to take for that pain. And I think the problem with it is when you are presenting at a GP or an emergency department, there's no awareness, there's no understanding what this drug is doing. And because there's this general lack of awareness of this drug, people see that you don't actually need any medical supervision to come off the drug, but users are experiencing something massively different. I was looking at my friend who was gravely unwell, who was seriously dangerously underweight, and I was listening to the advice being given, and I was thinking, this is not right. This can't be right. He's dying in front of me. Yeah, I'm being told this is not an addictive drug, you can just stop using. And I'm looking, thinking, if it was as easy for him to just stop using, looking, he would have stopped. Two weeks after that appointment, he went into respiratory failure at home and had to be resuscitated on his sofa.

Speaker 10 16:38

One question that keeps coming back: are we doing enough to prevent young people reaching this point? With reporters of children as young as 13 using ketamine in schools, many people believe this problem is growing faster than the awareness of its risks. Mark,

Meeting Mark Gregory

Speaker 10 16:54

how old was you when you first started taking ketamine and what what attracted you to that substance in the first place?

Speaker 1 16:59

When I first ever started it, I was at house parties. When I was 13, it just came like a normal thing to go to house parties and bring the ketamine. Little 14, 15 year old me thinking that it's cool doing ketamine. When I first used ketamine at the first house party, there was actually a lad there that was suffering with the long-term damage that you get from ketamine. He showed me his urine and it was just full of blood. But I thought, like, one in 50 people will end up with that issue. Doesn't mean that I'll get this issue. That's what was stuck in my brain that only one in so many people will have that, and that's what I always holded on to until I started having the issues. It was around two years when I started first getting the symptoms, and it was mainly the stomach cramps that were coming for me. I didn't want to believe that it was the ketamine that was doing that to me, and I never saw on YouTube, Facebook that what ketamine were doing to young people. I were getting kidney infections, water infections, the jelly were coming out.

Speaker 10 18:08

What advice would you give to someone who has maybe only just started taking ketamine and currently isn't experienced any of them physical symptoms that you've just told us about?

Speaker 1 18:17

To not use it, but you know, I got told that when I was younger not to use it. What teenagers need to realise is that it's not one in so many people will deal with these symptoms. If you use and abuse ketamine, you're gonna end up with these symptoms. It shreds your bladder lining and you constantly go into the toilet. It's a very horrible drug to be on.

Speaker 10 18:46

We are seeing, you know, more and more young people actually using this in school. It's one of the last places people might expect to find, you know, people using drugs like ketamine.

Speaker 1 18:54

If I didn't have ketamine in school, I would misbehave, I would get kicked out of class, but if I've used ketamine, I managed to actually stay in the classroom. I've came out of school with no GCSEs, and that's because I couldn't concentrate because I was always under the influence of ketamine. What I've always said, even through my addiction, when I was hooked up on ketamine and can't get off ketamine, I've always had this lad who's showing me his urine in my head, and I wish I listened to him. Very quickly, it became normal for me. I thought, why are you not doing ketamine? It was normal for me, and that's the scary thing, it's becoming normal for 13, 14 year olds to be doing ketamine.

Speaker 10 19:37

When I hear people talking about young people using ketamine, I think of those aged 16 to 25. So I had to ask Joe more, just how young are the people we're actually seeing?

Speaker 12 19:47

What is quite shocking is we're seeing people who are sort of 10 and 12 years old. Their parents have phoned up the service, and actually we're not able to help those people, so they are referred back to primary care services. I didn't think we'd ever see this kind of cohort of individuals referred in, but for people to be extremely young and having life-changing surgeries, bladder removals, double nephrostomy tubes, insertion into the kidneys is more shocking than I could ever imagine.

Speaker 10 20:19

If you could go back to 13-year-old matter, what would you tell him?

Speaker 1 20:24

I wish that I could stop. And it weren't an everyday thing, it weren't doing it in school, doing it out of school. When I leave rehab, it's gonna be hard because I need to refinance. Being in here, you've got peers, but when you go out there, you've got no one. That's what can take you back out there for drugs, boredom, not knowing how to sit with yourself.

Speaker 12 20:47

Ketmin is a dissociative anesthetic that essentially takes them away from feeling of reality. They do not know how to deal with life and they want to be as far away as possible.

Speaker 10 21:00

This generation faces increasingly complex challenges. Many young people seeking help are also struggling with their mental health, and ketamine's disassociative effects can make it especially appealing. I want to understand what really works. Not just in helping people recover, but in preventing ketamine use in the first place. That means

Building A Life Without Ketamine

Speaker 10 21:17

looking beyond treatment to the role of sport, community, and purpose in building a life without drugs. Boxing is a big part of your life. How does fitness and activities like this help with not just yourself and your own recovery from ketamine use, but how does it help other people within these circles that you're in?

Speaker 7 21:34

Yeah, it's massive. I got diagnosed with ADHD about three months ago now. I speak to my mum and she said, Finley, the sounds have been there since you were a kid. The impulsivity, and there's a host of things when I look back that kind of points to it. This is where boxing comes into it for me. There's not many places where I go and I'm engaging and I'm not thinking about a million other things where I'm there and I'm present. And there's always been good people here who kind of knew what was going on with me. Oh, it's good to see you now, you're getting on. You know, it's like A little community. And to have that when you feel so lonely, you know, when you feel isolated from the world, to have a place where you can come and you can train and you can have a bit of a laugh with people and I almost have a little community. It's been priceless, absolutely priceless. For me, giving back to people is what helps me stay sober. If I'm not helping people, that's my purpose taken away. I feel like I feel like my purpose in life is to help. Boxing's been a massive part of my journey. We helped get my education services when I was probably about six or seven months into recovery. And what do we do now? We run online and kind of in-person support. All run with people with lived experience, who know what they're talking about, who've been there. We're going to schools, colleges, prisons, workplaces, drug and alcohol services. We're in all kinds of different places, up and down the country, trying to raise awareness, trying to educate people, and hopefully, for anybody who's not took it, the EarMR story and the education decide to never take it. Or for anybody that's taking it, we're showing that there's hope, there is help, and you can change.

Speaker 10 23:01

After seeing the importance of education in action, I realised that lived experience carries an emotional weight that can't be underestimated. Seeing someone who has lived it, recovered, and is willing to share their story can be life-changing for the people who hear it.

Speaker 4 23:15

The reason I spoke out about this in the first place, one, not many people were at the time, and two, I didn't know anyone with a bladder as bad as mine. Obviously, I didn't know how bad it can affect you, now I do, and I wanted everyone else to know what I was going through to hopefully stop them from wanting to ever take it in the first place because what I've gone through isn't just mine, it's been absolutely horrific, and I'm never gonna forget it for the rest of my life, and I'm never gonna be what I was like before it. In August 2023, that's when I stopped. When Anna went into hospital and they told us that she was gonna die. When I went to visit her in hospital, I was going through a lot of the weeing the lumps out. That started happening whilst I was there visiting her. So I had to sit in the toilet for nearly two hours and push and push this lump out. And I was just sitting there thinking, like, if I didn't do this to myself in the first place, I'd be able to be sat in there with my nana who's dying. I've done so much since I stopped taking care. And I know she knew I quit, but that upsets me a lot. Everything's changed so much since then. I just wish she could have seen everything that I've been doing. They are proud of me, but they're not the type of people to always say it and my nano was. It's really important education because if I knew anything what I know now, I honestly don't think I would have taken it in the first place. And that's why I think going into schools is so important, educating doctors is really important, and you know, recovery service workers and stuff like that. I think it's so important that they know everything to be able to help people the most.

Education That Could Prevent Lifelong Harm

Speaker 10 25:06

After hearing Amber speak about the importance of education, I asked Joe what message she'd want everyone to hear about the devastating impact that ketamine can have on the rest of the body.

Speaker 12 25:15

We're seeing a lot of people talking about urinary issues, so the bladder, the frequency and urination, but it's not just the bladder at all. There's actually inflammation throughout the whole system. So it goes from the bladder up to the kidneys, and sometimes the kidneys become enlarged, and that's where we see people needing nephrostomy tubes inserted. We're just seeing devastating effects that we've never sort of seen before with any other drug, and that's why we're so invested in being able to raise awareness.

Speaker 10 25:48

I asked Julie, a nurse at Castle Hill Hospital, whether there was anything that could act as a deterrent to stop young people from using ketamine.

Speaker 11 25:56

I think if they saw a picture of a bladder that had been affected by ketamine that's had to be removed, I think that would that would probably shock a few people. I think the emphasis on how it can completely change your life by abusing ketamine, because of the frequency and the urgency, you know, people have to stop working or they have to stop going out, or they have to, you know, they can't go to football anymore, they can't play football, they can't go to the gym, or they can't have a relationship because of the frequency of going to the toilet. Because sometimes they can go to the toilet 20 times a day and every half an hour, 20 minutes during the night. So that impacts the sleep, that impacts the mental health, and it's just a downward spiral.

Speaker 26:41

If the drug is stopped early enough and haven't been taking it for too long, it there's a chance for resuming a normal life. But if patients take ketamine for a long period of time consistently, it's a very difficult problem to treat.

Speaker 6 27:06

In a lot of cases, I've seen the bodies are dying. This is not just like a little bit unwell. This is the bodies are failing. They're neglecting, they're not eating, you know, they're not sleeping, it's it's constant pain, the bleeding out of every area. It's it's a it's really, really, really scary. And then the parents are recognising it and all the siblings and family, and everyone's coming in very, very upset. There was no official pathway in place. So, upon me sort of recognising what was going on and seeing that there was a lot of ketamine usage going on. I went to my management and I said, I think we've got like a real problem here. I'd like to start doing some work with ketamine users. Initially, because we were so uneducated on ketamine and the effects of it on the body, we didn't see that these primarily young people need to be getting fast-tracked into a detox. I am arguing with the GP and advocating for the client that, you know, you are preventing them from recovery because you're not willing to prescribe anything strong enough for the pain. The barrier I face with the GPs is a serious problem because I'm doing all this work behind and I'm requesting GP appointments and I'm going up to A and E and we're doing all of this, getting into inpatient detox. But when they come out of detox and they don't have a post-pain management plan in place, yes, almost set up to fail because that pain's still there. And what you'll hear a lot of ketamine clients say is, you know, I take ketamine now to get rid of the pain. These ketamine clients are not going out having fun. This is not fun anymore. I could work with a ketamine user that's been on ketamine for two years, and then I could work with a heroin user that's been on heroin for 30 years, and the heroin user's body is not in as poor physical state as a two-year addiction to ketamine.

Speaker 4 29:06

I was still pushing lumps out for about a year and a half after stopping, which I was quite shocked by. I honestly thought that as soon as I stopped, oh, it'll be fine in a month and I'll heal and I'll be able to get on with my life, and it was just not the case at all.

Harm Reduction And Specialist Pathways

Speaker 10 29:22

To better understand harm reduction, I spoke with Changegirl Lives national harm reduction lead, Peter Fairlong. While the safest option is to not use ketamine, the reality is more complex, and harm reduction is about reducing risk and keeping people alive until they're ready for change. What's some of the changes that people could make with their ketamine use that can genuinely actually reduce harm?

Speaker 9 29:46

If you're gonna use ketamine, use it you know as infrequently as possible. Go low and slow, don't mix drugs, don't use ketamine if you're feeling low and anxious because it's it's gonna take you to a more low and anxious place because it's a mood enhancer and that disassociative effect. I'd say stay hydrated, stay with people that you trust. Never get a bath after taking ketamine. There's been some tragic accidents and deaths from people wanting to chill out in a bath. The best time reduction advice I would give is to monitor your use, and if it's more than occasional use and you get interdependent use or regular use, daily use, we really need to start thinking about moderation or or total abstinence. I spoke to a urologist from Greater Manchester who said if you use ketamine on a daily basis, you've got a very high, almost guaranteed chance of ending up in a urology clinic.

Speaker 10 30:40

Harm reduction can help prevent some of the risks, but when ketamine begins causing serious physical or psychological harm, people need more than advice. They need specialist support. Hull's ketamine pathway provides exactly that, and for Adam, supporting others isn't just his job, it's a journey he's lived himself. So after five years of ketamine use, it's almost come full circle now because now you're gonna be doing a role where you're supporting others with a problem with ketamine. What attracted you to doing the job, and why is it so important to have someone with lived experience in that role as well?

Speaker 8 31:19

So, what attracted me to the role is the fact that I have got a lived experience and I know exactly what it's like to be a ketamine addict. I know exactly the ups and the downs. So if I could help in any way someone that's going through the same things as I was, or just to be seen as maybe like the light at the end of the tunnel, do you know what I mean? Or the the fact that someone else has done it that could give someone an extra push to start. It could be everything to someone to see someone else that's come from the same the same position and made it out of the out of the addiction. Do you know what I mean? And actually made something for themselves rather than just being addicted to ketamine.

Speaker 9 31:56

I would hope in five years' time there'll be more of a pharmacological community offer to offer people earlier on and getting to people much sooner, really, because we're seeing people very late and all the damage is already being done.

Speaker 12 32:08

What we need is all professionals within the fields. So I mean social services, I mean GPs, AE, urology, everybody working together to be able to actually understand Kessmin, but also from people lived experience. It's got to be a system-wide approach so that we all know those warning signs to look out for.

Speaker 10 32:29

As

The Question That Could Save Lives

Speaker 10 32:30

I've travelled across the country making this documentary, I've seen what begins as curiosity or experimentation can quickly become addiction, irreversible injury, and lifelong consequences. Ketamine is not the harmless party drug many people still believe it to be. But these stories don't have to be repeated. With better education, greater awareness, and earlier intervention, we can change outcomes. Sometimes simply asking, are you using ketamine? could be the conversation that changes or even saves a life. I hope this documentary challenges myths, starts important conversations, and reminds us that behind every statistic is a real person. The next chapter isn't about this documentary, it's about what we choose to do next. If you've enjoyed this episode of the Believe in People Podcast, we love for you to share it with others who might find it meaningful. For additional resources, insights and updates, explore the links in this episode description.com.