Doctors in the UK are warning about the growing use of ketamine by young people and the extremely harmful health effects of this narcotic, recently brought to light by Elon Musk and Matthew Perry.
“K”, for ketamine, is a drug with an anesthetic effect. Widely used as a horse tranquilizer, it is now a common sight in British clubs and among young people.
Over the last year, 6.6% of 16–24-year-olds in England and Wales declared they have used the drug in their lifetime, almost doubling the 2016 numbers (3.4%).
Ketamine has already been present in the United Kingdom for twenty years, but there has been a resurgence in use that the statistics likely underestimate, according to the Office for National Statistics.
“I think we’ve seen a huge explosion of young people taking ketamine throughout the country,” alerts the BBC Dr. Mohammed Belal of the British Association of Urological Surgeons.
Manchester-based DJ Salute complained on the social network X about the growing presence of the drug on the dance floor: “There is far too much ket on dancefloors in the uk imo. Everyone should have fun but it sucks seeing people kind of just standing around like zombies and not dancing.”
So what are the effects of this popular drug?
The white crystalline substance offers dissociative effects, allowing detachment from one’s body and environment as it numbs the senses. With an impression of being in a dream, “Ket” also sometimes produces mild hallucinations, making you feel euphoric.
But the energy spike sometimes comes with a downside: the “K‑hole.”
“When a person has a K‑hole, they are in a subanesthetic state. They dissociate from themselves. This can lead to a sense of oneness with the universe,” explained Dr. Stephen Bright, clinical psychologist and vice-president of Psychedelic Research In Science and Medicine (PRISM), to Vice.
The K‑hole can be both a good and a bad experience, necessarily involving a loss of control and making one seem unconscious. Usually inhaled, smoked, injected, or drunk late at night, in recent years ketamine has also been taken in nightclubs.
When we look at this shift in trend, one thing stands out: confinement precipitated a change in usage.
“From research done during lockdown, we found there was a decrease in the amount of people who were taking drugs like ecstasy and cocaine because they weren’t going out partying as much,” explains Adam Waugh, the training coordinator at drug testing and harm reduction NGO The Loop. “People were looking for an escape that wasn’t an upper, so they turned to ket.”
A teenage phenomenon
“Special K” is an urban phenomenon, as it is mainly consumed in Manchester, Bristol, and London, and is sold extensively via social networks. On Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp, or even Telegram — the encrypted messaging system favored by the more professional dealers — it is symbolized by a simple horse emoji and costs just 20 pounds (25 dollars) a gram, or 3 pounds a dose.
That’s half the price of MDMA, another popular drug in rave culture. This accessibility through price and social networks positions young people as the primary clientele for dealers.
Tolerance to “donkey dust” — another nickname for ketamine — quickly builds up. Dosages then have to be increasingly higher to feel the same effects as before, and taking ketamine has terrible long-term health effects.
Fatally dangerous when mixed with alcohol, ketamine alone has a major impact on long- and short-term memory, damaging the kidneys and liver, but above all the bladder.
“Ketamine bladder” refers to the damage caused by the drug to the bladder, whose lining is attacked and shrinks to the size of a marble in the most severe cases. Beth, a ketamine addict, told the BBC “I can’t walk 50 meters without either needing to sit down or needing to run to the toilet.”
“For some people the only option is to have your bladder removed and that leaves you infertile, having a colostomy bag when you’re at a young age is really, really sad,” said Celia Morgan, Professor of Psychopharmacology at the University of Exeter, whose research focuses on ketamine in particular.
Ketamine was partly responsible for the death of Matthew Perry, the actor who played Chandler in the series Friends.
Esketamine, a derivative form of ketamine available by prescription, is used by X owner Elon Musk to treat a “negative chemical state” similar to depression. Scientists at the Peking University First Hospital in Beijing, China, recently discovered that esketamine could reduce post-partum depression experienced by new mothers with a single dose.
