Youngsters have taken cheap ‘cocaine substitute’ ketamine thinking it’s safe – my son’s death proves differently
CLARE ROGERS knows all about the dangers facing Gen Ket – the group of youngsters like her son who risk death with every fix of party drug ketamine.
Even though she paid £7,000 for Rian to go into rehab and flushed all his drugs down the toilet, nothing could release him from the substance’s fatal grip.
In April, the body of the 26-year-old coder was found in the bathroom of his shared house, four days after he had died from a dose of the drug.
Many other members of Gen Ket — or Generation Ketamine — are taking risks with the illegal drug that can be bought for the price of a posh coffee. For many, it starts off as fun at a party or festival.
The drug has a false reputation for being “safe” — many youngsters believe it can’t kill and are unaware of the possible fatal consequences.
One dose of the powerful sedative — also known as Special K, Ket or Kit Kat — costs £3.
The most recent data shows one in four 16-to 24-year-olds have tried it and one in 20 are regular users.
Home Office statistics revealed an 884 per cent rise in ketamine seizures in just one year.
Adult drug and alcohol treatment service Together reported a 53 per cent rise in the number of young adults admitting to ketamine use since August 2022.
There have been 41 reported ketamine deaths among students since 1991, with seven alone in 2021.
Holding up a photo of her once- bright and loving son, Clare warned: “I want to tell Rian’s story to any parent or person out there who thinks ketamine is in any way safe.
“It kills, and rips holes in families, in communities. Nothing will ever bring him back.”
Developed in 1962, ketamine was used as an anaesthetic in the Vietnam War and to tranquillise animals.
In the 1990s it became a popular recreational drug at raves, before largely going out of fashion.
Now in the 2020s it is back with a vengeance. Medics are seeing users suffering from both mental and physical effects including depression, memory loss, panic attacks, psychosis and permanent bladder damage.
For Rian, who had a good job at Jaguar Land Rover before learning how to code, it was far more serious.
Clare, a 47-year-old midwife from Tamworth, Staffs, told The Sun: “Rian was sporty and bright, with so many friends. He had everything to live for, but ketamine took all that away.”
In his late teens he started experimenting with the drug with friends at festivals such as Reading and Boomtown in Hampshire.
‘Out of control’
But when his best friend died in a road accident while high on the drug in 2018, Rian’s usage escalated.
Clare said: “He hardly drank and didn’t do any other drugs, but ketamine became his tool to help him deal with his grief, numbing his pain.”
It was only when Rian’s girlfriend Chloe Williams told Clare she was worried about him that she became aware of what was going on.
Chloe’s father had called the police after Rian started smashing up their flat in a state of drug-induced psychosis.
Clare said: “We had a family meeting with Rian, his dad and my parents, and told him we’d do everything we could to help him.
“Rian wanted help, but we all knew how out of control he was and he kept slipping back into his addiction.”
Rian moved in with Clare and her nine-year-old son Dylan, but carried on using.
She recalled: “Dylan could plainly see what was going on, how Rian would stumble out of the bathroom, off his face. Dylan ended up telling someone at his school, who then contacted social services, so I had no choice but to kick Rian out or I’d lose both my sons.”
Rian stayed with friends, but was soon thrown out after they found out the extent of his ketamine habit — and then he had to live in his car.
Clare added: “Finally, in May 2021, we all pooled together and paid over £7,000 for Rian to spend a month in a residential rehab facility. If we hadn’t, we knew he’d kill himself.”
By then Rian had developed an ulcerated bladder, a common side effect of prolonged, heavy ketamine use, and was in intense pain.
Scans showed his bladder capacity had shrunk from the regular 500ml to just 90ml.
Rehab offered Clare a ray of hope.
She said: “He went into rehab like an 80-year-old man, all emaciated and hunched over, like a crab, in so much pain with his bladder.
“But afterwards his eyes sparkled for the first time in years. His smile was back. I really thought we’d turned a corner.”
Tragically, Rian could only resist the drug’s pull for three weeks.
Clare said: “His dealers wouldn’t leave him alone, even though he was desperate to quit.
“One day he’d be crying, saying he wanted to stop, the next day I’d see him off his face. He just lied to everyone, all the time.”
Clare says Rian’s addiction affected everyone around him. She had to sign off from work twice with stress.
After living with various other people he moved back in with her, and she said: “I flushed all the ketamine down the toilet — there must have been up to ten grams there — and Rian assured me he’d get clean.”
But when she called him during a trip to the cinema with Dylan she realised he was again off his head, and Clare felt she had to ask him to live somewhere else.
She said: “Before he left, I gave Rian a massive hug and told him he had to start living his life again, to go out and see friends.
“But at 5.20am on Tuesday, the 25th of April I had a knock on the door and saw two policemen. Instantly I knew my beautiful boy was gone.”
The police discovered five grams of ketamine with him, and Clare said: “He was found in the bathroom of the shared house he was living in, his body so decomposed after having locked himself in there four days before.
“I wasn’t allowed to see him.
“The tragic thing was, we knew it was coming but we were powerless over the stranglehold that ketamine had on him.”
Post-mortem results showed that he had stopped breathing after suffering lung problems and then a swelling of the brain.
Consultant psychiatrist and addiction medicine specialist Professor Adam Winstock, founder of research group the Global Drug Survey, says overdosing on ketamine is rare, the biggest risks to life instead coming from having accidents while high on the drug.
He said: “Most often, deaths occur as a result of taking ketamine and then driving, entering bodies of water like baths, pools or lakes, or doing something else your body won’t be equipped for.
“The UK has been one of the leading users of ket for the last five to ten years.”
Pastor Mick Fleming, founder of the charity Church On The Street, believes more young people than ever are getting hooked on the drug because of its affordability, combined with its hallucinogenic effect that helps users escape the despair of increasing mental illness.
‘I couldn’t stop’
He said: “There’s no substitute drug you can take to counteract the effects of withdrawal, like methadone for heroin.
“When you’re coming off ket you have to go through the effects, and it’s excruciating.”
The myth that ket does not kill lures youngsters into believing it is safe. That was one of the reasons why Rian’s former girlfriend Chloe tried the drug.
She said: “We never wanted to get addicted to it, but when you are told you can’t overdose, that it’s good for depression and also gives you a high, why not give it a go?”
Now she knows how terrible the effects can be. She suffered from severe weight loss and “horrific K cramps”.
Chloe, a 26-year-old tattoo artist, also from Tamworth, said: “I was in and out of hospital with horrible side effects, but I still couldn’t stop.
“For Rian and me it started as a sociable, festival thing. But it escalated so quickly into the opposite, never leaving our flat.”
After almost a decade of being reliant on ketamine, Chloe finally gave up in February, and has not touched it since.
She said: “I just knew one of us was going to die soon, and I had to choose my own safety ahead of our relationship.
“I know ketamine robbed Rian of his life, but it also robbed me of the man I loved.
“Without ketamine we could have had a family, his career would have flourished, we’d have a future.”
Finding hell in K-hole
By Hayley Minn
KETAMINE is a powerful anaesthetic, usually used as a horse tranquilliser.
It was created in 1962 in the US and was used on American casualties in the Vietnam War from 1970.
Around 20 years ago it also became an illicit recreational drug in the UK, where it is ranked as Class B, meaning possessing it can bring up to five years in prison, an unlimited fine, or both.
Dr Karenza Moore, a sociologist at Newcastle University who studies drug culture, says 16- to 24-year-olds can very easily buy ketamine on social media platforms such as Telegram and Instagram.
Like cocaine, it is sold as a grainy, white powder, but while cocaine usually costs £100 for one gram, ketamine is just £20 to £30 a gram.
It can make users feel relaxed and detached, but also confused and nauseated.
Trips can last a couple of hours and can alter the user’s perception of time and space and make them hallucinate.
As it’s a painkiller, it also puts users at risk of hurting themselves without realising.
A very common side effect of overdosing is a “K-hole” – when users lose the ability to move, and feel as if mind and body have separated and they can do nothing about it, which can be very alarming.
Regular use can cause many severe side effects, including agitation, panic attacks, short- and long-term memory loss, depression and blood in the urine.