Ketamine will make you wet the bed and then kill you – if you think your kids are taking it please try to help
KETAMINE was designed to tranquilise horses – but now it seems to have become extremely popular with teenage kids.
And I cannot work out why.
“It’s cheap,” we are told.
Well, yes.
But so is vinegar, and you wouldn’t put that up your nose.
I’m not daft so I can understand why people take drugs.
They go to a party and see other guests who are giggly or relaxed or suddenly very confident and they think: “I’ll have some of that.”
It’s the same story with alcohol, which can cause a straight-laced, fifty-something chap to decide at two in the morning that he wants to climb on a table and play air guitar.
I know this.
I’ve been there.
But ketamine is different, because when you look at someone who’s taken that, spasming on the floor in a completely catatonic state, who in their right mind thinks, “Mmmm. That looks like fun?”
Apparently, it puts you in something called a k-hole.
Which means you become completely detached from your surroundings.
You can’t hear anything or speak or see.
But if that’s what you want at a party, why not sit in the cupboard under the stairs?
And there’s more.
With alcohol and other drugs there are hangovers and long-term effects, of course.
Death is one.
Loneliness and bankruptcy are others.
But when it comes to ketamine, or Special K as it’s sometimes known, the story’s even worse.
First of all, it makes your bladder hurt.
And the only way of taking away the pain is taking more ketamine.
Until, eventually, your bladder has shrunk to the size of a marble and stops working.
Then you have to wear special incontinent panties which, I’m told, is not a good look if you’ve just pulled and you fancy a night of rumpy pumpy.
Eventually, after you’ve spent a year wetting the bed, your bladder will have to be removed.
And replaced with a bag.
Needless to say, people who’ve inflicted this damage on themselves don’t get preferential treatment from the NHS.
I read this week about one teenager who waited so long for pain treatment that the invitation to attend a doctor’s appointment arrived two years after his funeral.
All of which brings me on to a sombre conclusion.
If you think your kids are taking ketamine, don’t assume it’s a phase that will pass.
Have a chat.
Try to help.
It’d be the best Christmas present you’ve ever given them.
Frock and awe at sale
WHEN Princess Diana’s Ford Escort RS Turbo sold at auction last year for £650,000, I thought the world had taken leave of its senses.
But now comes news that someone has spent £904,000 on one of her old frocks.
I can’t grapple with that at all.
Because if you take Diana out of the equation, the chap with the RS Turbo does at least have a pretty cool car.
Whereas the guy with the dress has some velvet and a bit of cotton.
Perfect escape
MANY people will be heading to the airport next week so that someone in rubber gloves can touch them intimately before they queue for a flight that’s been cancelled.
Not me.
I love being at home in the gap between Christmas and New Year’s Eve.
I have my children around, and my granddaughter.
I have friends too, who aren’t at work either, so we can go to the pub, and we can stay up late and tell tall tales.
And we can go for walks, which are so much better in the winter because you don’t get sweaty, there are no wasps and you don’t get hay fever.
And then afterwards, I can fall asleep in front of the fire while watching The Great Escape.
That’s what I’m going to be doing and I shall be happy.
And I hope that whatever you are doing, you’re happy too.
See you on the flip side.
Bit of a tight spot
ALL week, people have been making “grrrr” noises about Baroness Mone, who trousered £60million from a deal selling PPE equipment to the Government during Covid.
And then spent most of it on a preposterous hairstyle.
Honestly though, I’m not that bothered.
People have always profited in times of national emergency.
Look at Walker from Dad’s Army.
He did it and we all loved the little scallywag.
What does bother me though is that during the Laura Kuenssberg interview she and her husband gave this week, I noticed his shirt didn’t fit.
What kind of a man thinks, “Right. I’m going to be interviewed on television today so I shall wear a shirt I bought before I became fat?”
Apart from me obviously.
Willy looks silly
WE learned this week that rugby legend Mike Tindall likes to call the Prince of Wales “One pint Willy”.
Apparently this is because the future King can’t handle the sauce.
I can’t imagine William is desperately pleased about this because it’s never fun when your private nickname is revealed to a wider audience.
I was at a party recently where it emerged a friend’s nickname at school was “Rear Entry”.
He claimed he was given it because he arrived at the school a year after everyone else.
Hmmm. That would have made him “Late Entry” surely.
Rear Entry is something entirely different.
A nose to the past
AS we know, mankind is obsessed by preserving the past.
We have museums full of old arrow heads and coins.
We slap planning restrictions on old houses to make sure they are never altered and we have galleries stuffed full of tapestries and paintings from hundreds of years ago.
But until now, no one has ever tried to preserve smells.
A team of boffins has identified a list of smells we don’t encounter any more.
And is trying to recreate them for posterity.
One is the smell made by a brewery.
Another is the stench given off by 17th century canals.
But my favourite is the smell of a 1970s Rover P5B.
Today, the inside of a new car doesn’t smell of anything at all.
But the Rover – which the Queen used to drive – was different.
It smelled of wax, and leather and glue maybe.
It smelt amazing.
Apparently, it’s not easy to remake a smell.
The boffins’ first attempt, using gas chromatography, mass spectrometry and olfactometry, resulted in a smell described as “cheesy and fatty”.
With overtones of “paper” and “animal”.
They’re getting somewhere now though, and I wish them well, because I like the idea of a smell museum.
And what I’d like most of all in there is the smell you used to get by sticking your nose into the spine of a glossy mag.
I used to enjoy doing that more than reading it most of the time.
Dangerous world
HEALTH and safety enthusiasts from Cambridge University announced this week that a Champagne cork comes out of the bottle very quickly and could blind you.
Yes. And in other safety news, you could trip over your trousers when getting into bed, and you could burn your tongue if you don’t blow on food before putting it into your mouth.
Be careful out there folks.
It’s a dangerous world