The first time that Barney Sustrely took ketamine during a music festival in the United Kingdom, he thought he had found the “Nirvana”. Five years later, he died in suffering, to the great despair of his loved ones.
“I would never have imagined that it could happen to our family,” said AFP Deborah Suprolly, Barney’s mother, who disappeared in April 2018 at 21.
Ketamine, an anesthetic product diverted for its hallucinogenic effects and sold illegally at an affordable price, has become very popular among young British.
To the point that some experts evoke an “epidemic”.
The crisis led the government in January to request the opinion of an official advisory body on the advisability of passing ketamine in class A substances.
These drugs-understanding heroin, cocaine and ecstasy- are those whose possession, sale and production are liable to the heaviest prison terms.
In the consultation room of Doctor Niall Campbell, an addictologist in Priory Hospital in Roehampton, in the southwest of London, Deborah Suprolly, 64, shows photos of her son hugging her, smiling.
She tells, tears in her eyes, her descent into hell.
– “atrocious pain” –
Barney was just 16 when he first took Ketamine at the Reading Music Festival in England. In his diary, he says he discovered his “Nirvana”.
He quickly becomes addicted to this drug, which can take the form of a white powder or come in liquid form.
“It has gone from a use in a festive setting for consumption at home, all alone (…) a tragic, sad and deepening lonely experience,” describes his mother.
Barney is sent to detoxification centers but relapse, consumes daily and endures “atrocious pain” caused by drugs.
“He spent long moments in a hot water bath, (…) because his cramps were too strong. He couldn’t sleep well at night, he had to get up to urinate,” she recalls.
The young man suffers from ulcerative cystitis, inflammation engendered by ketamine affecting the bladder.
“Mom, if that’s it to live, I don’t want to,” he said on April 7, 2018. The next day, his mother finds him dead in his bed.
Anesthetic drug invented in 1962, ketamine is used in both human and veterinary medicine, often as tranquilizer for horses.
“Some people love the dissociative effect, detachment of reality, which the drug provides,” said Doctor Campbell.
Consumers may have the feeling of diving into a hole, called the “K-Hole”, a state that causes a loss of consciousness.
Some 269,000 people aged 16 to 59 said they had consumed ketamine in England and Wales between March 2023 and March 2024, according to the government.
And among young people aged 16-24, the use of this drug “has increased by 231% in the past decade,” said the authorities.
– “Really commonplace” –
Ketamine is linked to 53 deaths in England and Wales in 2023, according to the National Statistics Office.
“It’s really commonplace now, we find it everywhere,” said Laiden, a London dealer using a pseudonym. “It’s a cheap drug that has a powerful effect and people have no scruples to sell it to young people,” he adds.
Ketamine costs between 20 and 30 pounds (between 23 and 35 euros) the gram between 20 and 35 euros, while cocaine can cost up to 100 pounds the gram, he says.
“This epidemic has a huge impact on the country,” said Niall Campbell. Ketamine is very addictive and when users “come to see us, the party is over. They are no longer going out in a box, they are alone with them (…), killing themselves,” he said.
Ketamine can however be administered under certain conditions in a therapeutic framework to treat depression.
Lucy and Alex Da Silva direct a psychedelic therapy center in London, and use ketamine prescribed by doctors in the form of pastilles to treat depression and trauma.
“We want people to see the healing benefits of ketamine when it is controlled in the right way,” said Lucy Da Silva. But there is, she recognizes, “a need for education on the dangers of ketamine outside the medical framework, and the lives it takes”.
