11 hours ago
I had no idea my son, 19, was an addict before the unthinkable happened… I dropped him at uni & he came back in a coffin
HEARING a familiar ping, mum Jo Forsdyke picks up her son's phone and sees a text which sends a dagger through her heart.
Less than a year ago her 19-old-old son Josh had tragically died after leaping from London Bridge into the River Thames.
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His mum, dad Alex and two brothers then faced an agonising four day wait before his body was recovered.
At the time Jo, a service manager at an IT company from Stockton-on-Tees, had no idea her talented, artistic middle son was using the class B drug ketamine while studying in London.
It was something she only discovered after his death in August last year. Ten months on, his phone is still receiving sickening text messages from callous dealers.
Shocking new figures from NHS clinics reveal last year 3,609 people in England were treated for ketamine addiction, eight times more than a decade earlier.
One charity in Lancashire is helping children as young as 11 who are hooked on the illegal substance.
Up and down the country, streets are so awash with the cheap drug that users 'can't get away from it'.
Some addicts report that ketamine, which is also called kitkat and special K, is being sold for as little as £3 a gram in Manchester.
It is also prevalent at our universities. Mum Jo tells The Sun: 'I was completely ignorant about it, and maybe we're not sophisticated, but we just didn't have a clue about what drugs were out there and how accepted they are and how widely available they are - and how cheap they are.'
Parents who have found their children caught up in the ketamine crisis gripping Britain want to warn others about what is going on.
Mother-of-three Julie, from Burnley, Lancs, didn't understand why her once athletic 13-year-old daughter was going missing for days on end, throwing "anything she could get her hands on' and being excluded from school until she ended up in accident and emergency.
Finally, in terrible pain, her daughter confessed that she was addicted to ketamine.
One in ten 15 year-olds have been offered ketamine, and doctors are treating people as young as 16 with severe bladder symptoms due to prolonged use of the drug which leaves addicts incontinent.
At least 55 people in Britain died from the habit in 2023 and a quarter of 16-to 24-year-olds have tried it.
'Not himself'
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Jo, 50, says her son Josh, a talented artist, had 'changed' after leaving the North East to study at the University of the Arts London in September 2023.
She recalls: 'We saw changes in Josh when we went on holiday to France last July. There was a big group of us.
"He was very strange, erratic. He just wasn't himself.'
Jo thought this was just because he'd gone away to uni, but then on August 26 last year he took a lethal cocktail of ketamine, the prescription painkiller tramadol and alcohol.
She recalls: 'He'd only just turned 19, on the 4th of August, and then he jumped from the London Bridge. He was still a kid, you know.
'He drowned and his body wasn't found for four days. It was an absolute nightmare.'
Josh left his mobile phone behind, which revealed how addicted he was to ketamine.
She claims she found "shopping lists" of drugs available to students where he was living.
Jo explains: 'There were pictures of boxes of ketamine being bagged up in the halls of residence.
'There's still messages on his phone. It still lights up with drug dealer messages.
"I think that they just send them out to everyone, but they're still coming through.'
Josh's grandmother Annie Llewellyn previously told how their family is devastated, with her daughter Jo remarking she had "dropped Joshua at the university in September 2023 and he came back in a coffin in September 2024".
Easy access
At the inquest into his death Melanie Sarah Lee, Assistant Coroner of Inner North London, was critical of the easy access to drugs at the halls of residence.
She wrote: "I heard evidence that ketamine was easily and openly available to students as it was being dealt from and/or by persons with access to, and moved between, student halls of residence.
"In my opinion, action should be taken to prevent future deaths.'
The coroner, sitting at St Pancras Coroner's Court in January, concluded that Josh "took his own life whilst his judgement was impaired due to drugs and alcohol".
Josh's only mental health issues were anxiety, and Jo fears that he might have taken ketamine because he was wrongly told it would help.
She continues: 'I just think he thought that ketamine would just help, but they've got no idea what they're dealing with.'
Jo isn't blaming the university or anyone else for Josh's death. She is speaking out to encourage other parents to look out for the warning signs.
Jo concludes: 'If one person thinks when their child is acting a bit strangely, just to start a conversation about it, even if it just helps one family, that's all I care about.'
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'Horrendous'
For Julie, 49, who we are not fully identifying to protect her now 15-year-old child, problems started much earlier, but the pattern is familiar.
Her daughter was involved in 'athletics, dance, drama, horse riding' prior to her behaviour changing in secondary school.
Julie recalls: 'Looking back now the signs were all the times she was not cooperating with anything, not wanting to get out of bed, and then when she did get out of bed she was wanting money and out the door and then we couldn't trace her.
'Sometimes she'd go missing when she couldn't get money or she had a phone taken away so she had no contacts to get anything.
'The rage, the smashing the house up, it was horrendous.
'Throwing glasses, plates, cups, anything she could get her hands on, smashing doors. It was really destructive and violent.'
The rage, the smashing the house up, it was horrendous. Throwing glasses, plates, cups, anything she could get her hands on, smashing doors. It was really destructive and violent
Julie, mum
The bad behaviour also led to her daughter being suspended by her school.
But often it is other pupils who are dealing drugs.
Father Alex Frost, 55, who is campaigning to protect Burnley against ketamine, says that pupils are being expelled from schools for selling the banned substance.
Julie had no idea that pupils had such easy access to them. Who would think that 13-year-olds are taking ketamine?
Only when she took her daughter to the pharmacy last August to find medicine for stomach pain did the truth come out.
The pharmacist said Julie's daughter needed to go to the hospital and it was there that the girl admitted she had been hooked on the drug for 10 months.
Julie says: 'I think the hospital staff scared her and it put reality into it. Because of the pain she was suffering, what it was doing to her.
'We were really lucky in the sense that she herself decided that's it.
'Unfortunately some of the kids that she was involved with are still doing it and much worse.'
The devastating impact of ketamine
Ketamine can lead to death by putting pressure on the heart and respiratory system.
But its other effects on the body, which are often irreversible, are horrifying, too.
'Ketamine bladder syndrome is one of the worst symptoms,' Dr Catherine Carney, an addiction specialist at Delamere, told Sun Health.
This is where the breakdown of ketamine in the body causes inflammation in the bladder wall.
It leaves people unable to hold urine and passing chunks of their bladder tissue.
Some users face the prospect of having their bladders removed entirely.
Dr Carney explains: 'The lining of the bladder can shrink over time and be extremely painful for those experiencing it.
'This can often lead to lower abdominal pain and pain when passing urine, as well as bleeding.
'It's usually what has forced people to get help because they can't tolerate it any more.
'We've had young men in agony, wetting the bed.
'Their whole life is focused on where there's a toilet because they can only hold urine for ten minutes.
'For a teenager or someone in their early 20s, that's absolutely life-changing.
'In some cases, the bladder damage progresses to the kidneys and people get kidney failure, too.
'This is developing in people who have been using for two years, so it is relatively quick.'
Dr Carney adds that the urine samples of new guests checking into the clinic are often just a 'pot of blood'.
This is followed by weeks of agony coming off the drug. An irony of ketamine use is people tend to take more and more to numb the pain of the side-effects it causes.
Dr Carney says: 'There's nothing that we can give which is as strong as a medical anaesthetic (the ketamine). We can use codeine-based products or anti-inflammatories.
'Some antidepressants help at night, but the pain is hard to manage in the early days.
'Most people that come to us, the bladder will improve to the point that they don't need to have it removed.
'But once you've got a bladder that has shrunk to the size of 70ml, that's never getting better.'
Ketamine is a difficult habit to kick and her daughter still has the 'urge' to take it, despite knowing the harm it can do.
A common side effect is 'k-cramps' - and because ketamine is an anaesthetic, users take more of it to numb the pain it is causing.
Many parents have told The Sun how their children died from the habit, with the drug destroying their bodies.
Ketamine is currently a class B drug like cannabis. Julie thinks it should be a class A drug on the same level as cocaine.
The long term damage to their health will put a huge strain on the NHS. It's a juggernaut coming down the mountain
Father Frost
Father Frost, from St Matthew's CofE Church, Burnley, agrees.
He concludes: 'Ketamine is affecting all communities. I have heard that older people are using it in rural villages, retired people.
'It is in our schools, but our children aren't getting signposted by GPs to detox or rehab, which is what they need.
'The long term damage to their health will put a huge strain on the NHS. It's a juggernaut coming down the mountain.'
The 'heroin of a generation'
Party drug ketamine has been dubbed the 'heroin' of a generation as users warn its true toll has yet to be fully seen.
The potent painkiller and sedative has become a hugely popular street drug due to its hallucinogenic and relaxing effects.
But for some, a party habit can spiral into a devastating addiction.
Exeter University researchers who interviewed 274 ketamine addicts warn the drug causes 'high levels of physical health problems and psychological consequences'.
They estimated that nearly half – 44 per cent – of British users suffering devastating side effects from ketamine do not get professional help.
Sixty per cent had bladder or nasal problems, while 56 per cent suffered from organ cramps.
Six in 10 interviewees had mental health problems and reported psychological issues including cravings, low mood, anxiety and irritability.
One anonymous ketamine user in the study said: 'I feel it is the heroin of a generation.
'More information will only become available once more people my age begin to suffer so greatly from misuse that it can't be hidden anymore.'
Another added: 'People know the risks of heroin and cocaine but not how addictive ketamine can become.'
