When Megan first tried ketamine, she was 14 years old and experimenting with a drug that was cheap, easy to find and — in her circle — barely stigmatised at all. By the time she was 22, she needed incontinence pads. For the last two years she has lived with constant agony and has been unable to stand up straight, her body wrecked by a drug whose most feared complication is the slow destruction of the bladder.
Megan's story, reported by the BBC, is no longer an outlier. It sits at the sharp end of a trend that doctors, rehab workers and the government all describe in the same terms: ketamine use among Britain's young people is surging, and the health consequences are arriving earlier and hitting harder than the system was prepared for.
A cheap high with a brutal physical price
Ketamine's rise has been driven, in large part, by economics. The drug is a Class B substance in the UK, but on the street it has become strikingly cheap — often far less expensive than a night of drinking — and widely available in clubs, at festivals and through social circles where its dissociative effects are treated as routine. Government figures cited in recent coverage suggest that past-year ketamine use among 16 to 24-year-olds has climbed by more than 230% compared with a decade ago, a surge officials link to low street prices and the drug's popularity among young people.
That popularity rests on a dangerous misunderstanding. Ketamine is an anaesthetic and painkiller, and users often describe dream-like, detached sensations. Because it blunts sensation in the body, heavy users can keep taking it long after physical damage has begun — in some cases using the drug to dull the very bladder pain it is causing, a vicious cycle that accelerates the harm. Verity has previously examined how debates around unregulated substances can miss the real patterns of harm, in our reporting on the kratom debate in America.
What the drug does to the bladder
The condition now filling paediatric wards has a clinical name — ketamine-induced uropathy — and a street name: "ket bladder". Sustained heavy use attacks the protective lining of the bladder, causing ulceration and scarring of the bladder wall, and the damage can spread to the urinary tubes and the kidneys. Symptoms include severe pain when urinating, needing the toilet urgently and constantly, blood in the urine and loss of bladder control. Some young patients have told doctors that urinating felt like "peeing a jellyfish", as the damaged lining of the bladder is shed.
Consultant paediatric urologist Harriet Corbett has warned that "the damage caused by ketamine can be devastating", adding that young people can be left with chronic bladder pain and incontinence and, in the most severe cases, "may go on to require major surgery or dialysis". Doctors stress that while stopping use can help in milder cases, the worst damage is irreversible. More of our health coverage examines the pressures facing NHS services.
The numbers behind the surge
The statistics sketch a crisis that has escalated with startling speed. Reports cited in coverage of Stacey Dooley's BBC documentary Down the K Hole — which follows ketamine users in recovery — put the rise in ketamine-related admissions at around 20% since 2023, according to the LADbible's reporting on the programme.
The frontline figures are more dramatic still. The charity Kaleidoscope, which runs detox and rehab services in Wales, says referrals for ketamine jumped from just 2 in 2021 to 112 so far this year, with most clients aged between 18 and 24. Staff at Acorn Recovery Projects, an English rehab provider, told UKPulse that clients now routinely arrive seeking treatment because of "ket bladder", with agonising pain and, in some cases, organ damage.
The children caught in the middle
Perhaps the most alarming development is how young the patients are getting. In May 2025, Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool opened the UK's first dedicated clinic for ketamine-induced uropathy in under-16s, after paediatricians noticed a rapid rise in referrals. Within its first six months the clinic treated 60 children, and it has now received more than 100 referrals in total.
An analysis of the first 60 patients, published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood and reported by Medical Xpress, found an average age of just 14 and a half, with some children having started using ketamine at 12 or 13. Nearly three-quarters of the patients were girls. More than 70% lived in the most deprived neighbourhoods, nearly three-quarters had experienced some form of childhood trauma, and one in five had experience of the care system. The children also had significantly higher than background rates of ADHD or autism — 27% against an estimated 6% in the general population.
The pattern suggests ketamine is not arriving in a vacuum. As our reporting on young people's mental health has found, growing up is widely felt to be getting harder, and some children told Alder Hey's doctors the drug helped "quieten" their brains — self-medication for distress that then caused devastating physical harm. Support services for young people's mental health, such as the NHS mental health support resources, are part of the wider safety net clinicians say needs strengthening.
There is another barrier the Alder Hey team has flagged: children under 16 struggle to access inpatient detox services, which are largely designed for adults. A 14-year-old with a destroyed bladder can fall between paediatric and adult services, exactly when intervention matters most.
Another view of Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool, where paediatricians opened the ketamine-induced uropathy clinic in May 2025
Credit: Brian Deegan / Geograph Britain and Ireland via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).
Rehab's new front line
For those who do reach treatment, the road is long. Megan told the BBC that rehab is helping her rebuild her life — two years into recovery, she is learning to live with a body permanently altered by the drug. Her experience mirrors what rehab charities describe: young clients arriving not for the psychological grip of the drug alone, but because their bodies have started to fail them.
Treatment providers say the profile of their caseload has changed within a few short years. Where ketamine once appeared as a secondary habit alongside other substances, it is increasingly the primary reason young adults walk through the door. The University of South Wales is now researching the specific needs of this younger cohort, whose treatment must address trauma, neurodiversity and physical injury together. The strain on regional health services is one more pressure on an already stretched system.
What happens next
Clinicians and campaigners are now asking whether the law has kept pace with the drug. There are growing calls to reclassify ketamine from Class B to Class A, which would increase maximum penalties for supply and possession — though critics note that tougher classification alone has a patchy record of deterring use, and could push vulnerable young users further from help.
What doctors agree on is that awareness lags far behind the reality. Many young users still see ketamine as a low-risk party drug, unaware that heavy use can leave them incontinent, in chronic pain, or facing bladder removal surgery before they turn 25. The hope among those treating them is that stories like Megan's — and the stark figures from Liverpool's clinic — will puncture that complacency before the next cohort arrives. You can follow more of our reporting as this story develops, and read about our mission on our about page.
