Ketamine-related admissions doubled at Surrey addiction centre
Primrose Lodge in Guildford has revealed ketamine admissions this year are already the highest on record
A Surrey addiction treatment centre say they have seen numbers double for people being referred with Ketamine addictions since 2020.
Primrose Lodge in Guildford, which is part of UKAT, has revealed ketamine admissions this year are already the highest on record.
As well as this, they say they have seen people as young as 18 becoming addicted to ketamine.
Johnny Bigachi, who is the manager at the centre, says that he has noticed a surge in patients arriving with ketamine as their primary addiction.
"I started about 5 years ago. We had the odd one client in a cohort, but in the last two years we noticed that there is a surge where in some cohorts there is four to five clients came into the service with the primary addiction of ketamine"
Bigachi added that not only was there a surge in people applying for treatment, there was a change in the demographic doing so.
"The younger generation are are coming into treatment now where before we used to have a kind of mid-range age people coming to treatment. Now we have clients as young as 18, 19"
He adds that due to accessibility and lack of education about it, ketamine can have significant effect on young people.
"It became a drug of choice for young kids. They believe it's not addictive and it's cheap and widely available. They are not aware of the physical effects.
It tells a story, the physical health, physical pain, they're not able to contain themselves or sit still due to the the damage caused to the internal organs due to the use of ketamine."
Bigachi says that the main way for the problem to be helped is through education.
"There needs to be more media, more awareness, at the GP surgery levels, at hospitals, at schools as well.
Kids today use it as a drug of choice. They think it's harmless, but in fact it is very harmful substance that causes a severe, a severe physical health effects."