Charlie, co-founder of Stop Ketamine UK, lost her best friend to ketamine earlier this year and created the charity to educate others on the dangers of the drug
In the UK, deaths involving ketamine use are up 650% since 2015, new data seen by ITV News indicated. There is one death every week related to the drug. The Office for National Statistics released data, obtained by the UKAT Group, which showed three times as many women losing their lives to ketamine since before Covid.
In January 2025, the Government announced that it would seek expert advice to reclassify ketamine as a Class A drug due to illegal use of the drug skyrocketing in the year ending March 2023. An estimated 299,000 people aged 16-59 had reported ketamine use in the last year.
Charlie, the co-founder of Stop Ketamine UK, started the charity three months ago after losing her best friend to ketamine addiction four months prior. It comes after The Vivienne’s cause of death was revealed to be ketamine use.
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“After my friend passed away, I found out that she had a ketamine addiction for five years that none of us knew about, so that was a really difficult thing to found out about after she passed away. She was not only struggling in silence, but that she didn’t get the help that she needed.”
Charlie’s moving experience impassioned her to kickstart the charity to ensure that “no one has to go through the pain that we’ve gone through but also no one has to go through that addiction on their own.”
Stop Ketamine UK are the UK’s first ketamine focused charity and their mission is prevention, by “stopping ketamine use before it starts and helping those who have used it to stop for good.”
Through the education and the support the charity provides, Charlie aims to educate people around the drug, around the addiction. “We give education in schools but [they] also give education in festivals,” she added.
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The charity were set up at Boomtown 2025 to inform people about the drug and what it’s mixed with in the UK, the harmful effects ketamine has on the body, as well as the mental health effects. Charlie said the charity have had conversations with current addicts, previous addicts, and recreational users and assisted people on their sobriety journey while at the festival.
“As a charity we’re motivated to change people’s minds around ketamine as a drug because a lot of people see it as a “safer drug” and a good party option because it’s cheap,” Charlie said. “We want to change people’s minds about how dangerous it is so that you don’t lose a friend like we did.”
What is ketamine?
Ketamine is a dissociative anaesthetic which was originally used medically for pain relief and anaesthesia. However, recreationally it is used for the dissociative and hallucinogenic effects which makes users feel disconnected from their body and surroundings. The drug effects begin rapidly from when it is snorted and can last from 30 minutes to sometimes a few hours.
Ketamine is classified as a Class B drug which is seen as less dangerous than Class A drugs like cocaine and heroin. This has resulted in people using it for recreational use and a common party drug, and has been used in the UK since the 1960s.
The physical severe effects from ketamine often include intense abdominal pain known as “ket cramps” which can lead to bleeding and clotting. Ultimately, damaging one’s bladder for good having to constantly urinate and even the shrinking of the bladder, which can result into needing bladder removal surgery.
Death is a major risk of ketamine addiction, with 53 ketamine-related deaths in 2023, as shown in the UKAT Group’s analysis seen by ITV News. In 2023, the region with the most deaths registered in relation to ketamine was the South East with seven lives lost.
In January 2025, the Government announced that it would seek expert advice to perhaps reclassify ketamine as a Class A drug due to illegal use of the drug skyrocketing in the year ending March 2023 – (an estimated 299,000 people aged 16-59 had reported ketamine use in the last year).
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