Her warning comes as new data shows deaths from this drug have increased 20-fold in the last 10 years.
A young mum who has been left in “excruciating pain” and with “irreversible” bladder damage has warned others of the risks of a popular drug. 27-year-old Amber Currah has spoken out about the dangers of ketamine.
Appearing on ITV’s Good Morning Britain (GMB), Amber shared how she was 17 when her addiction to ketamine began. At the time she didn’t know anything about the risks and tried it after she was offered some at a social event.
She found that the class B substance “calmed” her mind and made her “feel good”. However, little did she know it was scarring and shrinking her bladder.
Despite quitting ketamine two years ago, the damage has been done. Amber, from Morecambe in Lancashire, now deals with pain and incontinence on a daily basis, and has been told she may even need a bladder transplant.
Speaking on GMB, Amber said: “So as far as I’m aware, my damage is irreversible. My bladder is absolutely covered in scar tissue to the nines and I’ve been off it two and a bit years now.
“I would have thought it would have at least healed a bit more.” As a result her day-to-day life is dictated by her symptoms, including needing regular baths to ease the pain.
“I have to get up two hours before any deadline where I need to be and I have to get in the bath for two hours,” she said. “But last year, in 2024, because I’d stopped previously at the end of 2023, I was in the bath more than 10 hours every single day.
“It just alleviates pain straight away. It’s kind of the same if if you have a UTI that it would do the same. It really is it feels like the most severe UTI you will ever have in your whole entire life. And it’s constant.”
Ketamine is used in medicine as an anaesthetic, sedative, and pain reliever. It is also commonly used on animals.
It is sold as a grainy white or light brown powder. Recent data shows the number of people using ketamine in England and Wales has continued to rise with an estimated 299,000 people aged 16 to 59 reporting illicit ketamine use in 2024.
This is partly thought to be due to its low cost and wide availability throughout the UK. And more worryingly, figures have shown that ketamine deaths in the UK increased twenty-fold since 2014.
Coroner’s reports in England, Wales and Northern Ireland between 1999 and 2024 found there were 696 deaths with detections of illicit ketamine between 1999 and 2024. The drug is particularly dangerous if mixed with other substances.
It also stops the user from feeling pain, meaning they aren’t aware if they’ve injured themselves. Chronic ketamine use affects the lining of the bladder, and can shrink it, which is what happened to Amber.
She continued: “It affects every single aspect of my life every single day.” She added that if she could talk to her younger self she would say, “Don’t touch that. It’s not really not worth it. You’re going to chuck your whole life away, for ketamine.”
If you need help with a drug addiction you could speak to your GP or call the Frank drugs helpline on 0300 123 6600.