Barney Casserly’s initial experience with ketamine at a UK music festival was, in his own words, “nirvana.” Five years later, in April 2018, the then 21-year-old died in agony, leaving behind heartbroken parents and friends.
“I would never, ever have imagined that this would happen to us as a family,” said his mother, Deborah Casserly, still grieving her son’s passing.
Ketamine, an affordable recreational drug that induces a sense of detachment from reality, has surged in popularity among young people in the UK, with some experts now labeling it an “epidemic.”
The escalating crisis prompted the government in January to consult an official advisory body on potentially reclassifying ketamine as a Class A substance. Such a reclassification would align it with drugs like heroin, cocaine, and ecstasy, meaning the supply of ketamine could carry penalties including life imprisonment.
In the consulting room of Dr. Niall Campbell, a leading addiction treatment specialist at Priory Hospital, Roehampton, the 64-year-old Casserly tearfully displayed photographs of her son – a smiling young man with dark hair and bright eyes. She recounted how Barney’s life unraveled as his ketamine addiction took hold.
Barney was just 16 when he first tried ketamine at the Reading music festival in southern England, documenting the experience in his journal with ecstatic language. He quickly became addicted to the drug, a white crystalline powder typically crushed and sniffed, or swallowed in liquid form.
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