Ketamine is booming in America. The reasons go beyond drugs
But countries hit earlier by the ketamine wave offer a grim warning about the drug’s dark side. In the U.K., the number of people seeking treatment for ketamine addiction increased twelvefold between 2015 and 2025. Hospitals have reported growing numbers of chronic users suffering catastrophic bladder damage caused by the drug’s toxic metabolites. Some patients, including teenagers, have required bladder removal surgery. Heavy use can also cause debilitating abdominal pain known as “K-cramps,” which some users attempt to relieve by taking more ketamine.
only a small number of fatalities linked to sole ketamine use. Deaths more often involve misadventure, such as drowning, accidents or the combined effect of mixing multiple substances, rather than direct toxicity. For example, Missouri doctor Bolek Payan disappeared in December 2022 and was later found drowned in his pond after taking ketamine. The most high-profile death has been that of Matthew Perry, whose body was found in his hot tub after he knocked himself out with a large dose of ketamine. Even so, the resulting trial of the “Ketamine Queen,” the invented nickname prosecutors gave to an LA dealer called Jasveen Sangha who sold the drugs to Perry’s friend, ended with her being sentenced to 15 years.
Authorities are also increasingly concerned about “tusi,” or “pink cocaine,” a party drug that most often contains ketamine mixed with MDMA and caffeine. The Instagram-friendly drug was created by a new generation of young Colombian narcos in the early 2010s before spreading to Spain and its holiday hotspots such as Ibiza and the Canaries.
Medical examiners in Miami have reported a spike in deaths involving the drug. In one 2024 case, a 24-year-old woman crashed her car and killed two people after taking tusi, and told officers she was “from the future.”
Although at a lower level than other illicit drugs, ketamine poisonings, seizures and cases of pharmaceutical diversion are all rising nationally. Investigators say the U.S. market is increasingly being supplied by industrial-scale illicit production in Europe and India, with the drug being smuggled into the U.S. often from the U.K. by plane and boat.