Barney took ketamine aged 16 to celebrate the end of GCSEs. A year later he was addicted. At 21 he was dead. Now his despairing mother reveals the true horror of drug so many are taking

When Deborah Casserly’s son Barney started primary school, she and several other mums set up a book club.

Discussions of the latest bestseller were often relegated in favour of debate about their daily lives. As their children grew, the women supported each other through everything from divorce to illness via food fads and the first throes of teenage love.

But by the time the children left school, Deborah had a secret she felt unable to share.

‘I remember one day everyone was talking about which universities their children were applying to, while my son was a ketamine addict, and we were hanging on for grim death,’ recalls Deborah, 64. ‘But I couldn’t say that. I didn’t want pity, or to feel I might be judged.’

Plus, she adds: ‘Barney told me I didn’t have the right to tell them about his problem – that they would tell their kids who wouldn’t want to hang out with him.’

Barney, adored by teachers and pupils alike, was 16 when he first took ketamine. He quickly became hooked and his world shrank. Three stints in rehab failed and, crippled by pain, he became convinced he would never recover.

‘He said: “Mum, if this is living, I don’t want it,” ’ remembers Deborah through tears. Hours later, on April 8, 2018, Barney was found dead in his bedroom. He was 21. Seven years on, Deborah, head of partnerships for an eating disorders clinic, is still mired in grief.

‘The person I was is gone,’ she says. ‘I put on an act for work, professional and coping, but losing a child rips you apart. You never believe it’s going to happen to you.’

Yet since Deborah lost her son, ketamine use has soared.

Recent Office for National Statistics figures show deaths from the drug rose by 650 per cent, from just seven in 2015 to 53 in 2023. The number of people seeking treatment for ketamine addiction at NHS drug and alcohol services doubled between 2019 and 2023, from 1,140 to 2,211 – and use among children is particularly alarming.

A survey by NHS England found 11 per cent of 15-year-olds had been offered ketamine in 2023 – a statistic that is likely to be an ‘underestimate’, says Dr Niall Campbell, consultant psychiatrist at the Priory Hospital Roehampton, where, he adds, ketamine is now the third most common drug patients seek help for, after alcohol and cocaine.

‘It’s all over schools. It’s cheaper than getting drunk, it’s fashionable. It’s still regarded as a bit of a laugh.’

Last week, Elon Musk even attributed ketamine with helping him get out of ‘dark mental holes’ – which Deborah describes as an ‘inaccurate and dangerous message. I read it and wanted to scream’.

An anaesthetic used as a horse tranquiliser that has hallucinogenic effects and is typically snorted, ketamine – whose slang name is ‘K’ – causes memory loss and anxiety and, warns Dr Campbell, the products caused by its breakdown irritate the lining of the bladder, ‘so the inside gets ulcerated and bleeding and extremely painful.

‘The only thing that relieves that effectively is taking more ketamine, so you’re in a vicious circle’.

The damage is often irreversible.

Yet as Deborah, who is helping addiction charities highlight the dangers of the drug, points out, it remains easily available: ‘You can get a gram for £10.’

She scarcely dreamt one day she’d be able to recount ketamine’s market value, nor be privy to the list of dealers on her dead son’s phone. ‘Barney was so obedient. He’d never have broken any rules. That’s why, when all this happened, I thought…’ She pauses, lost for words: ‘How?’

She has precious memories of a child who loved Postman Pat and his younger brother Sam, now 26. She and her ex-husband gave them a happy upbringing in the family’s four-bedroom Edwardian home in a quiet North London cul-de-sac with holidays camping in the South of France. ‘We’d send the boys to buy baguettes. They were very close. They’d spend hours in the sea on their surf boards.’

Barney, who played for his local tennis club and was an avid reader, showed no interest in alcohol as he reached adolescence. ‘There was no smoking, no rebellion,’ says Deborah, who now knows, through conversations with Barney’s friends – with whom she is still close – that he first took ketamine when a group of them went to Reading Festival after their GCSEs in 2013.

They say he was immediately entran-ced. Indeed, he later described himself finding ‘nirvana’ in a journal, remembers Deborah. ‘I think he was looking for escape, some sort of meaning. I didn’t see it then, but I think there was an inner feeling of emptiness or not being “enough” in Barney.’

As months passed, he would often disappear to his room, saying he was watching a film on his laptop. ‘I thought that’s what 17-year-old boys do. I didn’t suspect anything.’

His schoolwork deteriorated, however and, after a year of A-levels, Barney announced he was quitting to go into the film industry. At weekends, he also worked as an aspiring DJ at nightclubs.

‘He was adamant he didn’t want to go to university, so there was no point in doing A-levels,’ says Deborah, who now believes the decision sparked his descent into addiction. ‘I think he felt isolated. His friends’ lives were moving on and his wasn’t.’

One evening when Barney was 17, Deborah walked into his bedroom without knocking to find him sitting, rocking on his bed, eyes glazed.

‘My heart stopped as I saw all this white powder and empty bags on his bedside table. I scraped the powder into my hands and flushed it away. Barney was so out of it he didn’t notice.’

After a desperate night of online research, she realised her son had likely taken ketamine. Rife on the clubbing scene, it was cheaper than cocaine – which it closely resembles – and, because it leaves users zoned out rather than talkative, is more likely to be taken alone.

The following morning Barney admitted as much but insisted, ‘It’s not a big deal. Everybody’s doing it.’ Deborah tried to push it from her mind until, when Barney was 18, one of his schoolfriends knocked on her door to tell Deborah her son had a problem with ketamine.

While the rest of his social group took the drug occasionally, Barney had ‘no off switch’ and was often unable to walk when the drug reduced his muscle function on nights out.

‘They were frightened for him,’ says Deborah. ‘I was angry with him for throwing his opportunities away.’

Barney agreed to weekly sessions with a psychiatrist that Deborah paid for privately – working with eating disorders in the addiction sector, she knew she would face a long wait for help on the NHS.

As months passed, Barney insisted the sessions were helpful, but his behaviour suggested otherwise.

Deborah learned to detect when he was on the drug by the fact he wore sunglasses. Without them, she would see his pupils enlarged, his eyes glazed.

‘The more he used, the more insular he became,’ she says. ‘He’d spend more and more time in his bedroom. Through my work I understood his relationship with ketamine was becoming more important than his relationship with me.’

By 19, Barney was taking ketamine most days and his bladder lining had begun to disintegrate. ‘He used to spend ages lying in the bath with the hose from the shower pointing at his stomach to help with the pain.’

One day, Deborah got a call from a doctor in a hospital A&E to say Barney had been asking for extra strength painkillers for back pain.

‘He was calling because he believed something did not add up,’ she says.

An investigation into Barney’s death would reveal he had visited different A&Es in London picking up heavy duty painkillers for fabricated ailments.

As Barney grew increasingly withdrawn, Deborah describes her anxiety as ‘horrific’.

On one occasion she slept on Barney’s bedroom floor, worried that with reduced muscle control he ‘could come out of his bedroom, go to the toilet on the landing, lose his footing and fall down the stairs’.

Both mother and son’s stress was compounded when she and her husband separated in 2016, and their house was put up for sale.

‘Barney wouldn’t get out of bed for viewings,’ says Deborah, who says her 22-year marriage was breaking down before Barney started taking ketamine, but that the split impacted her son nonetheless.

‘There is some kind of security in having your family around you, even when it’s dysfunctional.’

One evening, when he was 20, Barney broke down in front of his family. ‘He said, “I need help. I’m trying to stop and I can’t,” ’ recalls Deborah.

‘He wanted to be sent to rehab, where he’d have no access to drugs. He was sobbing and we all hugged him. I felt relief that he was no longer pretending.’

Barney wanted to go abroad so as not to embarrass his mother, who’s well-known at most rehab clinics due to her work in the sector. ‘I think he felt such profound shame.’

In September 2017, Deborah used her savings to book a £16,000 month-long stint at a rehab centre in Thailand, plus flights. She later found out through his journal that Barney had arranged a delivery of ketamine at Heathrow Airport, ‘because he couldn’t face the flight without drugs. Clearly he wasn’t searched’.

A few days later, Deborah flew out as part of Barney’s support programme. She told her employers she was going on holiday, fearing they would think Barney’s addiction meant she was incapable of doing her job.

Nor did she tell most friends or her parents. ‘Barney was worried people would sneer and judge and I wanted to look like I was coping. I felt people were thinking somehow we’d failed to be vigilant, that if it were them they would never have let their child get to this stage.

‘Addiction is the only illness that comes with blame. If my child had leukaemia nobody would be pointing fingers.’

Barney admitted he had relapsed ‘a matter of weeks’ after returning from Thailand. ‘I’d had this fantasy I would send Barney away and he’d be fixed,’ says Deborah. ‘I felt completely desperate.’

She used a loan to pay for a second month at the same Thai centre that November. After his return, he spent two months at a private residential rehab centre in London, where he was allowed out – provided he returned every night for a 9pm curfew.

It was supposed to be a transition back to reality, says Deborah, ‘but Barney found it difficult. He was going to the loo so much because his bladder was completely damaged’.

He was aware he was likely to need a urostomy bag over a stoma on the outside of his body, to collect urine, which left him feeling ‘absolutely destroyed’.

Barney finished rehab in March and got a job driving a van, but lost it when he relapsed.

‘He said, “Mum, it’s over. I’m an addict, and I can’t even hold down a job. I am such a loser,” ’ remembers Deborah.

After that ‘he was using all day, every day’ and Deborah felt powerless to stop him: ‘I was working, trying to keep my head afloat financially, terrified what I would find when I came home.

I would hold my breath as I walked in the front door.’

In the evenings she drove Barney to Narcotics Anonymous meetings – so he wasn’t triggered into buying ketamine from dealers at Tube stations – and waited outside in her car. ‘But he was too old for me to confiscate his phone and I knew he could still pick ketamine up at 2am from a dealer when I was asleep.’

On one occasion, he stole around £20 from her room: ‘He was so ashamed. He used to call me “Mumsy” and we hugged every day.’ She shows me a Christmas card he’d signed with ‘unlimited amounts of love’ and says, ‘I hated what addiction had done to our relationship.’

By April, Deborah – who estimated she and her ex-husband spent around £35,000 on treatment for Barney – had run out of money to pay for more.

One Friday afternoon, she drove Barney to an NHS drug and alcohol centre in North London and asked for him to be admitted to a residential facility. ‘I said, “He’s going to die.”

They said he had to prove he could keep himself clean as an outpatient. That was completely the wrong way round. He needed to be somewhere he couldn’t access drugs.’

They made a second appointment with a psychiatrist for the following Tuesday – but it was too late. Sitting in their living room that Saturday, Barney told Deborah he was never going to be able to stop using.

‘I told him he could recover – that people do,’ she recalls. ‘He said, “Not people like me.”

‘I don’t think I understood how utterly desperate he felt.’

The following morning, she found Barney’s bedroom door open. ‘I walked in. He was in bed, dead.’

Deborah stared blankly at her son, wearing shorts and no top, surrounded by drugs, painkillers, and a bottle of spirits. ‘I remember touching his arm, and it was cold, and thinking: “Oh, that must mean he’s dead.”

I phoned 999 and my boss, telling him, “I’m not coming into work because my son’s dead,” in a totally dissociated way.’ Sam wanted to see his brother, but, she says, ‘I shut the door. I didn’t want him to have that on his mind.’

Ambulance and police cars blocked their quiet road, and it was only when a paramedic emerged from Barney’s room and said there was nothing they could do that Deborah broke down. ‘I remember my hands being cold, but sweating, and crying.’

Deborah’s brother broke the news to their parents that their grandson had died. ‘They’d known nothing about his problems. They were shocked and devastated.’

So, too, were members of her book club, she recalls. ‘They said, “Oh God, why haven’t you told us about this?” They were incredible, setting up a cooking rota as they worried I wouldn’t eat.’

Four hundred and fifty mourners attended Barney’s funeral. ‘He never understood how much love he was surrounded by,’ says Deborah.

She has stored her son’s clothes in zipper bags, ‘because I wanted to be able to smell him,’ but pulled out the carpet and furniture from his room to obliterate every last trace of ketamine.

She showed police the string of dealers’ names on her son’s phone and begged them to investigate, but they said they couldn’t ‘because they didn’t know which dealer delivered’.

Still now, after years of therapy, Deborah is surrounded by triggers. Yesterday, when she was shown pictures of one of Barney’s best friends getting married, the boys he’d grown up with resplendent in cream suits, she broke down.

‘I had tears streaming down my face,’ she says. ‘I will never be a mum at my son’s wedding. I will never be a grandmother to his children. There is always something that is a reminder of the Barney that could have been. It’s a wound that never heals.’