Mother unable to save daughter hooked on ketamine

An inquest has heard of a mother’s desperate attempt to save the life of her ketamine-addicted daughter.

Isabelle Sapherson-Moralee started taking the illegal class B drug regularly in 2020. At the time of her death in 2025, its continuous use had rendered her incontinent and seriously underweight.

In Isabelle’s final moments, her mother — former nurse Ann Moralee — performed CPR in the family home. She told Bournemouth Coroner’s Court: “I have saved a lot of lives in my career, both as a nurse and flight attendant, but ultimately I couldn’t save my daughter.”

‘Catch 22’

Scott Davey from the drug and alcohol service Reach, which supported Isabelle, told the inquest that ketamine use eventually “becomes habitual”.

“It is very cheap, accessible, that plays into it massively. It’s not the acute effect, it’s the long-term effect where it’s done physical damage and then being used to manage the pain, it’s a Catch 22.”

Moralee said that when her daughter was “caught on the ward twice with ketamine” during her last hospital stay, “I followed her out of the building and tried to get the number plate of whoever was supplying my sick child with ketamine”.

Damaged bodies

Justine Royle, a consultant urologist at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, recently told BBC Scotland that the hospital’s ‘ketamine bladder’ clinic sees one or two young people a month “that have significant levels of damage to their urinary tract”.

Royle said her patients tend to “think ketamine is not going to do them any harm. In reality, they are damaging themselves beyond redemption.” She added: “The vast majority of people who have long term usage will end up with significant damage to their bodies.

“It can affect erectile function, it affects the liver, and there is some evidence that it may affect the brain in long term usage as well.”

Home Office data from wastewater analysis in England indicates that 30,800 kilograms of ketamine were consumed nationally in 2024-25 — a rise of 54 per cent on the previous year — equating to £0.9 billion pounds in illegal sales.