Nick (21) was addicted to ketamine and is still in a lot of pain

Nick was about fifteen years old when he first used ketamine. Friends did that sometimes too, especially on weekends.

“But that became more common, even without those friends. Eventually it went to four to five days a week,” he says with his addiction doctor from Novadic-Kentron.

When he started using more, his parents saw that he was getting worse. “I worked in sales, but I was sick more often more often. I was late, I was blurry and finally I started using at work too. It is very lonely with addiction.”

When he was seventeen, his parents had had enough. He had to go to the doctor. There he was sent to the Novadic-Kentron addiction clinic. “And I wasn’t sober when I was taking it in,” he admits.

Nevertheless, Nick was allowed to start treatment. This meant that he had a weekly meeting with a practitioner. “In conversations like that, I said I was doing well, but I didn’t stop using it. “

Nick got thedetoxin the clinic. He would be assisted for three weeks under supervision to stop using ketamine. “I really didn’t want to go to the clinic, which caused the treatment to fail. So I was re-registered.”

Meanwhile, Nick was fired. “I was sitting at home and I started having more and more stomach aches and problems with my bladder,” he says. “Maybe I could do it, but I didn’t to stop There is a big difference between being able to and wanting to. Of course the pain bothered me, but often I couldn’t stop for more. the two weeks.”

Nick suffered a lot from the name he was called ‘k-cramps’which is typical of ketamine use. It causes so much pain that some people are even in the emergency room.

Such a ‘ketamine cramp’ can last between twelve and eighteen hours, but also a few days. “It was very painful, especially in the first few hours. I was in bed with a hot water bottle. I couldn’t do anything, I couldn’t eat and I had to to throw,” said Nick.

Despite all the pain and misery, Nick continues to use ketamine for years, the drug is very addictive. So Nick’s parents made a difficult decision. “Finally they kicked me out of the house. It was hard for them to see me like that.”

There he stood. On the street, with addiction and a lot of pain. “I ended up at the homeless shelter. That was my first time,” said Nick.

In the shelter he decided to stop his addiction. He practiced again, but again registered with the Novadic-Kentron youth division. After three weeks he was admitted to the clinic in Vught. “That was just over three months ago now.”

Even now that he has been sober for a few months, he is still in a lot of pain. “It was only after three or four weeks that I found out how bad the pain is when you’re sober. I never thought it would bother me now. For example, I can’t playing football or walking for long periods of time.”

Once every six months, the psychiatrist Wouter van der Sanden examines his bladder and kidney complaints. “My flow gets back more slowly. This is usually within four to eight weeks, for me ten to twelve weeks.”

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“The ketamine causes some kind of lesions in my bladder. Because your urine passes through it, you get lumps,” Nick explains. “We’ll have to wait and see if that heals, but if it doesn’t, they’ll inflame those wounds. “

Nick has been happy for a long time that he doesn’t need a stoma, but he couldn’t have imagined that he would have so many complaints. “I didn’t think I got that far yet,” he says. “But when my bladder is full, it feels like an inflated balloon in my stomach.”

And although Nick used to pee now and again, he is now a little less. “I can go for two or three hours and then I only have to stretch once. At first I had to blow my nose much more often, about thirty times a day, so I slept until bad.”

Things are going well now, but Nick knows that even a one-time use can lead to terrible complaints. According to his addiction doctor, you can immediately experience some kind of allergic reaction to ketamine. “So, as soon as you use it again, you immediately get pain again. It doesn’t matter how much you use, you still get pain.”

Even though Nick is still recovering and can’t do everything yet, he feels ‘great’. “I’m a bit flat and I also became insecure through practice, but now I know who I am,” he says. “And next week I can go home again. Then I will go back to live with my parents and I want to go back to work.”

* Nick is a fictitious name. Nick’s real name is known to the editors.