Child ketamine users getting bladder damage describe 'peeing a jellyfish' — SkimNews
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- Alder Hey Hospital's ketamine bladder clinic — the UK's first and only dedicated NHS service for children — has received over 100 referrals since opening in May 2024, after seeing just one patient in 2023, nine in 2024, and then what doctors called a "rapid escalation" in 2025.
- Prof Rachel Isba, who runs the clinic, said children as young as 13 suffer damage so severe they describe "peeing a jellyfish" — shedding the bladder's protective lining — and report pain "like weeing over broken glass."
- Of the first 60 patients seen, 43 were girls, and many had been using ketamine for over a year, meaning some likely started at age 12 or younger; common background factors included ADHD, contact with the care system, and emotional trauma.
- The clinic receives roughly one referral a week from GPs and emergency departments across Cheshire, Merseyside and surrounding regions, with symptoms ranging from incontinence and blood-stained urine to potential kidney failure.
- About three in ten frequent ketamine users develop bladder issues, according to the British Association of Urological Surgeons, with some cases requiring surgical repair or full bladder removal.
- The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs has recommended ketamine remain a Class B controlled substance, rejecting calls from campaigners to reclassify it alongside cocaine and heroin as Class A.
- Isba said children under 16 who want to quit are denied the inpatient detox stays routinely available to over-18s, calling the gap "unfair" for those ready to stop.
Why it matters: Alder Hey, the UK's only dedicated children's ketamine bladder clinic, is absorbing roughly one new referral a week from across the North West, yet children under 16 who want to quit are barred from the inpatient detox stays available to adults — a structural gap that leaves the most vulnerable users with the least clinical support. With girls making up nearly three-quarters of early cases and cases now scaling sharply into 2025, the mismatch between demand and treatment capacity is widening.
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