Warning: some may find an image in this article distressing
“I feel like I’m going to die, but I don’t want to.”
The desperate words of Tracy Marelli’s daughter Sophie Russell are still etched in her mind.
Sophie was two years deep into a ketamine addiction before she died in September 2024.
Tracy, from Lincoln, is campaigning for the substance to be reclassified as a Class A drug and has met with the government to drive change.
“I had a beautiful daughter,” Tracy says.
In her living room, shelves are filled with tributes to Sophie – a framed school photograph, smiley holiday selfies and her ashes.
She says Sophie started using ketamine after the death of her grandmother.
Two years later, at the age of 20, she was found dead at her father’s house after a cardiac arrest.
She had developed health issues, including with her bladder.
“She always knew what she wanted in life, but then she became very unknown as to what she was doing,” Tracy says.