{"id":432929,"date":"2026-02-18T21:10:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T21:10:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/432929\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T21:10:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T21:10:07","slug":"ketamine-addiction-making-teenagers-wet-the-bed-says-uks-first-specialist-clinic-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/432929\/","title":{"rendered":"Ketamine addiction making teenagers wet the bed, says UK\u2019s first specialist clinic | Health"},"content":{"rendered":"

Children are using incontinence pads and urinating in buckets next to their bed at night due to bladder problems caused by ketamine addiction, according to the first specialist NHS clinic dealing with the issue.<\/p>\n

Medics at Alder Hey children\u2019s hospital in Liverpool<\/a> have opened the first ketamine clinic for young people in the UK in response to a surge in urology problems linked to addiction of the drug.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of our patients start wetting the bed or find going to the bathroom at night is actually too hard, so they\u2019ll either choose incontinence products or a bucket by the bed,\u201d said Harriet Corbett, a consultant paediatric urologist at the clinic.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hate to say it, but a lot of them get to the point where they\u2019re not fussed about where they go, because the need to go overrides their desire to find somewhere private. And I suspect more of them are incontinent than are willing to tell us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Corbett said most of their patients were 14 to 15, with many reporting they had been using ketamine for one or two years, suggesting some are taking up the drug at 12.<\/p>\n

Excessive use of the drug can cause problems as ketamine and its breakdown products sit in the bladder for a long time, where they can damage the lining and muscle tissue.<\/p>\n

This causes inflammation and the bladder to decrease in size, with the main symptom being an urgent need to urinate frequently. In extreme cases it can lead to the bladder needing to be removed or to kidney problems.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to shout loudly about this because if we can encourage them to stop using, that will potentially save themselves a miserable life of medical interventions,\u201d said Corbett. \u201cThere is a point at which you can\u2019t recover.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is still little research on exactly how many young people are using ketamine in the UK.<\/p>\n

A 2023 NHS England<\/a> survey of more than 13,000 students in 185 schools found that 0.9% of 15\u2011year\u2011olds had used ketamine, up from 0.4% in 2013, and 11% had been offered the drug. But medical professionals fear numbers could be higher than the data shows.<\/p>\n

Prof Rachel Isba, a consultant in paediatric public health medicine who runs the clinic alongside Corbett, said: \u201cThere are probably many other children and young people out there who have bladder symptoms, or non-specific tummy pain, which may be due to their ketamine use but you need somebody to make the connection.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to be specifically asking about ketamine use, but the vast majority of GPs and paediatricians in the UK will never have seen a child who\u2019s used ketamine.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pair set up the clinic after what started as a \u201cslow trickle\u201d of cases in 2023, a \u201chandful\u201d in 2024 and then an escalating number in 2025.<\/p>\n

Corbett said: \u201cThe numbers were going up and I was beginning to think, wow, this could be a problem. What are we going to do? It\u2019s on everyone\u2019s radar now because it\u2019s snowballed; it\u2019s gone a bit crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The clinic combines Corbett\u2019s expertise in dealing with bladder problems in children with Isba\u2019s knowledge of tackling addiction and referring young people to rehabilitation services.<\/p>\n

The reasons behind the surge in ketamine use are also unclear. Isba said young people might take the drug socially but become addicted and start doing it at home in their bedroom. Their patients may have experienced childhood trauma, and many also have some form of neurodivergence, particularly ADHD.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we hear from the kids is: ket is great, it\u2019s a break from your busy brain or just a bit of a rest,\u201d said Isba. \u201cThey want to belong. So they feel if they don\u2019t participate, they won\u2019t be able to. We\u2019ve heard stories of young people who\u2019ve changed the entire way they go about their day in order to avoid being exposed to other people\u2019s ketamine use.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another emerging issue is that many children are starting to use ketamine to ease the pain caused by their bladder problems. Corbett said: \u201cWhen they get bad bladder pain, for some of the only pain relief they find that is helpful is ketamine. So they get into a very nasty downward spiral.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Children are using incontinence pads and urinating in buckets next to their bed at night due to bladder…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":432930,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-432929","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}