A MAN from Flint who battled ketamine addiction has spoken up about the dangers of the drug, amid the launch of a campaign raising awareness among young people.
Luke Fenney-Williams, 23, from Flint, said he was first exposed to the Class B drug at a party in high school, but only used ketamine “four or five times” before going to university.
At university, due to how “cheap” ketamine was, his usage increased, firstly on a social level with friends.
“We'd heard a few rumours or whispers about what can happen, but nobody believed it at the time, and that's where it took his height,” Luke told the Leader.
“Every time I was going out, we'd come back, we'd use as well. You'd be doing it in your room altogether and it was more of a social thing - everybody was doing it, we were all just doing it.
“Two years after heavy use, that's when the pain started - urinating more, bladder pains, pains in your private area, and it just escalated so quickly.
“Within a couple of months of pain, I ended up in my room for two years. Can't move, can't do anything. Stopped playing football. I had a season ticket at Liverpool – I stopped going to the games, stopped going out with mates, and I ended up losing my driving licence, lost my job. It really took hold of me.”
Organisations across the region have joined forces to launch ‘I Wish Someone Had Told Me’ and Luke is one of the brave few who have spoken up in support of the awareness campaign.
For Luke, losing his licence due to a drug driving conviction was a “massive” push to first reach out for help, and he ended up seeking support from House of The Vivienne, an addiction centre in Colwyn Bay founded by the family of The Vivienne, the famous drag queen who died from cardiac arrest due to ketamine use.
Luke continued: “My name went in the paper. And obviously people are going to see it, so we had to tell my grandma and as soon as I told my grandma that's when the recovery started.
“I went 10 weeks clean and then when my court case came round, I relapsed, because my head was all over the place and when you're so used to taking ketamine, you know that's an escape. You go back to what you know.
“I hadn't done any proper work to rewire my brain. After that, I was doing four weeks off and then back to it and then when I came here [to House of The Vivienne] it changed my life - it got me into rehab, and today I'll be nine months clean.
“It really, really has changed my life, the best thing I ever did is getting clean.”
Luke said campaigns like ‘I Wish Someone Had Told Me’, and addiction centres like House of The Vivienne, play a “huge” part in people getting the help they need.
“I’ve played football for my whole life and when I was younger, you’d see all the older people you know who have started using it and you think ‘oh I’ll never be like that’ and it can change very quickly," Luke said.
“You think you won’t end up like that but one time, two times, it can lead to where I am today. I'm in a good place today, but I might not have been in a good place today.
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“I think getting the message out to young kids to show how dangerous it is, and I think coming from somebody like me is so important, because I think it's really relatable to people who are going to go through those challenges.”
On speaking up about the difficulties he’s faced and whether that gets easier with time, Luke said: “I said to my mum, the day she picked me up from rehab, I said I used to be embarrassed. I did used to be embarrassed, because I was the popular lad.
“I was mates with everybody, and for them to see me go through what I've gone through and turn into what I was like at the time, it was embarrassing.
“I'm not embarrassed now. I went to get help because I wanted to get better and be back to my normal self or the best version of myself.
“If I can help somebody, then I feel like I've done something good.”
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