Chilling allure of new festival high favourite
Ketamine — the drug that killed Friends star Matthew Perry — is fast becoming the cheap drug of choice for music festival goers but experts warn it is highly addictive, dangerous and almost impossible to quit without significant health treatment.
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Special report: It’s fast becoming a drug of choice for music festival goers, cheaper than cocaine and “minus the comedown”, but emergency services warn ketamine is highly addictive, dangerous and can be impossible to quit without significant health treatment.
NSW Police have responded to severe mental health episodes thanks to “Ket” overdoses, including one in Campsie on Thursday where tactical operations officers had to force entry into a home and taser a man high on ketamine who was stabbing himself to death.
Sources say police officers and paramedics “risked their own lives to save his”.
At the four-day Lost Paradise festival on The Central Coast over the New Year’s Eve weekend first responders reported a medical tent “full of people clearly high on ketamine with limited control over their actions”.
Ambulance officers say ketamine is a drug of choice at a lot of festivals and even “out on the road it’s up there with cocaine use” with people under the false apprehension that it’s a safer choice.
“You definitely can overdose and it knocks your socks off your respiratory drive so you can stop breathing,” a Sydney-based paramedic said.
“It’s a dangerous dissociative drug that causes hallucinations and a feeling of disconnection but like all drugs it has a dark side that young people need to be aware of. It’s their life they are playing with.”
Friends star Matthew Perry, died from the “acute effects” of an accidental ketamine overdose while in his jacuzzi, an autopsy found, with drowning a secondary cause.
Police at the Lost Paradise festival issued 27 Court Attendance Notices, nine Criminal Infringement Notices and 19 Cannabis Cautions.
At the Field Day musical festival on the same weekend at The Domain, 25 people were charged with drug offences, as police ran an “overt and covert” operation targeting the supply of illegal drugs both inside and outside the venue.
Police detected 91 people in possession of drugs, including ketamine, ecstasy, MDMA, cocaine, cannabis and LSD. Major arrests included six people charged with drug supply offences.
A man in his 20s who went to the Lost Paradise festival told the Sunday Telegraph “people were waving doof sticks which had things like Ket Barn instead of Pet Barn, a play on words sort of thing”.
The Sydney man said ketamine was definitely growing in popularity as a party drug.
“It makes people feel good, like they’re part of the music and chilled out,” he said.
“That’s just the culture, everyone does it.”
A 19-year-old female said people are doing ketamine over coke because it’s cheaper.
“It’s $150, where you sometimes pay more than $300 for a bag of cocaine,” she said.
“You take it the same way, just snort a bump. It’s a weird feeling, like you’ve had 10 beers. Your words are slurred and you feel a bit sedated.”
Another young man, from western Sydney, said ketamine was a choice over coke and MDMA “because it’s a lot more of a psychedelic fun sort of experience without the crazy come down so you can get on either of those two things”.
A NSW Health spokesperson said ketamine was particularly dangerous when mixed with the use of other drugs.
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