How Drug Addiction Can Damage the Body
By Dr.Fourkan Ali
A woman that became addicted to Ketamine has
spoken of how she may not be able to have any more children and of how the
addiction resulted in the loss of her bladder. Although she has been free of
addiction for a year-and-a-half, the damage was already done by the time she
gave up. It was the discovery that she was pregnant that gave her the
motivation to stop using but, by that stage, her body had already been
permanently damaged.
Sophie appears on the
new TV programme Jodie Marsh on…Drugs, which will be shown on the TLC channel. She
says, “I used to wee all the time and it burnt, it hurt, it stung. Then about a
year afterwards I started passing blood.”
She also told of how she thinks she began
passing pieces of her bladder and describes it as ‘your wee turns to jelly,
like clumps.’
Drugs
Sophie started taking drugs when she was just
thirteen years old and, like many teenagers, started out by taking cannabis.
However, by the time she was sixteen, she was snorting Ketamine. At the time,
Ketamine was a legal drug but it is now classed as an illegal Class B drug.
During the show, Sophie told Jodie that the
first time she got high she thought her house was on fire and that it was a bad
experience. Jodie asks why she decided to take drugs again, and she replied by
saying, “Because it was different, I liked the feeling. In the morning, it was
the first thing I thought about, to make me feel I could get through my day.”
Family Heartache
Sophie says that the reason she turned to
drugs in the first place was to help her cope with the breakdown of her family life;
her parents split when she was thirteen, and she had to live with her gran. She
says she did not see a lot of her mum, and she experienced abandonment issues.
Her addiction became so bad that, at one
point, she was spending £300 every week on drugs.
Damage to Her Body
Sophie says she is hoping that her bladder can
be reconstructed but if not, she will have to live with a catheter for the rest
of her life. She has also been told that she may never have another child
because doctors cannot be sure they can save her womb.
Jodie asks if she is scared she might start
using again, but Sophie told her that she knew she would lose everything if she
did, which is the reason she must stay away from drugs.
Legal Highs
During the programme, Jodie focused on the dangers
of legal highs and revealed that young people are the biggest users of these
substances. She said that the reason many young people use them is because they
are under the impression that these are safe because they are ‘legal’. However,
around two hundred people in the UK die each year from using legal highs.
Help for Addiction
More and more people are using legal highs
today because of their easy accessibility; in many cases, these are cheaper
than illegal drugs as well. Another problem is the fact that manufacturers are
creating legal highs to mimic illegal substances such as heroin and cannabis.
Thankfully, there is
help available for legal high drug addiction in the same way that there is support for
other types of addiction. Addiction Helper is a referral service working with
clients with all kinds of addiction. We help by providing advice and support,
as well as free referrals to treatment providers all over the UK. If you
require any more information or you would like a free assessment and referral,
call us today.
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