Estate agent, 22, dies after severe health decline linked to ketamine addiction

A young estate agent with a ketamine addiction died in agony at home after discharging herself from hospital and telling her mum ‘I can’t do it anymore’, and inquest heard.

Isabelle Sapherson-Moralee, known as Izzy, died after her body shut down having spent five years taking the class B drug. By then, she weighed just 5st 9lb, or around 35kg.

Her devastated mum Ann Moralee fought for 18 months to get help for Izzy and tried warning health officials that her daughter would die from it.

An inquest in Bournemouth heard Izzy suffered from chronic pain and a damaged bladder because of the drug, which left her having to spend £500 a month on incontinence pads.

Izzy, 22, ‘went home to die’ after discharging herself from hospital two days before her death.

Her mum told the inquest she begged her daughter to let her call an ambulance as her condition deteriorated.

Ann said: ‘I kept asking her, please let me phone an ambulance but she said “no more hospitals mum, I can’t do it anymore”.

‘She knew she was dying that last 48 hours. She died 36 hours after she got home. She was freezing cold, shallow breathing. I checked on her and she was cold.’

Ann said she told the 999 call handler while doing CPR: ‘I said she’s going to die, I told everybody she was going to die and now here we are and she’s dead.’

She added: ‘I have saved a lot of lives in my career, both as a nurse and flight attendant, but ultimately I couldn’t save my daughter.’

There has been an alarming rise in ketamine abuse by young people in the UK over the last few years.

Figures show that since 2015 ketamine usage has increased by more than 250%, the greatest increase in the use of a single drug in that period.

Ketamine, also known as ‘K’ and ‘Special K’, has been linked to dozens of student deaths over the past few years.

Izzy, from Wimborne, Dorset, started taking the drug regularly during the Covid lockdowns in 2020 when she moved in with her boyfriend.

Ann said she did not discover her daughter had been taking it until the end of 2023 when it had become ‘out of control and she couldn’t hide it anymore’.

She told the inquest she felt there had been ‘missed opportunities’ by health officials, saying they could have done more.

The inquest was told Izzy stopped trusting doctors after a ‘vile’ experience with a urologist at Salisbury District Hospital.

Ann said: ‘From then on she had no trust in hospitals or doctors. She was just seen as a ketamine addict and everything else was ignored, especially her back pain.

‘I spent up to £500 a month on incontinence pads, we asked for help from the bladder and bowel people but they discharged her, as did the weight-loss team who said she didn’t have an eating disorder.

‘Then she really just gave up.’

The heartbroken mum said she tried to get Izzy into rehab using her private medical insurance and even looked at going to America for treatment.

She said there was a ‘last chance’ to save her daughter when she was arrested for suspected ketamine possession, adding she should have been sectioned at that point.

Ann said: ‘She couldn’t walk, she was disorientated – that was the last opportunity to save her. They had a duty of care, they should have applied the Mental Health Act.

‘She was deemed to have capacity, my argument is how could she possibly have capacity?

‘I was desperately trying to help my daughter. She was so desperately ill. I think there were safeguarding concerns and missed opportunities to escalate and order an intervention.

‘She felt like nobody cared about her anymore, they just saw an addict.’

Izzy was admitted to hospital in March but despite her poor health she was still able to get hold of and take ketamine.

Ann said: ‘In her last hospital stay she was caught on the ward twice with ketamine, I followed her out of the building and tried to get the number plate of whoever was supplying my sick child with ketamine.’

Izzy was then admitted to A&E on April 24 last year before discharging herself.

Her mum said: ‘I kept asking Izzy “please let me phone the ambulance”. She said “no more hospitals mum, I just want to be at home with you, I can’t do it anymore”. Because of all the capacity stuff, she would have refused to go.

‘So I made her hot water bottles, made her some French toast, she didn’t eat much.’

Asked if she wanted to get better, she added: ‘Yes, she said I’m going to get better, I’m going to do a psychology course then I want to help other children like me.

‘Nobody should have to go through what I have been through. Her goal was to get better.’

Izzy’s cause of death was given as respiratory depression due to combined severe morphine and gabapentin toxicity.

Both pain drugs showed higher than normal therapeutic levels in her blood and the gabapentin would have exacerbated the toxic effects of the morphine.

The postmortem examination also found she had biliary sepsis, localised sepsis in the liver, which may have been a contributing factor but did not cause her death.

The inquest also heard from Scott Davey from Reach, a drug and alcohol support charity that was working with Izzy before her death.

Coroner Brendan Allen asked if in his experience users got ‘trapped in a vicious cycle’ where the ketamine causes damage but users then increase the usage to relieve the pain caused by the damage.

Mr Davey said: ‘Yes, ketamine normally starts as recreational. The dissociative factors of it mean it can be used to mask mental health, external factors going on stresses with family, work. It becomes habitual.

‘It is very cheap, accessible, that plays into it massively. It’s not the acute effect, it’s the long-term effect where it’s done physical damage and then being used to manage the pain, it’s a Catch 22.’

Ann added: ‘Izzy was a beautiful, funny girl, highly intelligent, a talented photographer and dancer.

‘But as beautiful and smart as she was, she was also a master manipulator. The guys (at her GP practice and Reach) did everything they possibly could.’

The inquest in Bournemouth continues.