A British estate agent with a ketamine addiction cried, “I can’t do it anymore,” before dying in agony, an inquest heard. Isabelle Sapherson-Moralee, known as Izzy, died after her body shut down following five years of using the Schedule 8 Controlled Drug, a highly regulated medicine with a high potential for misuse and dependence.
Her devastated mother, Ann Moralee, battled for 18 months to get her daughter help and tried to warn health officials that she would die without it. The inquest heard that Izzy suffered from chronic pain and a damaged bladder due to her addiction, resulting in her spending £500 (around $940) on incontinence pads every month.
Ketamine’s Toll on the Body
Ketamine addicts commonly experience rapid weight loss and malnutrition. Izzy’s weight plummeted to just 5st 9lb (35kg), leaving her “pale, gaunt, emaciated and malnourished.” Two days before she died, she discharged herself from hospital and “went home to die.”
While being cared for by her mother, Ann begged her daughter to let her call an ambulance. Ann told the inquest: “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, a flight attendant and former nurse, gave her daughter CPR in a heartbreaking bid to save her. 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.”
Addiction Began During Lockdown
Izzy, who worked as an estate agent, started taking ketamine regularly during the Covid lockdown in 2020 when she moved in with her boyfriend. Ann, from Wimborne, Dorset, said she did not discover her daughter’s ketamine use until the end of 2023, when it had gotten “out of control and she couldn’t hide it anymore.”
The drug use damaged Izzy’s bladder and caused her to become incontinent about a year before she died. Her mother said it was so bad that she spent hundreds a month on incontinence pads, and Izzy had to stop working about six months before her death.
Missed Opportunities for Help
Ann told the inquest that health officials could have done more to help her daughter and had “missed opportunities.” After a bad experience with a urologist who Ann claimed was “vile” to Izzy, she said her daughter no longer trusted doctors. Ann added: “She was just seen as a ketamine addict and everything else was ignored, especially her back pain. 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.”
Ann said she tried to get her daughter into rehab using her private medical insurance and looked at going to America for treatment. She told the court there was a “last chance” to save her daughter when Izzy was arrested for suspected ketamine possession. Despite struggling to walk and becoming disorientated, Izzy was not sectioned under the Mental Health Act – a decision Ann did not agree with.
Final Days and Cause of Death
Izzy was admitted to hospital in March but, even then, she was still able to get hold of and take ketamine. A month later, she was admitted to A&E before discharging herself. Ann 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.’ So I made her hot water bottles, made her some French toast, she didn’t eat much.”
When the family’s lawyer asked if Izzy wanted to get better, Ann replied: “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 post mortem 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 continues.
Rising Ketamine Use in Australia
Global recreational ketamine use and addiction rates have risen substantially over the last decade, heavily driven by increased availability, low costs, and popularity among young adults. In Australia, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reported that past-year ketamine use rose from 0.9 per cent in 2019 to 1.4 per cent in 2022–2023, representing roughly 300,000 users.
