Part of Amy Winehouse’s Drug Cocktail Routinely Stolen from Veterinary Clinics

At 10:30 pm London Time Amy Winehouse made a drug run that proved to be her last. She proceeded to mix cocaine, heroin, ecstasy and ketamine, and coupled with the alcohol she was drinking, the combination proved fatal. In general this is not a topic I would cover on my blog someone dying of a drug overdose but I think that there is information here that needs to get out so that those using the drug learn that they are not the only ones being hurt by their drug use. I am not even talking about the users friends and family, their jobs, education, or lives. I am talking about our pets when they are at their most vulnerable – during surgery.

The street drug Special K is made purely from the pharmaceutical grade Ketamine. In veterinary anesthesia, Ketamine is often used for its anesthetic and analgesic effects on cats, dogs, rabbits, rats, and other small animals. Veterinarians often use ketamine with sedative drugs to produce balanced anesthesia, and as a constant rate infusion to help prevent the animal from waking up during or post surgery with their nerve ending on fire with so much pain. Ketamine is used to manage pain among large animals. It is the primary intravenous anesthetic agent used in surgery on horses. If your pet has been spayed or neutered or had any of the surgery you will most likely have noticed the line item Ketamine as part of the anesthesia used for the operation. What you didn’t know is that users of Ketamin will break into Veterinary clinics and steal the drug or steal it off the truck as it is being delivered to warehouse facilities. Its one thing when the vials of Ketamine are stolen the police are called and the event is reported to authorities and all that needs to occur is to order a new shipment of the drug and call a local practice to have some on hand for emergency cases that come in until the new order can arrive. It is another story entirely when it is a staff member from the practice who thinks they can make a few extra dollars by selling the drug to their friends and cover up what they are doing. Ketamine is stored in a locked container in Veterinary practices and kept complete control over with a video camera pointing at it. It has happened that a staff member will get their hands on the Ketamine and then replace the missing drugs with sterile water to hide the theft. The theft is not found out until the vet goes to do surgery and the Ketamine is not doing its job. So the animal suffers. When the theft is discovered all surgeries have to be canceled and as soon as the theft can be proven as having occurred the police have to be called. Its not only veterinary clinics that it happens in it can happen in people hospitals as well as the drug is used as part of anesthesia or used as the only form of anesthesia in some trauma cases.

The instance that I know about of this occurring in a veterinary clinic I know first hand it was not a story passed along to me. I am not going to go into detail but it was an animal in for a routine surgery that suffered because of the theft. Ketamine sold illegally comes either from diverted legitimate supplies and semi-legitimate suppliers, or from theft of legitimate suppliers. You cannot get a prescription written for Ketamine so a person or animal suffers in order for the drug user to achieve their high.

We can only hope that Amy Winehouse’s death will be a turning point for other drug users to get themselves clean, something the singer could not do. And maybe just maybe by spreading the word that Ketamine is stolen from people and animals when they need it the most – for surgery, that people will stop using it as a recreational drug. It is sad when anyone dies of an addiction but it is even more sad when a person or an animal’s life is put at risk because the medications they need in order to have a successful surgery are not available because they were stolen.