Estate agent died after weight dropped to 5 stone from ketamine addiction

Isabelle Sapherson-Moralee, known as Izzy, died after her body shut down having spent five years taking the class B drug (Picture: BNPS)
‘I can’t do it anymore’

Those were the words of estate agent Izzy Sapherson-Moralee to her mum when she discharged herself from hospital.

Shortly after, an inquest heard, the 22-year-old died in agony after her body shut down from a five-year addiction to class B drug ketamine.

At the time of her death she weighed just over five-and-a-half stone (around 79lbs or 35kg).

Her mum, Ann Moralee, spent 18 months fighting to get help for Izzy and tried repeatedly to tell officials that her daughter would die as a result of addiction.

Izzy suffered from chronic pain and her bladder was so badly damaged she had to spend £500 a month on incontinence pads.

She ended up in hospital on April 25 last year but discharged herself and ‘went home to die’.

The inquest was told Izzy stopped trusting doctors after a ‘vile’ experience with a urologist (Picture: Facebook)
Over the following days, her condition deteriorated.

Ann said: ‘I kept asking her, please let me phone an ambulance but she said “no more hospitals mum, I just want to be at home with you, I can’t do it anymore”.

‘She knew she was dying that last 48 hours. She died 36 hours after she got home.’

Even when she was in hospital the month before her death, Izzy was twice caught taking ketamine on the ward by her mum.

She said: ‘I followed her out of the building and tried to get the number plate of whoever was supplying my sick child with ketamine.’

When Ann discovered Izzy’s body she called 999 and while carrying out CPR she told the operator: ‘I said she’s going to die, I told everybody she was going to die and now here we are and she’s dead.’

Izzy died after taking a toxic combination of morphine and gabapentin, causing her breathing to slow and stop.

An infection was found in her liver, but it was not the cause of death.

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.’

Izzy, from Wimborne, Dorset, started taking ketamine when she moved in with her boyfriend in the Covid lockdowns of 2020.

It was only at the end of 2023 that Ann discovered she had been taking it. By then the addiction was ‘out of control and she couldn’t hide it anymore’, Ann said.

She told the inquest Izzy had a mistrust of doctors after an experience at Salisbury District Hospital.

‘She was just seen as a ketamine addict and everything else was ignored, especially her back pain,’ she said.

Izzy’s mum Ann Moralee leaving the inquest in Bournemouth (Picture: BNPS)
‘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.’

Ann looked at putting Izzy into rehab and even considered going to the US for treatment.

Her last chance, she believes, was when Izzy was arrested for suspected possession of ketamine and she should have been sectioned.

‘She couldn’t walk, she was disorientated – that was the last opportunity to save her,’ she said. ‘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.’

In her final moments, Ann asked Izzy if she wanted to recover. Ann told the inquest: ‘”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.’

Scott Davey, from drug and alcohol charity Reach, worked to support Izzy.

He said: ‘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.

SOURCE: https://metro.co.uk/2026/06/04/estate-agent-22-ketamine-addiction-died-weight-dropped-just-5st-28648627/