A woman snorted so much cocaine that she was left with a gaping hole in her face and forced to get a skin graft.
Kelly Kozyra, 38, was first offered a line of coke by a friend in 2017 – over the next 19 months, she spent over £63,000 on the drug.
She was using the drug day and night, and even stopped eating in a bid to fuel her drug habit.
Kelly, who lives in Chicago, Illinois, noticed blood in her nose and was horrified to find chunks of flesh blown out from her nostrils, but ignored the symptoms.
Eventually, her septum became so eroded that her nose was deformed and began to sink in on itself.
She compared her nose to Daniella Westbrook’s – who also battled a rotted septum after prolonged drug abuse.
After interventions from friends and family, Kelly decided to live a sober life in 2021 and has undergone 15 reconstructive surgeries to help restore her nose, including a skin graft from her forehead to create a new tip and an artery from her arm to rebuild the blood supply from her cheek to her nose.
She said: ‘I’d been using cocaine for three months daily when I started experiencing bleeding in my nose and was blowing out chunks of skin, then noticed the septum was deteriorating.
‘I thought this couldn’t happen to me and I wasn’t doing that much but I was doing a hell of a lot. I thought it would just heal itself, but I still continued snorting. The septum completely deteriorated. Then I got a hole on the outside of my face, which grew to the size of a dime.
‘Eventually I had to shove my pinky up my nose to hold all the cocaine up there so I didn’t lose it out the hole.’
To cover up the hole in her face, Kelly told others she had a sinus infection, and used masks during Covid to help better cover her collapsing nose.
She’s able to breathe better now and has warned others to talk more about drug abuse to destigmatise it.
‘This entire experience has taught me so much. Now I live day by day, that’s how we’re taught to live through the programme,’ she said.
‘I don’t have any plans of relapsing or using. I think being open about it helps me and other people. The more we talk about drug use, the less stigmatised it becomes.’
Side effects from using cocaine
- Faster heart rate, raised body temperature, feel sick and/or want to go to the toilet more.
- Anyone can have a panic attack, heart attack and/or stroke if they take too much cocaine. Regular use can make you feel depressed and run down.
- Mixing drugs is always risky but some mixtures are more dangerous than others.
Cocaine is very addictive and regular use changes the way the brain releases dopamine, a brain chemical that makes you feel happy.
Cocaine is mostly known for causing psychological dependence (addiction), but users can sometimes continue to use cocaine just to overcome the negative aftereffects of using. This can lead to a binge pattern of use and increase the risk of dependence.
Drugs cut with ingredients like deworming medicines used by vets have this impact on the nose, doctors say.
The warning coincides with a rise in the number of people being treated by ear, nose and throat medics due to cocaine use.
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