Cocaine – Crack-Cocaine

Cocaine is a powerfully addictive stimulant drug. The powdered hydrochloride salt form of cocaine can be snorted or dissolved in water and then injected. Crack is the street name given to the form of cocaine that has been processed to make a rock crystal, which, when heated, produces vapors that are smoked. The term “crack” refers to the crackling sound produced by the rock as it is heated.

How Is Cocaine Abused?

Three routes of administration are commonly used for cocaine: snorting, injecting, and smoking. Snorting is the process of inhaling cocaine powder through the nose, where it is absorbed into the bloodstream through the nasal tissues. Injecting is the use of a needle to insert the drug directly into the bloodstream. Smoking involves inhaling cocaine vapor or smoke into the lungs, where absorption into the bloodstream is as rapid as by injection. All three methods of cocaine abuse can lead to addiction and other severe health problems, including increasing the risk of contracting HIV and other infectious diseases.

The intensity and duration of cocaine’s effects (which include increased energy, reduced fatigue and mental alertness) depend on the route of drug administration. The faster cocaine is absorbed into the bloodstream and delivered to the brain, the more intense the high. Injecting or smoking cocaine produces a quicker, stronger high than snorting. On the other hand, faster absorption usually means shorter duration of action: the high from snorting cocaine may last 15 to 30 minutes, but the high from smoking may last only 5 to 10 minutes. In order to sustain the high, a cocaine abuser has to administer the drug again. For this reason, cocaine is sometimes abused in binges and taken repeatedly within a relatively short period of time, at increasingly higher doses.

How Does Cocaine Affect the Brain?

Cocaine is a strong central nervous system stimulant that increases levels of dopamine, a brain chemical (or neurotransmitter) associated with pleasure and movement, in the brain’s reward circuit. Certain brain cells, or neurons, use dopamine to communicate. Normally, dopamine is released by a neuron in response to a pleasurable signal (e.g. the smell of good food), and then recycled back into the cell that released it, thus shutting off the signal between neurons. Cocaine acts by preventing the dopamine from being recycled, causing excessive amounts of the neurotransmitter to build up, amplifying the message to, and response of, the receiving neuron, and ultimately disrupting normal communication. It is this excess of dopamine that is responsible for cocaine’s euphoric effects. With repeated use, cocaine can cause long-term changes in the brain’s reward system and in other brain systems as well, which may eventually lead to addiction. With repeated use, tolerance to the cocaine high often develops. Many cocaine abusers report that they seek but fail to achieve as much pleasure as they did from their first exposure. Some users will increase their dose in an attempt to intensify and prolong the euphoria, but this can also increase the risk of adverse psychological or physiological effects.

What Adverse Effects Does Cocaine Have on Health?

Abusing cocaine has a variety of adverse effects on the body. For example, cocaine constricts blood vessels, dilates pupils, and increases body temperature, heart rate, and blood pressure. It can also cause headaches and gastrointestinal complications such as abdominal pain and nausea. Because cocaine tends to decrease appetite, chronic users can become malnourished as well.

Different methods of taking cocaine can produce different adverse effects. Regular intranasal use (snorting) of cocaine, for example, can lead to a loss of the sense of smell, nosebleeds, problems with swallowing, hoarseness, and a chronically runny nose. Ingesting cocaine can cause severe bowel gangrene as a result of reduced blood flow. Injecting cocaine can bring about severe allergic reactions and increased risk for contracting HIV and other blood-borne diseases. Binge-patterned cocaine use may lead to irritability, restlessness, and anxiety. Cocaine abusers can also experience severe paranoia – a temporary state of full-blown paranoid psychosis in which they lose touch with reality and experience auditory hallucinations.

Regardless of the route or frequency of use, cocaine abusers can experience acute cardiovascular or cerebrovascular emergencies, such as a heart attack or stroke, which may cause sudden death. Cocaine-related deaths are often a result of cardiac arrest or seizure followed by respiratory arrest.

Identifying Suspected Cocaine Use

Evaluate behaviour. Cocaine users tend to have anxiety and often suffer from panic attacks. He or she may exhibit signs of irritability. This is common when craving cocaine.

Pay attention to the physical condition of his or her body. Cocaine users often have a stuffy, bloody or runny nose. Dilated pupils can also be an indication of cocaine use.

Observe his or her motor skill activities. The user may have tremors or act extremely hyper with rapid speech.

Cocaine users may hallucinate, suffer from paranoia or appear to be in a state of confusion.

Look for any paraphernalia that is often associated with cocaine use. Common methods of using cocaine are snorting, smoking and injecting intravenously. Look for rolled paper–money is often used to snort. Check for razor blades and straws. Smoking includes the use of a glass pipe. Items commonly associated with injecting cocaine are syringes, needles, spoons and bandannas or belts that are used to constrict the veins. The presence of one or more of these items may indicate the use of cocaine.

It is important to note that many of these behaviours may indicate another problem, such as hypomania, and professional consultation is critical.

Added Danger: Cocaethylene

Polydrug use (use of more than one drug) is common among substance abusers. When people consume two or more psychoactive drugs together, such as cocaine and alcohol, they compound the danger each drug poses and unknowingly perform a complex chemical experiment within their bodies. Researchers have found that the human liver combines cocaine and alcohol to produce a third substance, cocaethylene, that intensifies cocaine’s euphoric effects. Cocaethylene is associated with a greater risk of sudden death than cocaine alone. Info facts

Famous Cocaine Users

Stephen King

From 1979-1987, the horror novelist was addicted to cocaine, describing it as his “on switch” and cannot remember a couple of books he wrote during this period. King claims it saved him from alcoholism and an early grave: “without coke I’d have gone on drinking until about the age of 55 and it would have been a couple of lines in the New York Times: ‘Writer Stephen King dies of stroke.’

Sigmund Freud

Wrote effervescently of the “exhilaration and lasting euphoria” and its “stimulative effect on the genitalia”. He even penned a (now hard-to-find) essay, ‘UberCoca,’ extolling its virtues. Freud changed his mind about the substance when a patient friend of his died of an overdose.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Stevenson wrote Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde in six days and nights on a cocaine binge. “That an invalid in my husband’s condition of health should have been able to perform the manual labour alone of putting 60,000 words on paper in six days, seems almost incredible,” said his astonished wife, Fanny.

Sherlock Holmes

“Sherlock Holmes took his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case. With his long, white, nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle, and rolled back his left shirt cuff…the sinewy forearm and wrist, all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture-marks…sank back into the velvet lined armchair with a long sigh of satisfaction.” The Sign Of Four.