Cocaine

Cocaine is rapidly becoming one of the most dangerous hard drugs of our time. Cocaine can be injected. The freebase form of the powder is pre-cooked. The powder can be "snorted" (sniffed) up by the nose. Coca paste is the crude extract of the leaf. Crack is the powder heated into stones and then smoked. In this chapter, we will consider all of these forms.

COCAINE

1 - COCAINE- Cocaine is a powerfully addictive drug of abuse. Individuals who have tried cocaine have described the experience as a powerful high that gave them a feeling of supremacy. However, once someone starts taking cocaine, one cannot predict or control the extent to which he or she will continue to use the drug. The major ways of taking cocaine are sniffing or snorting, injecting, and smoking (including freebase and crack cocaine).</p>

Also called "the leaf," "snow," and "speedballs" (when mixed with heroin), cocaine is one of the leading narcotics in America today.

Extracted from the leaves of the coca bush, it is a white, odorless, bitter tasting, fluffy powder that looks like crystalline snow.

Although legally classified as a narcotic, cocaine is a central nervous system stimulant, with effects that are quite similar to those of the amphetamines. Cocaine also has some anesthetic properties, for it numbs the mucous membranes of the nose, throat, and mouth, as it is inhaled or swallowed.

The immediate effect of taking cocaine is a brief but intense euphoria, characterized by a strong sense of energy, restlessness, talkativeness, and self-confidence. But continued usage leads to body tremors, nervousness, irritability, loss of appetite, and profuse sweating. This increases as the cocaine continues to damage sensitive nerve tissue.

And continued use brings even more serious side effects: Because cocaine is a powerful stimulant, the use of it severely strains the heart, disrupts blood pressure, and causes insomnia and weight loss. Cocaine is also a powerful anesthetic; so it constricts the blood vessels, especially in the nose. Continued use damages tissues and induces a diseased state in them. Respiratory depression and cardiac arrest-causing immediate death-is but another result of taking cocaine. It is the single large dose that will bring instant death, but the doses available on the "street" contain unknown purity; therefore, if one that is too pure is taken, quick death can result.

The heavy psychological dependence caused by taking cocaine is nearly as powerful as the physical narcotic addiction. A deep depression and craving is excited in the mind for another dose of the white powder. When the drug is easily obtainable, users tend to keep taking larger and more frequent doses. This leads to a full-scale psychosis (insanity) that exhibits itself as extreme paranoia, compulsive behavior, delusions, and vivid hallucinations.

Cocaine has been glamorized as the great solution to all of one's problems. But all it does is make problems. At first it seems, to the taker, to increase mental performance and physical sensitivity. But two or three doses quickly levels the addiction to a slowing of mental ability and alertness, and a dulling of physical sensation. Yet, despite these facts, the glamorization continues in order to sell more of this vicious plant extract.

Health risks exist regardless of whether cocaine is inhaled (snorted), injected, or smoked. Smoking allows extremely high doses of cocaine to reach the brain very quickly and results in an intense and immediate high. The injecting drug user is also at risk for acquiring or transmitting HIV infection/AIDS if needles or other injection equipment are shared.

Here is a summary of other cocaine health hazards:

Physical effects: Physical effects of cocaine use include constricted peripheral blood vessels, dilated pupils, and increased body temperature, heart rate, and blood pressure. Some cocaine users report feelings of restlessness, irritability, and anxiety while using and between periods of use. An appreciable tolerance to the high may be developed; and many addicts report that they seek but fail to achieve as much pleasure as they did from their first exposure.

Paranoia and aggression: High doses of cocaine and/or prolonged use can trigger paranoia. Smoking crack cocaine can produce particularly aggressive paranoid behavior in users. When addicted individuals stop using cocaine, they may become depressed. This depression causes users to continue

to use the drug to alleviate their depression.

Long-term effects: Prolonged cocaine snorting can result in ulceration of the mucous membrane of the nose and can damage the nasal septum enough to cause it to collapse. Cocaine-related deaths are often a result of cardiac arrest or seizures followed by respiratory arrest.

Added Danger: When people mix cocaine and alcohol, they are compounding the danger each drug poses and unknowingly causing a complex chemical interaction within their bodies. Researchers have found that the human liver combines cocaine and alcohol to manufacture a third substance, cocaethylene, which intensifies cocaine's euphoric effects and possibly increases the risk of sudden death.

2 - FREEBASING COCAINE-

Freebasing is a more recent development. A base solution and a solvent, such as ether, is applied to standard cocaine. The result is a crystalline flake instead of a granule. The flakes are then smoked in special pipes. The effect is the same as injecting regular cocaine into the bloodstream: a quick-acting, short-term "high" is experienced. It is all over in two or three minutes. And then follows the strong depression until another dose of cocaine is taken.

Strictly speaking, cocaine is not physically addicting, but the intensely depressive feelings that follow it induce a craving to go back for more. And this craving grows over a period of time as it is used.

What neither drug nor drug paraphernalia dealers talk about are the scary side effects. "When you smoke cocaine, it has a reinforcing effect, but it does so in a way that makes you keep wanting more and more all the time," says Dr. Charles Wetli, assistant Dade County (Miami) medical examiner. "It can lead to mental aberrations and paranoia. Cocaine just starts to exclude everything else in your life."

Wetli says he recently spoke to a group of students at the University of Miami about drugs; "and, afterwards, they were all telling me that freebasing is the big thing now." About the only good news about freebasing is that it is too expensive to become too widespread.

3 - COCA PASTE-

The use of coca paste in the United States became a highly dangerous hard drug fad in the late 1980s.

Already epidemic in four South American countries, coca paste is now here. The leaf of the coca plant is used to make cocaine. Coca paste is the crude extract of this leaf. It is as pure as freebase, provides a similar high when smoked, has no odor, and is every bit as addicting and damaging to the body and mind.

4 - SNORTED COCAINE-

Sniffing cocaine through the nose can cost hundreds of dollars; freebasing it (through smoke) can cost thousands, because so much more cocaine is needed to make the paste. "You're not going to go through the process with a gram of coke (cocaine), because that costs $100, and you still wouldn't have enough to freebase anything," says the Coconut Grove drug abuse information center.

One former freebase smoker described it this way: "People who really get into it are like junkies. I've seen them totally change personalities in a week or two. It's a different kind of high when you smoke cocaine. It hits immediately because it's going straight to the lungs. And then it fades fast too and you become mentally depressed and anxious for another hit every few minutes." There is so much down time for every up minute-and the down time is terrible to live through. But that is really the story with all of the narcotics described in this book.
Before you began, life was enjoyable and interesting; but after going on the narcotic-craving and taking it became all the meaning that life had to offer. Nothing else matters: friends, family, children, wife, employment, skills, goals, or ambitions.

You end up a narcotics-addicted animal, living only to provide lots of money for the pushers.

5 - CRACK COCAINE-

There is also another form of cocaine that only came into prominence in the 1980s. This is "crack cocaine," or "crack." As part of the processing of cocaine in small laboratories (primarily in South America ), cocaine powder is heated, purified, and transformed into small white stones. Sold in the U.S. , these are then smoked. But crack is amazingly dangerous. Because this smokable form of cocaine delivers 10 times the impact of snorting the powder, even the most casual use can cause death from heart or respiratory failure. Crack smokers also run an increased risk of addiction and paranoid psychosis. Only a few years ago, street cocaine was only 20 percent pure, now it is up to 80 percent pure. This is resulting in a far higher number of fatalities as a result of just one dose.