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Cocaine; Facts
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<h1>Cocaine</h1>
heightens
alertness, inhibits appetite and the need for sleep,
and provides intense feelings of
pleasure. It is prepared from
the leaf of the Erythroxylon coca bush, which grows
primarily in
Peru and Bolivia.<p>
Pure cocaine was
first extracted and identified by the German
chemist Albert Niemann in the mid-19th
century, and was
introduced as a tonic/elixir in patent medicines to treat a wide
variety of real or imagined illnesses. Later, it was used as a
local
anesthetic for eye, ear, and throat surgery and continues
today to have limited
employment in surgery. Currently, it has no
other clinical application, having been
largely replaced by
synthetic local anesthetics such as lidocaine.
<p>
Because of its potent euphoric and energizing effects, many
people in
the late 19th century took cocaine, even though some
physicians recognized that users
quickly became <a href="addict.html">dependent</a>. In the
1880s,
the psychiatrist Sigmund Freud created a sensation with a
series of papers praising
cocaine’s potential to cure depression,
alcoholism, and morphine addiction.
<p>
Skepticism soon replaced this excitement, however, when
documented reports of fatal cocaine poisoning, alarming mental
disturbances, and
cocaine addiction began to circulate.
<p>
According to information
collected in 1902, 92% of all cocaine
sold in major cities in the United States was in
the form of an
ingredient in tonics and potions available from local pharmacies.
<p>
In 1911, the Canadian government legally restricted cocaine use,
and its popularity waned. The 1920s and ’30s saw a marked decline
in its use,
especially after <a href="amphetam.html">amphetamines</a> became easily
available. Cocaine’s return to popularity, beginning in the late
1960s,
coincided with the decreased use of amphetamines.
<p>
<h1>Appearance
</h1>
Cocaine is generally sold on the street as a
hydrochloride salt
- a fine, white crystalline powder known as coke, C, snow,
flake,
or blow. Street dealers dilute it with inert (non-psychoactive)
but
similar-looking substances such as cornstarch, talcum powder,
and sugar, or with active
drugs such as procaine and benzocaine
(used as local anesthetics), or other CNS
stimulants such as
amphetamines. Nevertheless, illicit cocaine has actually become
purer over the years; according to RCMP figures, in 1988 its
purity averaged
about 75%.
<p>
Cocaine in powder form is usually
"snorted" into the nostrils,
although it may also be rubbed onto the mucous
lining of the
mouth, rectum, or vagina. To experience cocaine’s effects more
it.
<p>
<b>Cocaine hydrochloride can be chemically altered to remove other
substances. The process, called "freebasing," is potentially
dangerous because the solvents used are highly flammable. The
pure form of cocaine that
results ("free base") is smoked rather
than snorted. The drug commonly called
"crack" is a crude form of
free base that has become popular in recent
years.
</b>
<h1>Effects
</h1>
The effects of
any drug depend on several factors:
<ul>
<li>the amount taken
at one time
<li> the user’s past drug experience
<li> the manner in which the drug is taken
<li> the
circumstances under which the drug is taken (the place,
the user’s psychological and
emotional stability the presence
of other people, the simultaneous use of alcohol or
other
drugs, etc.).
</ul>
<p>
Cocaine’s
short-term effects appear soon after a single dose and
disappear within a few minutes
or hours. Taken in small amounts
(up to 100 mg), cocaine usually makes the user feel
euphoric,
energetic, talkative, and mentally alert - especially to the
sensations of sight, sound, and touch. It can also temporarily
dispel the need for food
and sleep. Paradoxically, it can make
some people feel contemplative, anxious, or even
panic-stricken.
Some people find that the drug helps them perform simple physical
and intellectual tasks more quickly; others experience just the
opposite
effect.
<p>
Physical symptoms include accelerated heartbeat and
breathing,
and higher blood pressure and body temperature.
<p>
Large amounts (several hundred milligrams or more) intensify
users’
"high," but may also lead to bizarre, erratic, and violent
behavior. These
users may experience tremors, vertigo, muscle
twitches, paranoia, or, with repeated
doses, a toxic reaction
closely resembling amphetamine poisoning.
<p>
Physical symptoms may include chest pain, nausea, blurred vision,
fever, muscle spasms, convulsions, and coma. Death from a cocaine
overdose can occur
from convulsions, heart failure, or the
depression of vital brain centres controlling
respiration.
<p>
With repeated administration over time, users
experience the
drug’s long-term effects. Euphoria is gradually displaced by
eventually
hallucinations and delusions. These conditions,
clinically identical to amphetamine
psychosis and very similar to
paranoid schizophrenia, disappear rapidly in most cases
after
cocaine use is ended.
<p>
While many of the
physical effects of heavy continuous use are
essentially the same as those of
short-term use, the heavy user
may also suffer from mood swings, paranoia, loss of
interest in
sex, weight loss, and insomnia.
<p>
Chronic
cocaine snorting often causes stuffiness, runny nose,
eczema around the nostrils, and a
perforated nasal septum. Users
who inject the drug risk not only overdosing but also
infections
from unsterile needles and hepatitis or AIDS (acquired immune
deficiency syndrome) from needles shared with others. Severe
respiratory tract
irritation has been noted in some heavy users
of cocaine free base.
<p>
<h2>Tolerance and dependence</h2>
Tolerance to any drug exists
when higher doses are necessary to
achieve the same effects once reached with lower
doses. But
scientists have not observed tolerance to cocaine’s stimulant
effect: users may keep taking the original amount over extended
periods and still
experience the same euphoria. Yet some users
frequently increase their dose to
intensify and prolong the
effects. Amounts up to 10 g (10,000 mg) have been reported.
<p>
Some users, however, report that they become more sensitive
to
cocaine’s anesthetic and convulsant effects even without
increasing the
amount. This theory of increased sensitivity has
been put forward to explain some
deaths that have occurred after
apparently low doses.
<p>
person’s thoughts,
emotions, and activities that it becomes a
craving or compulsion. Among heavy cocaine
users, an intense
psychological dependence can occur; they suffer severe depression
if the drug is unavailable, which lifts only when they take it
again.
<p>
Experiments with animals suggest that cocaine is perhaps the
most
powerful drug of all in producing psychological dependence. Rats
and
monkeys made dependent on cocaine will always strive hard to
get more.
<p>
At present, researchers do not agree on what constitutes physical
dependence on cocaine. When regular heavy users stop taking the
drug, however, they
experience what they term the "crash" shortly
afterwards.
<p>
Overall, during abstinence, many users complain of sleep and
eating
disorders, depression, and anxiety, and the craving for
cocaine often compels them to
take it again. Treatment of the
dependent cocaine user is therefore difficult, and the
relapse
rate is high. Nevertheless, some heavy users have been able to
quit on their own
<p>
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