I had gone through four years of high school with the
misconception that cocaine was a drug from the 80
’s and 90’s, and that no one I knew would be stupid enough to
use it. But this past summer, I found out just how wrong I was. I
had to watch someone who used to be my closest guy friend snort a
line of cocaine.
I had gone through four years of high school with the misconception that cocaine was a drug from the 80’s and 90’s, and that no one I knew would be stupid enough to use it. But this past summer, I found out just how wrong I was. I had to watch someone who used to be my closest guy friend snort a line of cocaine.
All this time I’d been completely naïve and never knew how close to home it was. After my little wake up call, I did some research, trying to find out just how much I should be worrying. It turns out; I should be worrying a lot.
Cocaine is a powerfully addictive stimulant that directly affects the brain. It was extensively popular in the 1980’s and 90’s, but it was being used long before then. The pure chemical, cocaine hydrochloride, has been an abused substance for more than 100 years, and is one of the oldest known drugs.
There are basically two available forms of cocaine: the hydrochloride salt and the “freebase.” The hydrochloride salt, or powdered form of cocaine, dissolves in water and can be taken intravenously (by vein) or intranasally (in the nose).
Crack is the freebase form, which has not been neutralized by an acid, and is used to smoke. It is processed from the hydrochloride form into the smokeable form by using ammonia or sodium bicarbonate to remove the hydrochloride.
In 1997, an estimated 1.5 million Americans were current cocaine users, according to the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (NHSDA). Also, with the help of additional data that takes into account users that were not represented in the NHSDA, the estimated number of cocaine users soars to 3.6 million.
The age group most targeted for cocaine use is adults 18 to 25 years of age. Overall, men are said to have a higher rate of current cocaine use than do women.
Crack cocaine use is also a serious problem in the United States. The NHSDA estimated the number of current crack cocaine users to be around 604,000 in 1997. What’s even worse is that kids are experimenting with it at an even younger age than before. The 1998 Monitoring the Future Survey, which annually surveys teen attitudes and recent drug use among teens, reported that lifetime and past-year use of crack increased to its highest level. The percentage of eighth graders reporting crack use at least once in their lives increased from 2.7 percent in 1997 to 3.2 percent in 1998. Eighth graders smoking crack? I didn’t even know what crack was in eighth grade and now they’re actually smoking it.
Information from the Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) showed that there were 152,433 cocaine-related emergency room visits in 1996.
The common ways of cocaine administration are oral, intranasal, intravenous, and inhalation. Snorting is the process of inhaling cocaine powder through the nostrils, where it is absorbed into the bloodstream through the nasal tissues. Injecting cocaine releases the drug directly into the bloodstream, and heightens the intensity of its effects. Smoking involves the inhalation of cocaine vapor or smoke into the lungs, where absorption into the bloodstream is just as rapid as injection.
Cocaine use ranges from occasional use to repeated or compulsive use, with a variety of patterns in between. There is no safe way to use cocaine; every method has serious health effects. Any route of administration can lead to absorption of toxic amounts of cocaine, leading to acute cardiovascular or cerebrovascular emergencies that could easily result in sudden death.
Cocaine’s effects appear almost immediately after a single dose, and disappear within a few minutes or hours. Taken in small amounts (up to 100mg), 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 decrease the need for food and sleep. The faster the absorption, the more intense the high.
The high from snorting is relatively slow at onset, and may last 15 to 30 minutes, while the high from smoking may last only 5 to 10 minutes. Short-term effects of cocaine include constricted blood vessels; dilated pupils; and increased temperature, heart rate, and blood pressure. Large amounts of cocaine 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. Smoking crack cocaine can produce particularly aggressive paranoid behavior in users.
Some cocaine users report feeling restlessness, irritability, and anxiety. In some instances, sudden death can occur on the first use of cocaine or unexpectedly thereafter. 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. Most cocaine-related deaths are a result of cardiac arrest or seizures followed by respiratory arrest.
The list of medical complications from cocaine abuse goes on and on, I can name a few more for those of you out there who think, “As long as it’s not heroin, it’s okay to use it.”
The most frequent health complications are cardiovascular, including disturbances in heart rhythm and heart attacks; respiratory effects such as chest pain and respiratory failure; neurological effects, including strokes, seizure, and chronic headaches; and gastrointestinal complications, including abdominal pain and nausea.
Cocaine use has been linked to many types of heart disease and has also been found to trigger chaotic heart rhythms, referred to as ventricular fibrillation; accelerate heartbeat and breathing; and increase blood pressure and body temperature. Common physical symptoms among cocaine users may include chest pain, nausea, blurred vision, fever, muscle spasms, convulsions and coma.
Because cocaine has a tendency to decrease food intake, many chronic cocaine users lose their appetites and can experience significant weight loss and malnourishment. There are also different health effects to different routes of administration. For example, regularly snorting cocaine can lead to loss of sense of smell, nosebleeds, problems with swallowing, hoarseness, and an overall irritation of the nasal septum, which can lead to a chronically inflamed, runny nose. If that’s not enough to make you think twice about sniffing, how about this: the chemical cocaine actually eats holes inside the cartilage of your nose.
Not only does using cocaine cause all of these long-term health effects, but sudden death from cocaine use is very common also. When you take cocaine, the drug causes the heart to beat rapidly. At the same time, it constricts blood vessels. The effect on your body is like turning up the water pressure in a hose while shrinking the diameter of the hose.
A weak spot in a blood vessel, especially if it’s near the heart or brain, can burst under the increased pressure. As more of the drug is taken, it interferes with the electrical signals the brain sends to the heart and lungs to keep them working. Seizures and heart failure are the common result from this reaction. And, because cocaine use creates severe depression (when the user comes down from the “high”) cocaine has also been commonly linked to suicide.
Cocaine is an incredibly powerful, addictive drug. Once having tried cocaine, an individual may have difficulty predicting or controlling the extent to which he or she will continue to use the drug. So basically, after only using cocaine once, you could be hooked for life.
You may think, “Oh, I can stop using it whenever I want.” But recent studies have shown that, even during periods of abstinence from cocaine use, the memory of the “euphoria” associated with cocaine use, or mere exposure to something that is associated with drug use can trigger tremendous craving and a relapse back to cocaine use.
Research has discovered a potentially dangerous interaction between cocaine and alcohol. Taken in combination, the two drugs are converted by the body to cocaethylene. Cocaethylene has a longer duration of action in the brain and is more toxic than either drug alone. The mixture of cocaine and alcohol is the most common two-drug combination that results in drug-related death.
When addicted individuals stop using cocaine, they may become depressed. This depression causes users to continue to use the drug to alleviate their depression.
I can’t imagine what the reasons would be to start using cocaine but whether you’re feeling stressed, depressed, or lost, cocaine isn’t the answer. And if you’re sitting there and your friends keep asking you to do it, no matter how “cool” they may be, you might want to think about all those rather unpleasant health effects before you take that hit. Instead of constantly searching for that “incredible high” you can figure out how to fill up the void inside that makes you think you need drugs in order to function.
Also, how “cool” is it to waste your time sitting around in some disgusting room with a bunch of losers while you all destroy your bodies? It just doesn’t seem like something very popular or cool to me, but everyone has to make his own choices. My good friend Brandon told me his reason for not using cocaine, even though it’s easily attainable. It’s something his brother said to him.
“The decisions we make today should be held in regard for what lies tomorrow. What happened yesterday is the past, and what will happen tomorrow is the future.
What happens today is a gift, and that’s why it is called the ‘present’.”
Hmmmm…makes sense to me. What about you?
Chrissy Bryant is freshman at San Jose State University. She will write A College View about local college life and things that catch her fancy. Contact Chrissy at ed****@*************es.com
