COCAINE
What Is Cocaine?
Cocaine is a stimulant. It is a very strong stimulant. It is the most powerful natural stimulant known to man.
It works up a man's central nervous system. It causes physical and mental alertness when taken, including a feeling of surging body strength. It is followed by complete physical and mental exhaustion.
It is obtained from leaves of the coca plant found in Java, Taiwan and South America, mainly Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia and Argentina. The active substance of the plant is alkaloid cocaine.
In its pure form, cocaine is made up of shiny, white or colorless crystals. Hence, its common name: snow. The cocaine powder is odorless, but it has a bitter taste.
Cocaine is also found in: sterile solutions or tablets.
It differs from other "up" drugs or stimulants in that it is completely banned and can be obtained only through illegal or criminal markets.
Cocaine is either sniffed, eaten or injected into a vain.
How Does Cocaine Work?
Cocaine acts immediately. It is a quick-acting drug. Its effects are rapid from the time of intake. It is, indeed, "super-speed"
It peps and speeds up the brain cells, with these results: mental power is sharpened, physical strength surges.
It causes initially: euphoria or a sense of buoyant well- being, marked by a feeling of complete self-confidence, as well as pleasant hallucinations, visual and auditory. The peak "lift" lasts only briefly, however: only 15 to 30 minutes, although lesser effects linger up to 2 to 4 hours.
When taken in large doses, cocaine moves on to also work and speed up the spinal cord. This is very dangerous. Convulsion may result, even death.
The stimulation is followed often by a "crash" or collapse of the whole nervous system. When tkis happens, death may result from heart failure.
What Are Cocaine's Effects?
Like all drugs of abuse, cocaine yields varying physical and mental effects: a few good, a great many bad. Weighed against each other, the "good" vs. the "bad," cocaine emerges as: a drug that wastes and weakens the body and mind, can even kill, and properly belongs among the outlawed drugs.
The facts about cocaine, what it does to a user:
- Initial Lift
Cocaine, which acts quickly, causes initially a sense of wellbeing and self-confidence, a surge of great physical strength and mental alertness, a feeling of being more than equal to any task or challenge. The user is wide awake, feels himself fueled to think, talk, act and work. He does all of these rather compulsively. He is "speeding." - The Crash
A cocaine "lift" is short-lived, however. The peak lasts only 15 to 30 minutes, although lesser effects continue up to 2 to 4 hours. After this comes what they call the "crash," which is marked by: raw nerves, physical,weakness, a feeling of gloom, all coming in a quick sudden, just as quickly as the "lift" or "speed" had come. The user is easily irritated, gets bad-tempered, sulks or gets restless, even becomes violent. - Mental Breakdown
Heavy doses cause unclear speech, confused thinking, short temper, unease and tension, all signs of an impaired mind. When abused, it leads to social, intellectual and emotional breakdown, marked by mental instability, serious psychotic states and long-term personality disordes. A sudden "crash" or withdrawal can also trigger such mental imbalance - Nasal Ulcers
Continued snorting or sniffing cocaine is physically damaging. It causes nasal ulcers and, in acute cases, perforates the dividing wall of the nose. (Ulcers are breaks in the skin or mucous membrane, with festering, disintegration and loss of surface tissues, often attended by pus). - Body Sores
"As in cases of all drugs that are taken by injection, there usually is a lack of sanitary precautions in "shooting" or "mainlining" cocaine. This leads to abscesses, sores and scars where the cocaine was injected, a way of identifying a narcotic or cocaine user. - Overworked Heart
Cocaine speeds up action of the heart, which gets overworked and results in: rapid breathing, soaring blood pressure, palpitations, sweating, severe headache, pallor and, sometimes, heart failure and death. It also numbs the tongue, causes the mouth to dry. - LSD-Type Toxicity
A cocaine user easily falls victim to LSD-type toxicity, with all the dangers in an LSD toxicity seizure. Signs of cocaine toxicity are: rapid heart beat, dilated pupils, stomach cramps, nausea, convulsions, vomiting. Terrifying hallucinations and delusions usually attend cocaine overdose; death can occur. - Unwitting Over-Exertion
Grandiose feelings of super physical and mental prowess, as previously stated, are among cocaine's initial effects on a user. While such "lift" feelings yield great physical and mental work, they unhappily have led users to over-estimate their actual capabilities and collapse in physical exhaustion or break down mentally. - Long-Term Effects
Cocaine abuse can have long-lasting effects, like: physical emaciation, caused by loss of appetite and digestive disorders, and moral degeneration, caused by self-neglect, anti-social feelings and resort to crimes to feed the cocaine habit. Victims become social, physical, and moral wrecks. - Tricky Drug
Cocaine is a tricky drug, a "tricky lady," as some users say. Its effects are unpredictable. A user, instead of getting stimulated or a "high," may sink into a depressed state, even lapse into a coma or unconsciousness.
Hallucinations, which can be "good" or "bad," and fear-filled delusions may occur with cocaine abuse. They can be terrifying.
A hallucination commonly induced by cocaine is a sense of insects crawling over or under a user's skin. Addicts are known to scratch themselves until they bleed in an attempt to dig imaginary insects from under their skin. This has driven victims insane
Delusions of jealousy and persecution are common cocaine results.
These can lead to violence, with the cokie" or "cokehead" believing certain persons are scheming to kill him and, consequently, kills theni in what he believes is self-defense.
A cocaine user is, therefore, a Potentially dangerous person. In fact it is due to the bizarre behavior produced by cocaine that users are called 'crazed dope addicts."
Can Cocaine Kill You?
Yes. In fact, cases of death by cocaine are many. Cocaine can kill you in three ways:
- . It can so overwork your heart that it fails to cope with the "hyper-speed" exertion. When this happen5, it break5 down and conks out; you suffer heart failure and may die. The heart is like an engine; it is built for only so much effort and beyond that, it fails.
- If you are lucky and your heart holds while with cocaine, you still face your second death-by-cocaine likelihood: Slow death, estimated to take you in about five years. Cocaine medical studies show, cuts down your life expectancy to just about five years from the time you get hooked on this "Super- speed" drug. It takes a heavy toll on a user's liver, heart and body, tests show.
- You can kill yourself too. This is a cornmon result
of psychotic paranoia (violent, fear-filled insanity). This is
caused by terror "trips" in the mind which cocaine abuse
triggers, much like LSD and other hallucinogens do.
[ Back top ]