Cocaine causes rapid distortion of neural systems. After ingestion, users are quickly “rewarded” with electrifying energy and delusional euphoria. It produces dependency at an equally alarming pace if used repeatedly. Frequent consumption results in psychosomatic complications and acute awareness states of being “on” and “off”. The “off” states call for increased volumes and eventual addiction, ending in severe mental and material backlash, including medical emergencies and sudden death.
Help for cocaine dependency
Chronic cocaine users usually endure multiple disorders, as well as polydrug vulnerabilities, requiring complex professional intervention. We are here to help.
Immediate effects of cocaine
Cocaine is a stimulant that provides bursts of energy, alertness, performance, endurance, competence, acute sensory perception, sociability and sexual prowess. It sustains activity at social events and boosts work productivity. Negative side effects include increased body heat, sweating, dehydration, rapid pulse, high blood pressure, tremors, delusions, possible paranoia, convulsions, coma, cardiac failure and other causes of sudden death.
The cocaine crash and legacy
After the sustained, energised activity of a cocaine fueled session, a deflated condition called a comedown or crash follows. The withdrawal symptoms include abnormal exhaustion and emotional decline and often a need for a “corrective” dosage. With repeated usage, strong cravings, sleep disorders, depression, anxiety, personality changes, poor hygiene, self-harming and numerous other comorbidities, can develop.
Relationship sabotage
Chronic users of cocaine can unintentionally become obsessed with the drug and neglect everything else, including the needs, wants and feelings of other people. They often resort to aggression, manipulation, false promises, avoiding responsibilities, taking extreme risks and even committing fraud or crime to sustain access. Their conduct frustrates others and causes enormous damage to relationships with intimates, friends and employers.
Cocaine uplifts and shatters you
Cocaine is an illegal psychostimulant that temporarily boosts your energy and perception levels. It is popular at parties and festive events, where it helps revelers to attune their social graces and sustain a high level of activity.
Cocaine is also used by workers and students to increase productivity and meet deadlines when they face a challenging task. Athletes sometimes use it to inappropriately raise their competitiveness.
It is available as a crystalised powder or in small chunks. It can be snorted, smoked or diluted in liquid and then injected. The type that is smoked is very popular and called “crack”. However, the powder is also often arranged in neat lines and snorted with a straw.
Street peddlers mix cocaine with other powders to increase the volume and the profit they make. They also mix it with other drugs to lure users into more addictions. In both cases the potential risk is increased, as it can contain poisonous impurities or the strength can be underestimated.
Cocaine is extremely addictive. It distracts the user into focusing intently on obtaining and using it, to the detriment of everything else. This destroys relationships, friendships and careers. Financial hardship is common and cocaine users are often unable to sustain employment, productivity, responsibilities or social tolerance, due to incapacity.
Frequent users experience severe withdrawals when the effect of the drug wears off and this compels them to continue taking it, in ever increasing quantities, regardless of the consequences and dangers. They may become aggressive, manipulative and can even turn to crime to obtain the drug. Possession and other illegal acts can result in arrest and imprisonment.
Cocaine use activates negative symptoms like extreme tiredness, impaired judgement, depression, anxiety, delusions, paranoia, tooth decay, nasal collapse, facial sores, hypertension, hyperthermia, dehydration, kidney failure, respiratory arrest, brain haemorrhaging, coma, heart failure, suicide, overdosing and other causes of sudden death.
Cocaine is a powerful stimulant and aesthetic. It is used worldwide as a narcotic with high psychological, but not physical dependence potential.
Treatment of cocaine addiction
Since the 1990s, along with a drastic decline in the price of cocaine, there has been an increase in cocaine use by all classes and age groups in major cities. The existing addiction help systems in the South Africa are in part inadequate for this development and for this situation. Most outpatient and inpatient services are adapted to the treatment of opiate addicts.
Purely cocaine-dependent people form a target group with other needs compared to opioid-dependent people. They are usually in significantly different socioeconomic situations (socially integrated and financially secure) than opiate addicts.
Cocaine craving / relapse
Cocaine substance craving is usually triggered by key stimuli (smells, music, pictures), by certain situations ( stress , moods, places) and almost always by the previous consumption of alcohol or other psychotropic substances .
The triggers change over time (during active consumption and especially during treatment).
The effect also changes over time (during active consumption and during treatment). The positive effects of cocaine are increasingly overshadowed by dependent consumption. The aim of the treatment is to identify one’s own high-risk situations or thoughts on cocaine at an early stage and to take appropriate preventive measures.
Relapses in abstainants are usually not due to a lack of abstinence motivation, but rather to imprudence or lack of planning. Results from brain research also show that substance craving for cocaine in former addicts can be triggered by appropriate key stimuli even after years of abstinence, d. H. the desire for substance can be influenced only partially at will.
Cocaine dependence
Comparison of the harmful effects of psychoactive substances on the basis of survey data among psychiatrists specializing in addiction and independent experts. Cocaine ranks as the drug with the second highest level of physical harm and the second highest dependency potential.
Comparison of addictive potential and ratio between usual and lethal dose of various psychoactive substances and cocaine after RS Gable.
After the cocaine intoxication depression can occur. This condition often causes these consumers to quickly return to the drug in order to escape the “cocaine depression”. This mechanism is dangerous because it can quickly lead to dependency.
The extreme exhilaration and the rapid decay of the effect increases the addictive potential of the drug considerably.
Under certain circumstances, therefore, it may come after the first cocaine use to a mental dependency. A physical dependence does not occur.
A peculiarity here (even more pronounced when smoking the cocaine base crack ) is the “episodic greed”: Even inexperienced consumers can, when the drug effect subsides, a strong desire to consume more. In extreme cases, this dynamic of consumption may result in so-called “binges” (episodes of frequent consumption) lasting many hours or even several days. A peculiarity of long-term cocaine abuse is the occurrence of the so-called conviction that insects move under their own skin. Besides, the cocaine dependence often becomes with a deterioration of the conscience in the context of the self-consciousness-enhancing effect in combination with the dynamics of consumption, which fades social awareness (which is why cocaine is sometimes referred to as an “ego drug”).
More information about residential cocaine addiction treatment with Recovery Direct click here.