Someone who uses cocaine frequently will develop a dependence on it, meaning they need to have it in order to feel normal. Once a dependence has developed, a tolerance will develop and cocaine withdrawal symptoms will occur when stopping use. Use of cocaine causes abnormally fast heart rhythms and a marked elevation of blood pressure (hypertension), which can be life-threatening.
If you use cocaine regularly or to excess, you may have long-lasting and serious problems with your physical and mental health. It can affect your heart, brain, lungs, gut, and kidneys as well as your emotional health and daily life — especially if you become addicted. Even as total overdose deaths plateaued, cocaine-related mortality continues to rise, a sign that cocaine’s resurgence is real and far from benign.
Treatment is available for those who struggle with cocaine. The routes of use can also lead to specific adverse effects. Cocaine also reduces blood flow to the gastrointestinal system, which can induce tears and ulcerations in the stomach and GI tract. Benthamiana also naturally contains nicotine, separating the cocaine from nicotine and related alkaloids would be challenging.
Many people who are addicted to cocaine go through a phase called withdrawal when they first do this. Withdrawal can be difficult, so it may be best to do it with the help of a medical professional. Another reason cocaine can lead to substance use disorder is that each time you use it, your body builds a tolerance. That means you have to use more and more of the drug to get high. Since it’s an illegal drug, you can never be sure about the quality of cocaine. To make more money, dealers may “cut” the drug with other substances, like flour, baking soda, cornstarch, or talcum powder.
Cocaine Addiction And Abuse
Cocaine is highly addictive and has poor bioavailability when taken orally. Individuals often engage in repeated use by either insufflating it intranasally or converting it to crack cocaine for vaporization. Cocaine addiction can cause several negative effects that ripple through a person’s life. Some of these effects are physical, includinginsomnia,feeling shaky,poor memoryand evendeath. Other effects of cocaine addiction are indirect but still harm a person’s quality of life, like anegative impact on your social life, career and loved ones.
Impact of illicit cocaine
Although there is no one single cause of cocaine addiction, addictive disease is generally believed to be the result of a combination of genetic background and environmental risk factors. Those from high-risk family environments are particularly susceptible to the development of addictive disease, and they need to be aware of this information during their preadolescent period. However, the presence of an addict in the family does not mean that a person can be certain to become an addict.
Rehab can take place in bothinpatientand outpatient settings. Sometimes, inpatient rehab is longer-lasting and takes place in a home-like environment, a rehab setting known asresidential rehab. In other cases, a person may benefit fromoutpatient rehab, living at home or at a sober living center and coming to the rehab facility for therapy sessions. Call 911 for an ambulance as opposed to bringing someone by car to a hospital emergency department. Animal research suggests the orbitofrontal cortex sustains some level of damage over long periods of cocaine use.
- Although most people today recognize that cocaine is addictive, thousands are still drawn to it.
- Whether you are struggling with addiction, mental health or both, our expert team is here to guide you every step of the way.
- But we need much more research into whether the vaccine is safe and effective over the long term.
- Over the long term, the effects of a cocaine addiction can become even more pronounced, reflectingthe toll that cocaine abuse can take on the body.
- Regardless, anyone who uses cocaine is at risk for an overdose.
Common Cocaine Nicknames and Street Names
If someone you know lives with a cocaine addiction or is using cocaine recreationally and wants to stop, it’s time to seek professional help. The Recovery Village provides care to those struggling with cocaine.Reach outto one of our knowledgeable representatives today to learn how you can start on your path to recovery. Cocaine Anonymousis a free support group to help cocaine addicts in recovery.
This can make it difficult to address their behavior or confront the situation that’s unfolding. The more these symptoms pile up, though, the more urgent the problem becomes. When this occurs, a person constantly needs to take larger amounts to feel the same familiar effects. Though no amount of cocaine is “safe” to take, the drug can be more dangerous in larger doses and put you at risk of an overdose.
How is cocaine use disorder treated?
- This irritation leads to symptoms such as a runny nose, nasal congestion, and excessive or thickened mucus.
- Insufflating (snorting) cocaine commonly causes increased mucus production due to irritation and inflammation of the nasal passages.
- Mixing cocaine and other substances can be dangerous because your overdose risk increases when you take multiple substances together.
- While this may not work for everyone,teletherapyoffers flexible scheduling to give you access to licensed professionals at a time and place convenient for you.
- Rehab focuses on helping you explore why you began to rely on cocaine in the first place and develop coping strategies that can help protect you against further cocaine use.
When you heat the rock crystal and breathe the smoke into your lungs, you get a high that’s almost as fast and strong as when you inject it. That’s one reason crack cocaine became popular in the 1980s. The drug is made from the leaves of the coca plant, which grows almost nowhere other than the northern and western regions of South America.
Mixing Cocaine With Alcohol And Other Drugs
Cocaine overdoses present as heart attack or stroke, disrupting body temperature regulation and causing psychosis and other mental health symptoms. The Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) found nearly three-quarters (72.5%) of cocaine-related emergency visits involved at least one other substance, most commonly alcohol or opioids. These patients rarely presented with straightforward cocaine intoxication; their clinical pictures were complex, often dominated by opioid overdose or cardiac complications. But it carries many risks, including overdose and serious physical and mental side effects as well as addiction.
Men are usually significantly more likely to consider or attempt suicide than women. But being a cocaine abuser doubled the risk for attempted suicide, as did a history of sexual abuse. Upon the recent death of the luminous Diane Keaton, forever “Annie Hall,” I found myself reflecting on the cocaine epidemic epitomized by that movie, because, now, cocaine is back, but more lethal, and often mixed with fentanyl. Although most overdose deaths involve opioids, 182,502 persons died of overdoses involving stimulants (with or without other drugs) in the United States during January 2021–June 2024, accounting for 59% of all overdose deaths.
Overdose Mortality and the Fentanyl Connection
Surgeons used it to block pain before local anesthetic were available. A common thread among those who use cocaine is the unpredictable and extreme changes in mood. A loved one who develops a cocaine addiction can become distant and unrecognizable from the person you used to know.
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They may also use medication to treat other complications you have. Many people start to build a tolerance after their first use of cocaine. You may develop depression, unpredictable mood changes, paranoia, or even violent behaviors cocaine abuse & addiction toward yourself and others. You could have hallucinations, meaning you see or hear things that aren’t there.