Symtoms of Cocaine Addiction

Common Health Effects

Common health effects include heart attacks, respiratory failure, strokes, and seizures. Large amounts can cause bizarre and violent behaviour. In some cases, sudden death can occur on the first use of cocaine or unexpectedly thereafter.

Physical effects of cocaine use include constricted blood vessels, dilated pupils, and increased temperature, heart rate, and blood pressure. The duration of cocaine’s immediate euphoric effects, which include hyper stimulation, reduced fatigue, and mental clarity, depends on the route of administration. On the other hand, the faster the absorption, the shorter the duration of action. The high from snorting may last 15 to 30 minutes, while that from smoking may last 5 to 10 minutes. Increased use can reduce the period of time a user feels high and increases the risk of addiction.

Some users of cocaine report feelings of restlessness, irritability, and anxiety. A tolerance to the high may develop and many addicts report that they seek but fail to achieve as much pleasure as they did from their first exposure. Some users will increase their doses to intensify and prolong the euphoric effects. While tolerance to the high can occur, users can also become more sensitive to cocaine’s anaesthetic and convulsing effects without increasing the dose taken. This increased sensitivity may explain some deaths occurring after apparently low doses of cocaine.

Use of cocaine in a binge

Use of cocaine in a binge, during which the drug is taken repeatedly and at increasingly high doses, may lead to a state of increasing irritability, restlessness, and paranoia. This can result in a period of full-blown paranoid psychosis, in which the user loses touch with reality and experiences auditory hallucinations. Other complications associated with cocaine use include disturbances in hearth rhythm and heart attacks, chest pain and respiratory failure, strokes, seizures and headaches, and gastrointestinal complications such as abdominal pain and nausea. Because cocaine has a tendency to decrease appetite, many chronic users can become malnourished.

Different effects from the way cocaine is taken

Different means of taking cocaine can produce different adverse effects.

* Regularly snorting cocaine, for example, can lead to loss of sense of smell, nosebleeds, and problems with swallowing, hoarseness, and a chronically runny nose.

* Ingesting cocaine can cause severe bowel gangrene due to reduced blood flow.

* People who inject cocaine can experience severe allergic reactions and, as with any injecting drug user, are at increased risk for contracting HIV and other blood borne diseases.