The effects of cocaine

The effects of cocaine/crack on the body

What is cocaine/crackCrack is simply another form of cocaine which comes from the coco plant and after creating cocaine all you do is add baking powder or any wheat base and you have created Crack. Crack has a lower melting point (90) than cocaine which allows it to be smoked. To make cocaine it involves 3 steps:• The leaves are ground up in a laboratory and saturated with a

chemical liquid that removes the Cocaine alkaline crystals.

• This produces a damp grey mud-like paste.

• The chemical liquid must now be dried, and removed from the cocaine crystals. It will become a dry white powder.

In the hands of poor farmers with no laboratory, dangerous flammable fuels like deisel and gasoline and ammonia are used.

The reason why you smoke crack rather snorting cocaine

People smoke crack because getting something into the lungs is an extremely quick way to get something to enter your blood stream. When the smoke is inhaled it slips through the membrane and straight to the brain in about 8 seconds. This is a lot faster than snorted cocaine which takes around 10 minutes to reach the brain.

What encouraged the use of cocainePeople may say that Hollywood glamorises the use of drugs by allowing teens to view hard drug use. Many well known movies have been made which are mostly about drugs for example “The Wolf of Wall Street, Spring Breakers and Project X. These films although are absolutely amazing and I highly recommend them, involve characters doing drugs without any concquences.

The initial effects

Initialy the person feels energised, alert and much more aware of their senses. In the brain crack acts releasing large amounts of Dopamine which gives you pleasure and happiness. Dopamine binds to neuron receptors causing pleasure.Dopamine is usually brought back into the neuron by the transporter but crack blocks it allowing more pleasure

The secondary effects of cocaine• Soon after the amazing high the Dopamine levels in the brain

fall causing an extreme low and a feeling of depression which is why most uses snort/smoke it again in order to reach the high again. Unfortuantely these Dopamine levels take a long time to be created causing addiction, restlessness and paranoia. In some cases crack can lead to something called Delusional Parasitosis which is a feeling that insects are crawling under your skin causing you to start to become irritated causing scratching.

Parts of the body affected The NoseMostly users snort cocaine and due to this they might suffer from nosebleeds and runny nose. In harsh long-term use, cocaine will corrode the cartilage between the nose and create a hole in the cartilage that divides the nostrils.

The Heart The nervous system, which is handled by the discharge of adrenaline, powerfully affected by the use of cocaine. This system reacts with cocaine and stimulates the heart rate, and decreases blood flow to the heart. This can lead to a heart attack.