Cocaine Addiction Rehab

Cocaine Addiction

Both a stimulant to the central nervous system and an appetite suppressant, users describe its effects as a euphoric sense of happiness and energy; this intense high is immediately followed by opposite, intense feelings of depression, edginess and a craving for more of the drug. The technical reason for the euphoric sensation comes about because when stimulating the central nervous system, cocaine interferes with the re-absorption process of dopamine. This buildup of dopamine cause continuous stimulation of receiving neurons, thus the euphoria. Cocaine also interferes with the way the brain processes chemicals so users need to use it more and more just to feel normal. Thus you have businessmen losing everything just to keep their high going; street users stealing to support their habit; and teens lying and stealing from their own parents even though they’ve been given everything for a happy life.

Cocaine Side Effects

Addiction can be quick and hard to break. Attempts to stop can be overwhelming resulting in depression. While heavy users intensify their high, they may also experience bizarre, erratic and violent behavior. These users may also experience muscle twitches, paranoia, anxiety, panic attacks, tremors and vertigo.
Long-term use can damage the brain and other organs.
Smoking cocaine can lead to chest pain, breathing difficulties, chronic cough and lung trauma and bleeding, acute respiratory problems, sleeplessness, headaches.
Chronic abuse includes severe cardiovascular problems including heart failure, brain hemorrhaging, strokes, and psychosis.
Cocaine destroys male sexual performance and can eventually cause impotence.

Signs of Cocaine Use

Signs to look for if you believe someone you know is using cocaine are: red, bloodshot eyes; a runny nose or frequent sniffling; a change in friends and in school grades or behavior; a change in normal eating and sleeping patterns; acting withdrawn or depressed and losing interest in those things he or she use to enjoy. A big red flag is the need for more money more frequently. Cocaine while readily available to all age brackets in smaller doses to get them started, is nonetheless expensive as a habit because they will eventually need more and more to sustain their habit. Regular users can speed hundreds, even thousands of dollars on Cocaine each week.

Some users affectionately call the drug “snow” and have described the high as the best feeling ever, as a euphoric sense of happiness along with increased energy. Taken in small amounts, cocaine can make the user talkative, mentally alert especially to sound, sight and touch; while others experience the opposite effect. Either which way, the experience is short lived. Many users of cocaine often don’t eat or sleep properly and can experience increased heart rate, increased temperature and blood pressure, muscle spasms and convulsions. Interestingly enough, as euphoric as the drug can make it’s users feel, this same drug can make people feel paranoid, angry, hostile and anxious, even when not high. Persons with pre-existing conditions are at an even higher risk as because just using cocaine once could induce a heart attack or stroke.

It has also been reported that users on a cocaine binge where the drug is taken repeatedly and in increasing doses, can experience increasing irritability, restlessness, and paranoia which could result in a full-blown paranoid psychosis where the person has lost his grip on reality and starts experiencing auditory hallucinations.

Not only does cocaine continue to be one of society's biggest problems with its addicted users doing whatever they have to in order to get their next fix creating physical and psychological ill effects on good portion of the population, but one of the greatest dangers associated with cocaine is the illegal drug trafficking between wholesalers in the United States and the distributors Columbia or other cocaine producing countries. The violence which goes hand in hand with these drug lords has taken its toll on way too many lives.
From www.cocaineaddictiononline.com