Q: What is cocaine?
A: Cocaine is a powerful drug made from the leaves of the coca plant, which is found mostly in South America. The plant’s leaves produce a paste. This paste is purified to produce a white powder. The powder is often weakened by mixing it with sugar, cornstarch or talcum powder. Some street names for cocaine are “coke,” “snow”, “C” and “flake.”
Q: Is cocaine an upper or a downer?
A: Cocaine is an upper. It stimulates the body’s nervous system.
Q: How does a person take cocaine?
A: Cocaine is often sniffed or snorted through the nostrils and absorbed into the body through the respiratory tract. Sometimes cocaine is smoked or injected.
Q: What are freebase and crack cocaine?
A: Freebase cocaine is cocaine that has been chemically changed so that it can be smoked. Crack cocaine is made by mixing cocaine and baking soda and heating the mixture. When the mixture cools and dries it forms clumps known as rock or crack. These “rocks” can be smoked.
Some crack and freebase users heat it up in glass pipes and inhale the vapours. Others add it to tobacco or marijuana cigarettes.
Q: What are some of the effects of cocaine?
A: All forms of cocaine have the same effects. Because it increases the activity in the nervous system, cocaine produces increased alertness, high energy and euphoria. These effects are followed by agitation, anxiety and decreased appetite.
Cocaine also causes higher blood pressure, rapid heartbeat and breathing, and sweating. Taking a large amount of cocaine can cause shallow breathing, unpredictable or violent behaviour, twitching, hallucinations, chest pain, blurred vision, vomiting and even heart attacks.
Q: How long do the effects of cocaine last?
A: The cocaine high can last from five minutes to two hours. When users come down or “crash,” they feel very depressed, anxious and irritable. Many users take repeated doses to keep the high going and avoid the crash. Others try to modify the effects or stop binges with other drugs like alcohol, tranquillizers or heroin.
Q: Is it safer to snort, smoke or inject cocaine?
A: There is no safe way to use cocaine. All three ways have the same effects, but injecting or smoking cocaine produces these effects faster and more intensely than snorting.
No matter how cocaine is used, it can cause overdoses.
Q: What happens to people who use cocaine for a long time?
A: Using cocaine regularly over a long time can leave users agitated and cause mood swings and depression. It can also result in a loss of appetite, sleep problems and sexual problems.
When cocaine is snorted, it can damage tissue in the nose. Over time, snorting cocaine can cause stuffed, runny, chapped or bleeding noses, and holes in the barrier separating the nostrils.
People who smoke cocaine can develop lung and breathing problems. Some people cough up black phlegm or even blood.
People who inject cocaine—especially if they share needles—are at risk of getting infectious diseases like hepatitis and HIV (the virus that causes AIDS).
Q: Is crack more dangerous than cocaine?
A: Because it is smoked, crack reaches the blood and brain very quickly. Smoking it causes the most intense and addictive high. The sudden increase in cocaine in the blood may mean a greater chance of seizures, heart attack and stroke.
Q: Do people get addicted to cocaine and crack?
A: Yes. Cocaine can actually change people’s brain chemistry and create a craving that makes it very hard for them to stop using cocaine.
Crack is also addictive, and because it is smoked, an addiction can develop quickly. That is because crack reaches the brain quickly and causes a brief high, which is then followed by a severe low. That low makes people want to use more crack to get back to the high. This pattern can quickly lead to addiction.
