Cocaine addiction: get help

By supporting your loved one, you can help that person to achieve a healthier, more balanced life. It makes blood vessels in the nose constrict, cutting off oxygen flow to the nasal tissues. Other chemicals that dealers add to cocaine can also irritate the lining of the nose. Inhaling cocaine can lead to infections of the nasal and oral cavities. Because cocaine constricts blood vessels, frequent cocaine or crack use can cut off the supply of oxygen-rich blood to the intestines, causing the bowel to die and rupture. Much of the internal damage cocaine causes, however, is invisible.

Key signs of a cocaine overdose include a fast heart rate, elevated blood pressure, faster breathing, high body temperature, sweating, widened pupils and agitation. Overdose can occur unexpectedly and may even happen the first time someone tries cocaine. Using high doses or mixing cocaine with alcohol or other drugs increases the risk of overdose.

What to do if Someone You Love is Abusing Cocaine

Even if you stop using it for a long time, you could still have cravings for the drug. 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. If you have started to use cocaine frequently, and are finding it hard to stop, this is called cocaine dependence (also known as cocaine addiction).

Each drug puts a lot of pressure on the central nervous system and the heart. Crack cocaine is the smokable form of the drug and comes as crystals known as rocks or stones. It acts as a short lived central nervous system stimulant and local anaesthetic. If you or someone you know is experiencing a cocaine overdose, call 911 and seek emergency medical treatment. Cocaine smugglers and drug dealers sometimes swallow large amounts of cocaine in condoms or balloons to hide it from law enforcement. The packets can easily break open inside the body and cause a fatal cocaine overdose.

Other life-changing complications

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. This cycle can lead to cocaine use disorder, in which you have trouble controlling how much and how often you use the drug even when it has negative effects on your life. This makes you compulsively crave or use substances like cocaine. Some of the side effects of cocaine depend on how you take the drug. If you snort it, you might have nosebleeds, loss of smell, hoarseness, nasal irritation, runny nose, or trouble swallowing.

• Recreational cocaine users have been found to have harder arteries, thicker heart muscle walls, higher blood pressure, and up to a 35 higher risk of a hardened aorta, compared with people who have never used the drug.
• Addiction is personal, and different treatment plans may be more effective for some individuals than others.
• Dopamine acts as a pacesetter for many nerve cells throughout the brain.
• Researchers are seeking to understand how cocaine’s many longer term effects produce addiction’s persistent cravings and risk of relapse.
• People use coke for its intense psychological effects, like euphoria and boosted confidence.

Not only that, but we provide co-occurring disorder treatment for those individuals who struggle with addiction plus another mental health disorder, such as depression. Our programs give you all the tools you need to put cocaine abuse behind you. Cocaine produces its psychoactive and addictive effects primarily by acting on the brain’s limbic system, cocaine addiction treatment a set of interconnected regions that regulate pleasure and motivation. An initial, short-term effect — a buildup of the neurochemical dopamine — gives rise to euphoria and a desire to take the drug again. Researchers are seeking to understand how cocaine’s many longer term effects produce addiction’s persistent cravings and risk of relapse.