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Cocaine is a powerfully addictive stimulant drug made from the leaves of the coca plant native to South America. Although healthcare providers can use it for valid medical purposes, such as local anesthesia for some surgeries, cocaine is illegal. As a street drug, cocaine looks like a white crystal powder. Street dealers often mix it with cornstarch, talcum powder, or flour to increase profits. They may also combine it with other drugs, such as the stimulant amphetamine.
Popular nicknames for cocaine include:
People snort cocaine powder through the nose or rub it into their gums. Others dissolve the powder in water and inject it into the bloodstream. Some people inject a combination of cocaine and heroin, called a Speedball.
Another popular method is to smoke cocaine processed to make a rock crystal (also called “freebase cocaine”). The crystal is heated to produce vapors that are inhaled into the lungs. This form of cocaine is called Crack, which refers to the crackling sound of the rock as it’s heated.
People who use cocaine often take it on binges—taking it repeatedly within a short time, at increasingly higher doses—to maintain their high.
The brain’s reward circuit, which controls feelings of pleasure.
Cocaine increases the natural chemical messenger dopamine levels in brain circuits controlling pleasure and movement. Typically, the brain releases dopamine in these circuits in response to potential rewards, like the smell of good food. It then recycles back into the cell that released it, shutting off the signal between nerve cells. Cocaine prevents dopamine from recycling, causing excessive amounts to build up between nerve cells. This flood of dopamine ultimately disrupts regular brain communication and causes cocaine’s high.
Short-term health effects of cocaine include:
Some people find that cocaine helps them perform simple physical and mental tasks more quickly, although others experience the opposite effect. Large amounts of cocaine can lead to bizarre, unpredictable, and violent behavior.
Cocaine’s effects appear almost immediately and disappear within a few minutes to an hour. How long the results last and how intense they are depend on the method of use. Injecting or smoking cocaine produces a quicker, more robust, but shorter-lasting high than snorting. The high from snorting cocaine may last 15 to 30 minutes. The high from smoking may last 5 to 10 minutes.
What are the other health effects of cocaine use?
Other health effects of cocaine use include:
Some long-term health effects of cocaine depend on the method of use and include the following:
Other long-term effects of cocaine use include being malnourished because cocaine decreases appetite, and movement disorders, including Parkinson’s disease, which may occur after many years of service. In addition, people report irritability and restlessness resulting from cocaine binges, and some also experience severe paranoia, in which they lose touch with reality and have auditory hallucinations—hearing noises that aren’t real.
Studies have shown that cocaine use speeds up HIV infection. According to research, cocaine impairs immune cell function and promotes the reproduction of HIV. People who use cocaine and are infected with HIV also increase their risk for co-infection with hepatitis C, a virus that affects the liver. Read more about the connection between cocaine and these diseases in NIDA’s Cocaine Research Report:www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/cocaine.
Yes, a person can overdose on cocaine. An overdose occurs when the person uses too much of a drug and has a toxic reaction that results in severe, harmful symptoms or death. An overdose can be intentional or unintentional.
Death from overdose can occur on the first use of cocaine or unexpectedly after that. Many people who use cocaine also drink alcohol simultaneously, which is particularly risky and can lead to overdose. Others mix cocaine with heroin, another dangerous—and deadly—combination.
Some of the most frequent and severe health consequences leading to overdose involve the heart and blood vessels, including irregular heart rhythm and heart attacks, and the nerves, including seizures and strokes.
Because cocaine overdose often leads to a heart attack, stroke, or seizure, first responders and emergency room, doctors try to treat the overdose by treating these conditions with the intent:
As with other drugs, repeated use of cocaine can cause long-term changes in the brain’s reward circuit and other brain systems, which may lead to addiction. The reward circuit eventually adapts to the excess dopamine the drug brings. As a result, people take more potent and frequent doses to achieve the same high and feel relief from initial withdrawal. Withdrawal symptoms include:
Behavioral therapy may be used to treat cocaine addiction. Examples include:
While no government-approved medicines are currently available to treat cocaine addiction, researchers are testing some treatments, including:
For more information about cocaine, visit: www.drugabuse.gov/drugs-abuse/cocaine and www.drugabuse.gov/drugs-abuse/commonly-abused-drugs-charts#cocaine
For more information about drug use and HIV/AIDS, visit: www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/hivaids-drug-abuse-intertwined-epidemics
Source: National Institute on Drug Abuse; National Institutes of Health; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
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