Everything you need to know about cocaine

Recreational use

As a recreational drug, cocaine is known as powder, snow, ski, soft, blow, slopes, coca, marching powder, benzoylmethylecgonine, and nose candy.

It is normally found as a white, crystalline powder or as an off-white, chunky substance.

In powder form, it usually consists of cocaine hydrochloride diluted with other substances, such as lidocaine, a local anesthetic, sugars (lactose), inositol, and mannitol.

Diluting the cocaine enables the seller to make more profit by "stretching" the amount of pure cocaine they have to sell.

Cocaine can be taken by:

• Snorting or inhaling through the nose. It enters the bloodstream via the nasal tissues
• Injecting, which releases it directly into the bloodstream
• Smoking or inhaled into the lungs, where it rapidly enters the bloodstream

What is crack?

Crack is the street name for a type of cocaine that has had the hydrochloride removed, making it possible to smoke.

When the mixture is heated, it makes a crackling sound, hence the name. Crack producers make crack with baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) or ammonia and water, and it is heated to remove the hydrochloride.

The crack smoker receives large doses of cocaine. The effect is intense and virtually immediate, as with injected cocaine, but the "high" lasts only around 5 minutes.

Effects

Cocaine has a very powerful stimulating effect on the nervous system. It raises levels of dopamine, a neurotransmitter linked to pleasure, movement, and the brain's reward circuit.

Normally, neurons release dopamine in response to a pleasurable stimulus, such as the smell of good food. Once the dopamine has passed on its message, it returns inside the neuron, and the signal stops.

Cocaine stops the dopamine from getting back into the neuron, so it accumulates and continues to sendTrusted Source the pleasurable message to the brain.

The excess dopamine gives the user a feeling of enhanced well-being, euphoria, alertness, motor activity, and energy.

The effects generally last between 15 and 30 minutes, but shorter with crack.

 Source: Medical News Today