The word cocaine is seen as synonymous to the word addiction. Cocaine gives the impression of negativity to people, either emotionally or ideally. This substance is known to be easily abused and thus, users eventually become dependent to it and the cycle goes on and on. Like any other drugs, cocaine addiction destroys one’s life. It changes the individual in many ways, his perspectives, his motives, perception, and behaviors.
Cocaine is a powerful and extremely addictive drug. It came from the coca bush leaves. There are two primary forms of cocaine. The first one is the. It is used for snorting up the nose. The second is freebase, better known as crack cocaine.This is used for smoking. A small percentage of cocaine addiction is done intravenously. When cocaine is snorted, the cocaine powder gets inhaled up into the nose where it is readily absorbed into the bloodstream. Dopamine gets released when cocaine reaches the brain which stimulates feelings of pleasure. The crack cocaine, commonly called as “crack” is the name for the smokable form of cocaine. Crack is the street name given to the type of cocaine that has been processed into a smokable drug. Smoking crack cocaine propels large quantities of the drug to the lungs, producing an quick and powerful euphoric feeling. The rush is usually very strong, but does not last very long. The rocks of crack cocaine are ignited in a crack pipe and the resulting vapors get deeply inhaled.
Dosage for pleasure reasons crates an individual who will sooner or later turned into a cocaine addict. With frequent use, the person becomes tolerant with the drug and then becomes dependent with it. The person seemed to be yearning for the drug every now and then. Cocaine addiction is characterized as continuously craving for the drug in spite of the negative costs of cocaine to the person’s body and mind. The physical signs of cocaine abuse can vary, depending on the person. For one, cocaine acts as an appetite suppressant so cocaine abusers often aren’t hungry and end up losing considerable amounts of weight.
With cocaine addiction, the person’s life becomes controlled by the drug. Cocaine addicts are normally not interested with ordinary activities because they only focus on obtaining and taking the drug. Thus, people around these addicts are affected because they act together every day. Cocaine dependence often involves not only compelling cocaine use but also a wide range of dysfunctional behaviors. This can frequently get in the way with normal functioning in the family, workplace and community. Cocaine addiction also can put people at higher risk for a wide variety of other illnesses. These illnesses can be brought on by the addiction type behaviorswhich includes poor living and health habits that often come with the lifestyle of an addict and the toxic effects of the cocaine itself.
Medical studies have focused their attention to one drug that could have possibly treat cocaine addiction. The compound GBR 12909 was initially tested as a potential antidepressant. With GBR 12909, the patients’ cocaine-seeking attitudes were eliminated within a few hours without disturbing food-seeking behavior. Studies have shown that both GBR 12909 and cocaine inhibit the action of a protein called the dopamine transporter. By inhibiting the transporter, both GBR 12909 and cocaine elevate the levels of the pleasure-inducing chemical messenger dopamine outside the nerve cells, a process that increases and prolongs dopamine’s pleasurable effects. However, GBR 12909 acts more gradually and pumps up dopamine levels less than does cocaine. By attaching to the dopamine transporter, GBR 12909 also stops cocaine from binding there. GBR 12909′s chemical attractiveness for the transporter is 500 times that of cocaine, so it binds to the transporter and stays there for a long time. While it’s sitting on the transporter, cocaine has no access to the transporter, so the cocaine can no longer act to bring on euphoria. The therapy using GBR 12909 should be prolonged so that the medication to have time to transport the dopamine transporter levels back to where they were before the patient started taking cocaine. The breakthrough in the discovery of GBR 12909 could be a gateway to help cocaine addiction victims in dealing with the problem they are so afraid to face.
Cocaine addiction is quite a hard condition. One should seek medical attention.
