Cocaine Effects and Addiction
In speaking about cocaine abuse and cocaine addiction it is important to understand some of the history of cocaine in America, which has been addressed 
previously with the articles on the history of drugs in America. This article is written to help one understand the nature of the drug so that one can have truth about cocaine rather than the many street myths.
Cocaine addiction in America
It is estimated that as many as three to four million people are chronic cocaine users in America. Chronic use denotes a continual use and craving for the drug. In the 1997 National Household Survey, a survey that estimates the extent of drug use in America, found that there were 600,000 crack users in our country. A figure that has seemed to stay close to that range since the 1980s.
Since cocaine’s early use in the 1800s, there as been the prevalent myth that cocaine is a non-addictive substance because it lacks the traditional withdrawal symptoms that are observed with alcohol and opiates, such as heroin. It is true that cocaine doesn’t have such extreme physical withdrawal symptoms, but it has powerful psychological addictive properties. Cocaine is rarely used by itself, but is usually part of a polydrug abuse situation with alcohol being the drug most commonly combined with cocaine use. Since cocaine causes nervousness and paranoia with continued use, it is commonly combined with “downers”, such as Valium, Ativan and even heroin. In adolescents, it found that it is popular to use cocaine in combination with alcohol and marijuana.
Cocaine is a naturally occurring alkaloid usually extracted from the leaves of the coca shrub, which is native to the Andes Mountains of Peru and Bolivia. With the huge profits that come from its sale, it is now cultivated in Colombia, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and the West Indies, and Ecuador. As early as the 6th century, the Peruvian Indians chewed the coca leaves to extract the mental effects so as to better handle the consequences of the cold, hunger and fatigue. When the coca leaves were introduced to Europe, the Germans learned to produce its alkaloid, cocaine.
As most people know, Coca-Cola was originally an elixir comprised of coca leaves and caffeine which created the wealth that founded today’s company. Coca-Cola was forced by the Harrison Narcotic Act of 1914 to remove the cocaine properties from its drink, but continued to make the drink with caffeine in hopes that they would lose their addicted public.
Cocaine in America today
Today cocaine comes into America mainly from South America where it is converted to cocaine hydrochloride and is exported at about 95% purity. After going through many different distributors, it can hit the streets in the U.S. at anywhere from 0 to 95% purity. Intermediate distributors will dilute, or cut, the cocaine to increase their profits, using sugars, or other drugs that act like cocaine, like procaine or lidocaine. It has also been found to be sold, at times, without a trace of cocaine, but with caffeine, amphetamine, PCP added to simulate the cocaine effects.
Addiction myth — The important information to remember about cocaine is the fact that it is HIGHLY addictive. The myth that cocaine is non-addictive has been around for years, but laboratory research and personal testimony prove quite the opposite to be the case.
Cocaine effects
The duration of effects varies according to the route of administration. If snorted, the effects will peak within 30 minutes with the duration of effects lasting 1-3 hours. If used intravenously or smoked, the effects peaking seconds to two minutes, but the effects only last 15-30 minutes. The metabolites of cocaine can be detected in the urine for 24 to 72 hours, except in chronic users who may how positive test results for up to two weeks. These figures do not take into account the cocaine that is stored in the fat tissue of the body.
The History of Drug Abuse and Addiction in America and the Origins of Drug Treatment part 5
As of the last installment in this series, we had traced the history of drug abuse and addiction to one of its most expansive periods, the 1970s through the 1980s. 
The government continued to be made aware of new, arising drug problems and continued to strengthen the punitive laws regarding different drugs of abuse. However, as soon as one drug, or a family of drugs, rose to the government’s attention and was addressed, there was another waiting to take its place. Drug and alcohol treatment was becoming more familiar to the public as commercial, for-profit treatment programs were becoming common, even in rural America. These drug treatment programs proved to have very poor success and their legacy has led the public and the drug addicted public to a level of apathy when it comes to believing that anyone can recover from addiction.
The American culture was moving from one drug-of-choice to another as people searched for a right combination of pharmaceutical support to make life more manageable. A history of drug abuse in America wouldn’t be complete without mentioning Methaqualone (Quaalude).
Methaqualone became an urban legend for its ability to enhance sexual desire and became one of the “recreational” drugs-of-choice in America. Methaqualone was originally synthesized in India as a possible antimalarial agent, but the sleep-producing qualities of the drug were profound and it was hoped that it could become an alternative to barbiturates.
Barbiturate drugs had been available for nearly a century and had become the family of drugs chosen for sleep problems, but they were abused because of the “high” they produced and it was problematic because the withdrawals were life threatening. Methaqualone was marketed as the safe, non-addicting alternative to barbiturates. Rorer Pharmaceuticals coined the commercial name of Quaalude and pushed physicians to freely prescribe this “safe” sleep aid. Producing a significant “high”, users sought out Quaaludes for any an all symptoms. However, like all of these stories, the drug became a problem with widespread abuse, acute reactions and fatal overdoses, and stiff restrictions were placed on the drug and, ultimately, it was taken off the market.
As America moved through the 1980s, both heroin and cocaine use persisted, and a few new drugs emerged. One of these was Ecstasy, a synthetic hallucinogen that was quickly outlawed. Of greater concern, however, was the reportedly new drug called “crack”…. referred to in the media as a cheap variety of street cocaine that could be smoked and was highly addictive.
Contrary to popular belief, crack is not a new substance, having been first reported in literature during the early 1970s. At the time, however, knowledge of crack, known then as “base” or “rock” (not to be confused with “rock cocaine”. Crack is processed from cocaine hydrochloride by adding ammonia or backing soda and water and by heating it to remove the hydrochloride. The result is a pebble-sized crystalline form of cocaine base. Interestingly, crack gets its name from the fact that the residue of sodium bicarbonate often causes a crackly sound when the substance is smoked.
The rediscovery of crack during the early 1980s seemed to occur simultaneously on the East and West Coasts.
Crack was an immediate success for a variety of reasons. First, it could be smoked rather than snorted. When cocaine is smoked, it is more rapidly absorbed and reportedly crosses the blood-brain barrier within six seconds, hence, an almost instantaneous high. Second, it was cheap. While a gram of cocaine for snorting may cost $60 or more depending on its purity, the same gram can be transformed into anywhere from five to thirty rocks. For the user, this meant that individual “rocks” could be purchased for as little as $5, $10 or $20. For the seller, $60 worth of cocaine hydrochloride could generate as much as $150 when sold as rocks. Third, it was easily hidden and transportable, and when sold in small glass vials, it could be readily scrutinized by potential buyers.
By the close of 1985, crack had come to the attention of the media and was predicted to be the “wave of the future” among substance abusers, and by mid-1986 national headlines were calling crack a glorified version of cocaine and the major street drug of abuse in the US. There was also the belief that crack was responsible for rising rates of street crime!’
Crack distribution rivalries had created homicide epidemics that turned entire stretches of urban America into “dead zones”, meaning that they were written off by law enforcement as too dangerous to patrol. Other victims were the users, the neighborhoods, “crack babies” (those born addicted) and child abuse of children born into crack using parents. For the better part of the 1980s cocaine and crack were drugs of epidemic proportions. How did America address this public health problem? Were there effective treatment programs available to this newly addicted and troubled population? We will discuss society’s response to this epidemic in our next issue.
Feel free to browse through this series of articles to learn the history of drugs and treatment in America.
Reference: Handbook of Drug Control In the United States by James A. Inciardi. Published by Greenwood Publishing Group, 1990.
The History of Drug Abuse and Addiction in America and the Origins of Drug Treatment part 4
In the last article on the history of drug abuse and addiction, we discussed the discovery of LSD and its immediate effects on society’s growth towards more 
and stronger drug abuse in the 1960’s. At this time a misinformation campaign that was telling the youth of America to “tune in, turn on and drop out” was becoming a fad. (This cryptic message meant to tune into what is happening, turn on to drugs, especially LSD and marijuana, and drop out of society’s expectations of your future.) Timothy Leary, who received immediate acceptance and became the guru of expanded consciousness with the help of LSD and other hallucinogens, delivered this message to 15,000 cheering youth in San Francisco in 1967.
At this time the country was involved in a failing war effort in Viet Nam and the youth of America were rebelling against traditional conservative values as well as the military draft. The idea that a new civilization could develop from altered states of awareness fit nicely into the counter-culture ideas of a new, youth-driven society.
The overwhelming acceptance of Leary’s message was threatening to mainstream society that lashed back at anyone who appeared to be supportive of anti-establishment philosophy. In response, news articles about how LSD had caused people to “blow their minds” became legion. One storied told of two teenagers who were “tripping” on LSD and stared directly into the sun until they were permanently blinded. This and other fear-based stories were never documented, and were probably not true, but they demonstrated society’s strong reaction to the psychedelic drug craze. LSD and other psychedelics were soon placed under strict legal control and by the end of the 1960’s the number of users was minimal.
Throughout the 1960s, heroin remained the most feared and romanticized drug in America, with estimates of a half a million addicted heroin user by the end of the decade. However, there weren’t any truly valid methods of estimating the incidence and prevalence of drug use in these years and these figures are probably lower than the actual drug use and abuse in the 1960s. However, studies do show that the annual production of barbiturate drugs exceeded one million pounds, the equivalent of twenty-four one-and one-half grain doses for every moan, woman and child in the nation, or enough to kill each person twice.1
In the early 1970s, amphetamines were being recognized as a drug of abuse in society. Amphetamines were synthesized in Germany during the 1880s, with their first American use being seen in the World War II. The Army issued Benzedrine and Dexedrine as a matter of course to the servicemen to relieve their fatigue and anxiety. After the war, these drugs became popular for truck drivers and those in weight control programs, but they soon were being used for their cocaine-like function and have become the most abused and addictive drug in many regions of society today.
The government conducted hearings about the extent of amphetamine abuse in the 1970s and laws were soon passed that tightened controls on the ability for physicians to easily prescribe amphetamines, which ultimately cut production of these drugs by 90%.
Feel free to browse through this series of articles to learn the history of drugs and treatment in America.
Editor
Department of Drug Education, Prevention, and Information
Narconon International
Reference: Handbook of Drug Control In the United States by James A. Inciardi. Published by Greenwood Publishing Group, 1990.
1. Carl D. Chambers, Leon Brill, and James A. Inciardi, :Toward Understanding and Managing Nonnarcotic Drug Abusers,” Federal Probation, March 1972, 50-55.
Related article on http://news.narconon.org: Increasing Incidence and Prevalence of Prescription Drug Abuse and Addiction
More drug information
The History of Drug Abuse and Addiction in America and the Origins of Drug Treatment LSD part 3
As mentioned in the last article, early in the 20th century the American press was picking its “drug-of-choice” to demonize, and by the 1930’s marijuana was 
labeled as wicked as sex had been in Victorian England. However, in the 1940’s drug abuse and addiction were not problems of enough magnitude to capture space in newspapers since Hitler and the buildup to WW II dominated America’s attention. By the 1950’s the prevailing concept of drug abuse and addiction was that of heroin addiction on the streets and alleys of urban ghettos.
The news media believed and reported that drug abuse and addiction was a problem among blacks ‘because of their newly found freedoms after WW II.’ How much of this perception was blind guesswork and how much was blatant racism is difficult to assess, but the truth is that drug abuse and addiction could be found in every racial group and in every urban center.
Hollywood offered the public a different perception of addiction in the post-war 50’s with the release of the film, The Man with the Golden Arm. The movie became controversial because its hero, Frank Sinatra, was a successful, white musician, but addicted to heroin. In the film, with the help of his beautiful wife, Kim Novak, he was able to recover from his addiction. Most of the public felt that heroin should be seen as a ghetto drug and not have any mainstream image.
The medical community at the time portrayed drug addiction in young addicts as having its roots in psychosis and neurosis. Terms such as ‘weak ego functioning,’ ‘defective superego,’ and ‘inadequate masculine identification’ demonstrate the 1950 American viewpoint of drug abuse and addiction. There was no drug rehabilitation treatment other than the isolation ward in general hospitals and psychiatric hospitals.
The 1960’s were a time of civil rights movements, political assassinations, anti-war protests, and ghetto riots. Naturally, these events shaped attitudes regarding drug use and abuse. Drug use during the 60’s was becoming mainstream, almost a right-of-passage for those who wanted to show they weren’t part of the ‘establishment’ (another term of the day.) By the end of the 60’s, America was being called ‘the addicted society.’
Given the civil unrest and young persons’ distrust of ‘anyone over 30,’ the climate was ripe for experimenting with drugs that were said to alter consciousness, the major candidate being LSD. Dr. Alber Hoffman of Sandoz Research Labs in Switzerland first isolated LSD in 1938, but it remained unappreciated until 1943 when Dr. Hoffman absorbed a small amount of LSD through his skin in a lab accident and began to hallucinate. He experienced the first LSD trip. In the 1960’s, Harvard psychologists Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (who later would change his name to Baba Ram Das) began seriously ‘experimenting’ with LSD, including their circle of colleagues and friends. They both were dismissed from their positions at Harvard, but welcomed their new role as ‘gurus’ of the expanding social movement to use (and abuse) drugs in America. The discovery and use of LSD divided America and may have fueled the social revolution that ushered in liberal attitudes and social change as never witnessed before. Drug abuse and addiction became badges of the ‘counterculture.’
It would take more than a decade for the pendulum to swing back.
Editor
Department of Drug Education, Prevention, and Information
Narconon International
find more lsd drug information
Feel free to browse through this series of articles to learn the history of drugs and treatment in America.
References:
Handbook of Drug Control In the United States by James A. Inciardi. Published by Greenwood Publishing Group, 1990.
Timothy Leary, “Introduction,” in LSD: The Consciousness-Expanding Drug, ed. David Solomon (New York: G.P. Putnam’s, 1964)
The History of Drug Abuse Addiction in America and the Origins of Drug Treatment
The details of the history of drug addiction in America can be assumed to have been part of the original colonies since narcotic (opiate) medications were 
common in London and were exported to our original settlers. Whether or not the health of any of our ancestors were compromised by opiate addiction isn’t totally revealed in our history, but given the ease with which one can become addicted to opiates through only casual use, and the ready availability of opiate concoctions (such as laudanum), one can assume that addiction arrived in America with the first comers.
We can document drug use back to the 1700’s when over-the-counter, patent medications were introduced for sale to the public. According to James A. Inciardi in his book Handbook of Drug Control In the United States, opium was the most common ingredient in these medicines, marketed to soothe the pain from ailments such as diarrhea, colds, fever, tooth aches, cholera, rheumatism, pelvic disorders and even athlete’s foot and baldness. These remedies were advertised as “painkillers,” “cough mixtures,” “women’s friends,” and other such enticing labels.
Dr. William Buchan’s Domestic Medicine, first published in Philadelphia in 1784 as a practical handbook on simple medicines for home use, recommended the tincture of opium (paragoric) for the treatment of common ailments. Dr. Buchan gave the readers a recipe to make their own tincture of opium to keep around the house to address common medical problems and other discomforts.
The shipping of medicines from London ended with the Revolutionary War. The American manufacturers of medicines were the first business entrepreneurs to seek national markets through widespread advertising. These medicines could be purchased in modest quantities from physicians, apothecaries, grocers, postmasters, and printers. One can find advertisements for these elixirs in every form of printed news and entertainment publications.
It is easy to see how quickly these “medications’ grew from the following accounts: A New York catalog listed some ninety brands of elixirs in 1804 and by 1857; a Boston periodical included almost 600 and in 1858; and one newspaper account totaled over 1,500 patent medicines. By 1905 the list grew to more than 28,000. One can assume that these “remedies” were used at a level bound to have been leading to some opiate addiction in America. One must remember that in these times there were no government regulations on any of these addictive opiate concoctions1.
In 1803, a German pharmacist isolated the chief alkaloid of opium, which was basically morphine, named after Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams. Around the same time, the hypodermic needle was invented, and by the time of the Civil War morphine was injected as a potent painkiller. Many German chemists played with the alkaloids of opium to create more and more potent opiate painkillers. Friedrich Bayer, of the famous Bayer Aspirin, invented diacetylmorphine in 1898, to treat pneumonia and tuberculosis and named it Heroin, from the German “heroisch” meaning heroic and powerful. Even though Bayer’s Heroin was promoted as a sedative for coughs and as a chest and lung medicine, it was advocated by some as a treatment for morphine addiction, since heroin was introduced as being non-addicting, and there we have the origin of “non-addictive” drugs being originally recommended to treat addiction with the subsequent paradox of creating many more addicts as a result. We also find our first literature regarding the need for a treatment for drug addiction.
The availability of immediate pain relief was becoming part of the American culture. In 1900 it was estimated that the small state of Vermont sold 3.3 million doses of opium a month. These were the times of the “snake oil” salesman. They were the first hucksters to use psychological lures to entice customers to buy their merchandise.1 The drug advertisements on television today assure us that the hucksters are still content with this effective level of marketing.
There were no legal restrictions on the importation or use of opium until the early 1900s. So by the turn of the 20th century there was unrestricted availability of opium, the influx of opium-smoking immigrants for East Asia, and the invention of the hypodermic needle, all of which were contributing to widespread compulsive drug abuse in America.
Our next article will look at how society responded to this epidemic of opiate addiction in America.
Feel free to browse through this series of articles to learn the history of drugs and treatment in America.
Editor
Department of Drug Education, Prevention, and Information
Narconon International
1. Handbook of Drug Control In the United States by James A. Inciardi. Published by Greenwood Publishing Group, 1990.
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