Addiction to any substance can leave you feeling alone — almost like nobody understands you and what you’re going through.
As the drug continues to grab a tighter grip on your life, it’s entirely likely that many close friends and family members will stop coming around. They may close off all contact with you.
This only adds to the feeling of loneliness.
With cocaine addiction, these feelings are intense as you battle to control your mood swings during the high from the substance and while sober.
Cocaine addiction can be treated. You can recover from it and live a happier and healthier life with those you love around you.
What Is Cocaine?
Cocaine is a stimulant drug that increases attention, energy, and alertness by releasing the feel-good hormone dopamine into the brain.
The drug usually begins to work on the person taking it immediately and will have a rush that lasts from 20-30 minutes. As a person grows more dependent on cocaine, they often will need to increase their dosage and the frequency of use to maintain a high from the drug.
Cocaine is made from the leaves of the South American coca plant. It is illegal for recreational use in the United States because of its high potential for addiction and misuse.
The drug is often sold on the streets of the United States and throughout the world as a fine, white powdery substance.
Drug dealers often “cut” cocaine with different substances. To cut a drug is to add other substances that dilute the power of the substance. With cocaine, substances like baking soda, cornstarch, and flour are combined with it. This allows for greater profits for drug dealers.
In a far more dangerous way of cutting, cocaine can be cut with other drugs like heroin. This mixture creates a very high risk of overdose as the opposing effects of the substances lead people to use more as the desired effects of cocaine are dampened by the heroin.
Cocaine is most often snorted, as usually depicted in popular culture. A person can also use cocaine by rubbing it into their gums or injecting it into veins.
The Difference Between Crack and Cocaine
Another drug commonly heard of is crack cocaine.
Knowledge of crack cocaine began in the 1980s with a huge rush of crack addictions in the United States and media coverage of the number of addictions and overdoses in the country.
Crack and cocaine are actually the same thing and perform the same functions in a person. So why do they have different names?
The differences between cocaine and crack cocaine, or simply crack, are the methods of use and the appearance of the drugs.
Again, cocaine is a powdery white substance, while crack cocaine is a rock crystal. Crack cocaine is absorbed by smoking.
The crack name comes from the sound that is made when it is heated. A person will heat the rock crystal and inhale the fumes to get high.
Crack is created by mixing cocaine with baking soda and water.
While both drugs are incredibly addictive, crack is often described as being more addictive.
While cocaine often brings a high that lasts from 20-30 minutes, crack provides a high that can last as little as five minutes. The drug wears off so quickly that it leaves a person wanting more as the come-down from crack leaves them feeling very low and depressed.
As the United States faced an unprecedented epidemic of crack use in the 1980s and 1990s, legal penalties for crack possession were strengthened and remain more harsh than the penalties for cocaine possession.
While cocaine is expensive, crack is cheaper and easier to get. That combined with the harsher legal penalties has landed many people who use crack cocaine in incarceration.
How Common Is Cocaine Use?
The 2019 National Survey of Drug Use and Health, performed by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, found that cocaine use in the United States has decreased in the past two decades. However, there are still more than 1 million Americans with a diagnosable addiction to cocaine.
That same 2019 survey found that 1.9 million Americans had used cocaine in the past month.
While cocaine and crack use have decreased substantially, it remains a true threat to many lives in our country.
In Nebraska, an estimated 25,000 Nebraskans use cocaine in any given year.
Effects of Cocaine Drug Use and Addiction
Cocaine use can and will come with serious, and life-threatening, effects. As little as one dose is enough to create an addiction.
Cocaine has an immediate impact upon use. The effects you may feel or see when cocaine is used include:
- Increased alertness
- Burst of energy
- Paranoia (fear someone wants to hurt you)
- Sensitivity to sound, sight, or touch
- Dilated pupils
- Decreased appetite
- Increased blood pressure
- Racing heartbeat
- Muscle spasms and twitches
The effects of cocaine use don’t only occur in the short term. Over the course of time, with continued use of cocaine, you may face additional effects like:
- Hallucinations (seeing or hearing things that aren’t there)
- Lung damage
- Mood swings
- Heart disease
- Heart attack
- Decay of critical organs
Non-physical effects of cocaine addiction can occur as well, effects like job loss, homelessness, legal troubles, financial struggles, and loss of friendships or relationships.
Becoming addicted to cocaine can also lead to many mental health disorders that were previously undetected. They include:
- Suicidal thoughts
- Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
Am I Addicted to Cocaine?
Cocaine addiction, like other addictions, can be tricky to uncover. However, sometimes it is more obvious than not.
There are a few signs that can help you determine if you are addicted to cocaine.
The display of one or more of these things can be a sign of cocaine addiction:
- Choosing cocaine over important obligations
- Strong cravings or urges for cocaine
- Continuing to increase the amount and frequency of use
- Feeling withdrawal symptoms
- Inability to control use
- Losing contact with family or friends because of cocaine use
Who Is at Risk For Cocaine Addiction?
Cocaine addiction is not something that discriminates. Anyone can become addicted, but there are certain things that can play a role in whether someone will become addicted.
The first in a list of commonalities among those with cocaine addiction is age.
Those who are exposed to drugs — regardless of the exact substance — at an early age have an increased risk for addiction later in life.
Related to age in risk factors is environment. For those who grew up around adults who were actively using drugs, the risk of becoming addicted is higher.
There are also genetic factors that go along with environmental factors. If a relative has struggled with addiction, you may be at higher risk.
The final and maybe most common risk factor is mental health. Mental health and substance use are cousins to one another.
For those with mental health disorders such as anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), or ADHD, the risk for addiction is heightened.
Saying these things does not mean that someone exposed to any or even many of these risk factors will develop an addiction. Again, addiction can happen to anyone.
Overcoming Cocaine Drug Abuse Addiction
Overcoming cocaine addiction is entirely possible. However, overcoming it alone is not as likely.
Trying to overcome addiction alone in general is much more difficult and much less successful than overcoming it with the help of professionals.
Recovery from cocaine addiction begins with an intense experience of withdrawing from the dependency you have grown within your mind and body.
Having the assistance of a group of medical professionals to help you through the detox and into treatment programs is key to making true change in your life.
Cocaine has a way of taking over and dominating your behaviors, your emotions, and your physical being. As you fight back against the dependence your mind and body have developed, you may feel extreme discomfort.
For these moments, it’s best to be surrounded by a team to help you along.
Detoxing From Cocaine With Supervision
Detoxing or quitting cocaine cold turkey on your own is dangerous. The withdrawal symptoms are intense and can lead to serious health consequences without the supervision of doctors and nurses.
By attending a detox program like the one at Northpoint Nebraska, patients can get 24-hour-per-day monitoring to help them throughout this process.
Among the possible symptoms felt, and reduced with the help of medical supervision, are:
- Cocaine cravings
- Muscle aches
- Difficulty concentrating
- Nerve pain
- Nausea and vomiting
- General discomfort
Cocaine withdrawal symptoms can begin as soon as three hours after the last dose if a person commonly uses it. Once a person hits 24 hours, cravings and discomfort really begin to take shape.
Days two to seven of withdrawing from cocaine are the most difficult. Intense cravings lead to insomnia (sleeplessness), depression, and mood swings.
After two weeks, withdrawal symptoms have generally gone away, as long as detoxing is followed with treatment.
Preparing for Cocaine Abuse Treatment
Treatment is scary.
Your mind has convinced you of the need for cocaine, and your body craves it. The thought of stopping is not easy to accept, even though you can see the benefits.
Sometimes you need the help of your family and friends to realize you need treatment.
If you are the family or friend of someone addicted to cocaine, you might think holding a meeting with your loved one about the benefits of treatment may scare them away. It is possible, if you go about it the wrong way, that your loved one will take it as an attack.
By approaching them in a calm and caring manner, you are likely to get much further in your attempts to help.
It is important to express your point without accusing them. Use statements of understanding, and express yourself to them by talking about your feelings and not how they should feel.
Treating Cocaine Addiction
There are several options for handling cocaine addiction in treatment, especially at Northpoint Nebraska.
We have a 44-bed facility to handle inpatient treatment, on top of multiple outpatient options. Both are suitable for overcoming cocaine addiction.
After detox, regardless of the program you enter, you will receive a mix of treatment that is tailored to your personal needs.
At Northpoint, we believe by offering evidence-based treatments, we give our patients the best chance at recovery.
For cocaine addiction, the toll taken on the body from the drug is huge. We believe a well-rounded treatment for cocaine addiction begins with working on your physical fitness and nutritional wellness.
By working on your body while also taking part in counseling to help with mental challenges in recovery, you set yourself up well for long-term recovery.
Counseling in individual therapy sessions is classic and well-known to be among the most important aspects of recovery. In speaking with one of our therapists, you will work on reaching the root cause of your drug misuse and put together a plan for avoiding future use.
Group therapy and family therapy also offer great benefits for those in cocaine addiction treatment.
In group therapy, you will learn that you are not alone in your addiction. These sessions will provide clarity of the fact that cocaine addiction is not a discriminatory addiction, and that it can affect anyone.
Cocaine addiction can cause a lot of strain within a family. Family therapy will help heal the relationships damaged along the way.
It will also be important to discover if there are any underlying mental health disorders you are facing. When there are overlapping mental health and substance use disorders, we call that co-occurring disorders.
If a patient comes in and is treated only for substance use but has an underlying mental health disorder that isn’t found and treated, they are more likely to return to their substance of choice.
Offering all of these things and more allows our patients to see success in their long-term recovery.
Call Northpoint Nebraska Today
Northpoint Nebraska is prepared to provide the top level of treatment for you or your loved one to overcome, and heal from, cocaine addiction.
With inpatient and outpatient options, we are prepared to gain control over your addiction with you in a variety of ways.
Call us at 402-275-4333 to speak with an admissions specialist today.