Cocaine and Crack-Cocaine--Effects of Cocaine Use

It is profoundly unwise to take crack-cocaine. The brain has evolved a truly vicious set of negative feedback mechanisms. Their functional effect is to stop us from being really happy for long. The initial short-lived euphoria of a reinforcer as powerful as crack will be followed by a "crash". This involves anxiety, depression, irritability, extreme fatigue and possibly paranoia. Physical health may deteriorate. An intense craving for more cocaine develops. In heavy users, stereotyped compulsive and repetitive patterns of behaviour may occur. So may tactile hallucinations of insects crawling underneath the skin ("formication"). Severe depressive conditions may follow; agitated delirium; and also a syndrome sometimes known as toxic paranoid psychosis.

The social consequences of heavy cocaine use can be equally unpleasant. Users are likely eventually to alienate family and friends. They tend to become isolated and suspicious. Most of their money and time is spent thinking about how to get more of the drug. The compulsion may become utterly obsessive. The illusion of free-will is likely to disappear. During a "mission", essentially a 3-4 day crack-binge, users may consume up to 50 rocks a day. Whereas "empathogens" such as ecstasy - which trigger the release of far more serotonin than dopamine - will typically promote empathy, trust, compassionate love and sociability, mainly dopaminergic drugs, if taken on their own and to excess, can easily have the reverse effect. Simplistically, cocaine tends to be a "selfish" drug.