Cocaine Side Effects

Cocaine side effects consist of constricted blood vessels, dilated pupils, increased body temperature, elevated heart rate, and higher than normal blood pressure. Some users of the drug have experienced jitters or even seizures while on cocaine. The side effects of snorting this drug often lead to nosebleeds, hoarseness, a persistently runny nose, and other associated problems. Users who inject the drug even once can succumb to severe allergic reactions, heart failure, and/or death. Frequent users of cocaine often experience agitation, depression, and insomnia. They may become increasingly paranoid, restless, and irritable. For some, these symptoms evolve into a mental illness that involves hallucinations and psychosis.

Cocaine side effects will often lead to heart problems that have serious and even fatal outcomes such as:

  • Dilated cardiomyopathy - and enlarged heart
  • Endocarditis - inflammation of the heart lining
  • Heart attack, cardiac arrest, and sudden death
  • Myocarditis - heart muscle damage leading to heart failure
  • Pulmonary edema - fluid in the lungs
  • Vascular thrombosis - clots in the coronary arteries

Cocaine addiction is the source of numerous cocaine side effects including chest pain, heart attack, irregular heartbeat, respiratory failure, heart problems, strokes, seizures, headaches, tremors, abdominal pain, and nausea. Those who smoke and/or inject the drug are in extreme danger of cocaine side effects. Smoking or injecting cocaine causes the drug to reach the user’s brain very quickly, leaving the liver no time to process the chemicals. The user’s body is left unprotected from any potential poisonous substances mixed with the drug. Because the effects of the drug are felt nearly instantaneously, the high from smoking or injecting cocaine is even more powerful than snorting the drug. Chronic users of cocaine can become malnourished due to the drug's ability to decrease appetite. All methods of taking this drug produce specific health related cocaine side effects:

•Ingesting: Severe bowel gangrene due to a reduction in the flow of blood to the intestines.
•Injecting: Severe allergic reactions. Increased risk for contracting HIV, Hepatitis, and other blood-borne diseases.
•Snorting: Chronically runny nose, nosebleeds, loss of smell, hoarseness, and problems swallowing.

Cocaine side effects are often exacerbated by the use of additional drugs. In fact, mixing cocaine with other substances makes use more likely to be fatal. The most common cause of death from cocaine overdose is respiratory failure. Respiratory failure is more common when a depressant drug such as heroin has been taken in addition to using cocaine. This combination is known as a speedball. Cocaine is also particularly dangerous when mixed with alcohol. Combining the two drugs creates a substance known as cocaethylene, which strengthens the high of cocaine and increases the risk of sudden death in the user.

 

Your Brain On Cocaine
(AP) Chronic cocaine use harms brain circuits that help produce the sense of pleasure, which may help explain why cocaine addicts have a higher rate of depression, a study suggests. It's not clear whether cocaine kills brain cells or merely impairs them, or whether the effect is reversible, said study author Dr. Karley Little. But it's bad news for cocaine addicts in any case, he said.
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Former cocaine kingpin now serves dogs, not drugs
MARKHAM, Ill. — Two decades after customers clamored to buy cocaine from a teenager named John Cappas, they're lined up again to buy what he has to sell: Hot dogs. The one-time "drug kingpin," as the newspapers called him in the late 1980s, this summer became an owner of a hot dog stand called Johnny's WeeNee Wagon.
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Drug mule swallowed 106 cocaine packages
A man who swallowed 106 packages of cocaine to smuggle them into the UK was today starting a 10-year jail sentence. Alexsejs Malinovs, 23, from Eastern Avenue South, Northampton, was stopped by UK Border Agency officers at Heathrow Airport in May 2009 when he arrived on a flight from Peru via Amsterdam. Investigations found the Latvian national had swallowed about 700 grams of cocaine in 106 packages, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) said today.
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Tainted cocaine
Okay, let's just get it right out there up front - no one thinks doing crack or cocaine is good for you. Nope, no one. Not me, not even the people who use it. However, if a huge percentage of the cocaine/crack sold in this country is being adulterated with a potentially lethal addition, shouldn't people (including the doctors wondering what the heck is going on) be warned?
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