Cocaine and other designer drugs

Cocaine is a naturally derived CNS (central nervous system) stimulant extracted and refined from the Coca plant grown primarily in the Andean region of South America. Cocaine is typically a whitish powder with a bitter, numbing taste. It is most often insufflated (snorted), though it can also be injected and used orally.

while powder cocaine can be smoked to some effect (despite common belief otherwise), it is a very inefficient method of ingestion. because of the high temperatures present when smoking, powder cocaine tends to burn rather than vaporizing. for this reason, freebase cocaine, also known as crack,is created from powder cocaine for smoking. Freebase cocaine vaporizes at smoking temperatures providing more effect with less material, as faster onset and a more intense high than powder cocaine.

Pure Cocaine was first extracted and identified by the German chemist Albert Niemann in the mid-19th century, and was introduced as a tonic/elixir in patent medicines to treat a wide variety of real or imagined illnesses. Later, it was used as a local anesthetic for eye, ear, and throat surgery and continues today to have limited employment in surgery. Currently, it has no other clinical application having been largely replaced by synthetic local anesthetics such as lidocaine.

Tolerance And Dependence

Tolerance to any drug exists when higher doses are necessary to achieve the same effects once reached with lower doses. But scientists have not observed tolerance to cocaine's stimulant effect: users may keep taking the original amount over extended periods and still experience the same euphoria. Yet some users frequently increase their dose to intensify and prolong the effects. Amounts up to 10g (10,000 mg) have been reported.

Some users, however, report that they become more sensitive to cocaine's anesthetic and convulsant effects even without increasing the amount. This theory of increased sensitivity has been put forward to explain some deaths that have occurred after apparently low doses.

Psychological dependence exists when a drug is so central to a person's thoughts, emotions, and activities that it becomes a craving or coumpulsion. Among heavy cocaine users, an intense psychological dependence can occur; they suffer severe depression if the drug is unavailable, which lifts only when they take it again.

Experiments with animals suggest that cocaine is perhaps the most powerful drug of all in producing psychological dependence. Rats and monkeys made dependent on cocaine will always strive hard to get more.