Cocaine Abuse
It is used in offices, parties, on street corners, in homes, and even
in
schools. With so much widespread abuse, cocaine is in extreme demand.
Cocaine
abuse has risen 118% since 1990, and continues to rise. Cocaine
addiction is
easy to understand-- it [cocaine] produces a good feeling, so
naturally people
would tend to want more of it. The question now though, is
how does it produce
these feelings, and why is the addiction so strong. By
taking a look at cocaine
from its entrance into the body, to the end of it's
high, and the side effects
it produces, the answers to these questions will
become clear. When a user takes
cocaine the user experiences pleasure beyond
what a person usually would ever
experience in their life. The user also
experiences an altered state of
conciousness where he/she feels an intense
sense of feeling alive. Cocaine
takers often speak of a rush in the sense of
a whole body orgasm. Cocaine comes
in two forms--preprocessed and cut (which
are the most popular and most
expensive on the market), or in rock form,
which is most commonly called'crack'. Cocaine is taken mainly in two ways:
inhalation, and injection. When
inhaled, cocaine travels up through the nasal
passage to the capillaries that
line the olfactory nerves. This provides a
more direct route to the brain than
an injection and gives what is commonly
referred to as a 'quick high'. The
olfactory nerves will receive some of the
cocaine particles and mistake them for
smell-producing particles. The cocaine
will enter the nerve and eat away at it,
and in time, will destroy it,
leaving the victim with no sense of smell. Cocaine
needs to be in the
bloodstream to become effective. Whether through the nose
capillaries, or an
injection, once the cocaine is in the bloodstream, it will
travel to the
brain. Cocaine particles bear a striking resemblance to glucose
molecules, so
as they enter the brain, the hypothalamus will send messages to
the brain to
open more dendrite receptors to receive the overflow of
"glucose". Glucose
naturally induces the production of the
neurotransmitter dopamine and
ceretonin. This is commonly referred to as a'sugar rush', so as the cocaine
enters the dopamine and ceretonin receptors, the
brain believes it's on a
'sugar. As cocaine floods the dopamine and ceretonin
receptors to there
limits, the hypothalamus will send signals to open more
receptor sites. The
production of ceretonin (the neurotransmitter that slows
down the system) is
blocked by cocaine, and dopamine (the neurotransmitter that
excites the
system) is produced rapidly. The excess dopamine flows into the open
receptor
sites of norepinepherine and noradrenaline (the neurotransmitters that
arouse
and cause pleasure) and excites them. This creates the "rush"
that cocaine
gives it's abuser. After repeated usage of cocaine, the brain
begins to fall
prey to an effect called neuroadaption . The neurotransmitters
start to adapt
to the dopamine overflow and ceretonin receptors will die off and
ceretonin
will not be produced at it's normal levels in the brain. This
adaptation will
require more of the drug to produce the previous effect, and the
once thought
amount of cocaine needed to produce a high would be needed to
produce a norm.
This dependence is called a physiological dependence, and is
common with
repeated cocaine abuse. Cocaine will often cause death in its users.
Most
often heart attacks and strokes occur, convulsions are produced at the
least.
The rush of dopamine and drop of ceretonin is taking place all over
the
brain. All the activity caused by this, depreciates the clarity of
normal
messages of thought and sense from region to region of the brain. The
most often
clouded messages are those from the brain stem to the subcortex.
When the
hypothalamus reads low levels of adrenaline, it sends messages to
the medulla to
increase heart rate. The medulla relays the message to the
pituitary gland for
production of adrenaline, but due to the high levels of
dopamine, the message
for an increase in a hormone produced by dopamine
called prolactin is read as
well. Prolactin and adrenaline are produced in
the adrenal glands. As the
hormones enter the heart, they increase heart rate
to abnormal highs. The heart
will become exhausted by the abnormal overuse.
Incoming messages to the brain
are slow and clouded, so the medulla continues
to send messages for increased
heart rate until a heart failure occurs.
Strokes and convulsions occur mainly
due to dopamine flowing into the wrong
receptor sites. This rush is too much and
malfunctions start to occur in the
motor cortex, producing convulsions and in
some cases, strokes and deaths.
Surprisingly, the Limbic System, or that which
produces emotion in the brain,
is not affected by cocaine as was once believed.
Recent studies indicate
that the relaxed, euphoric feeling that is produced is
achieved during a high
is created by the clouded messages that occur due to high
neurotransmitter
activity in the brain. As cocaine is used, it affects many
parts of the brain
directly and indirectly. The highs produced by cocaine are
actually irregular
levels of brain-made neurotransmitters caused by cocaine, not
cocaine itself.
The addiction is a strong physiological dependence brought about
by low
levels of ceretonin in the brain. The abuse of cocaine is wide-spread and
is
expensive financially as well as physically. After all of the
facts
presented, the question that remains to be answered about cocaine abuse
is not
how, but why.