Cocaine

A detailed Summary of Cocaine

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 olfact

ory 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.

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 needs to be in the bloodstream to become effective. Wh

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Approximate Word count = 925
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History