Abuse of Crack, Cocaine, Rock And The Ramifications

Cocaine, crack cocaine and derivatives affect the dopamine in the brain giving the individual a "high" or a feeling of euphoria. If the individual continues to take the drug either by smoking, injection or by snorting the powder, it takes longer to get high with each successive hit. This promotes overuse of the drug, which can be dangerous.

What happens is that the more hits in succession a user takes, the longer it takes for the dopamine in the brain takes to get replenished, and each time a hit is taken the highs become less intense.

When cocaine is taken repeatedly, which tends to be the case in binge usage causes irritability, paranoia and restlessness. Too much of a good thing can lead to a full-blown psychosis where the person can lose all touch with reality and can experience all kinds of hallucinations.

One specific psychosis involves affected individuals believing that they feel or perceive that they have parasites that are crawling under their skin. These types of reactions can actually  be a good thing, because it can cause people to stop taking more hits.

In situations where the binge continues, people can develop a higher tolerance for the drug where it takes more and more hits to reach a stage of satisfaction where the person starts to endanger him or herself with too much of the drug.

Each person is affected differently with these cocaine derivatives, such as crack and rock. Some people develop an early sensitivity to cocaine due to the drugs pain killing attributes. These people can have convulsive seizures, without increasing the dosage, and respiratory and cardiovascular issues can occur. This can explain many of the deaths of people on relatively low doses of the drug.

Abuse of cocaine derived drugs is a dangerous and difficult road to travel as it is extremely addictive and easy to abuse without an individual really becoming aware of the abuse.