Cocaine comes from the leaves of the coca bush in South America. The leaves are ground into a paste. In South America, this paste is sold to be smoked. The paste can be changed into a white powder, which might look like sugar or talcum powder. The powder is sold around the world, including here in Canada.

Some people snort this white powder up their noses. Some people eat it. They might also dissolve it in water, put it in a needle and inject it.

The white powder can be changed again, into crack cocaine. Crack cocaine is also called rock cocaine. Crack is in the form of small chunks. It is sometimes white, sometimes beige, yellow or other colours. Crack can be "smoked" in a pipe or cigarette, or it can be directly heated. Crack doesn’t actually burn: it melts and then evaporates. The person breathes in the vapour that rises from the heated crack.

Cocaine is a very dangerous drug, and it is easy to go from just using it to needing it. Because it is so dangerous, it is against the law to have cocaine. You can go to jail. People who are caught selling it can go to jail for much longer.

When people have used cocaine, their breathing gets faster. Their pupils get bigger. Their heart pumps faster. They don’t feel like eating. They feel more awake and they don’t need to sleep as soon or as much.

Some people use cocaine because it makes them feel better. They like themselves more. They feel like they have more power over their lives. They even think that other people like them more. Every ordinary thing they do feels more exciting. Things that are fun without cocaine seem like they are more fun when people are "high" on cocaine.

This good feeling does not last very long. Usually, the better a person feels, the shorter the feeling lasts.

Being high on cocaine does not always make you feel good. It can make you feel awful, in fact. It can make you think other people are out to get you. If you are high on cocaine and someone smiles at you, you might think that they are laughing at you. You might get very angry at them.

Being high on cocaine can make people do bad or silly things. People on cocaine sometimes hurt other people. This might be because they are angry. Sometimes it’s because they are not thinking straight. The good feeling that people get on cocaine makes them think that they are better at doing things than they actually are. You can see that if someone thinks they are a better driver than they are, they might take risks driving and get into accidents. They can hurt themselves or hurt other people.

When people take a lot of cocaine, they can feel shaken up and worried. Their eyes might get blurry so they can’t see clearly. They might hallucinate. They might get pains in their head or chest. They might feel sick and run a fever. Their arms, legs, face, or anywhere on their body might twitch.

*When people come down from the very short high of cocaine, they feel worse than they did before they used the cocaine. Many people who use cocaine feel so bad that they take another dose of cocaine. They keep doing this until their bodies just can’t make them feel good any more. The cocaine stops working. They "crash," and may sleep for days. After the crash, they may look for more cocaine.

Using cocaine for a long time can damage your body. Snorting cocaine can hurt the inside of your nose. You get a stuffy or runny nose. The inside of your nose might feel chapped, and it might bleed. Cocaine can even burn a hole through the middle part of your nose, the barrier inside your nose that separates your two nostrils. Smoking crack can hurt your lungs. You might get pneumonia. You might cough up blood.

People who inject cocaine into their veins with a needle sometimes share the needle with other people. If one of the people who uses the needle is sick, they can make everyone else who uses that needle after them sick. For example, you can get hepatitis, a liver disease, from a needle someone else has used. You can also get HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. AIDS is a disease that is very difficult to cure, and most people who get it die from it.

People who use a lot of cocaine for a long time, and people who use very big doses for a short time, start to need bigger doses to feel the same high. We say they develop tolerance. Tolerance happens because your body has a natural balancing process. When you give it too much of one drug, the body changes so that it reacts less to that drug. Tolerance reduces the good feelings that cocaine gives you, but it doesn’t reduce the harm that it can do to your body.

People who have developed tolerance sometimes try to get the same feelings back by using more cocaine. They may take such a high dose that they overdose. An overdose is a very large dose of a drug, a dose that is very damaging to your body and might kill you. An overdose of cocaine can cause heart attacks, kidney failure, seizures, strokes, coma, and death. If you have heart trouble, even a normal dose of cocaine can kill you. Sometimes, people don’t even know they have heart problems, and they die from using cocaine.

As with all mood-altering drugs, cocaine can become the main thing people do in their lives. They give up their friends, their families, their jobs, the things they used to like to do, the things they were good at. All they want is the drug. They may keep using even though they get into trouble with the police. They may keep using even though they have spent all their money on cocaine. Some will spend their whole lives on cocaine: finding money for cocaine, then finding someone to sell them cocaine, then using cocaine, then crashing from cocaine. And then the whole cycle starts again.

People who need to use cocaine repeatedly to feel good or to stop feeling bad are said to be dependent on cocaine. When dependent users stop using cocaine, they have withdrawal symptoms. There are two phases of withdrawal. Phase 1 is the crash,* which lasts for up to four days after they stop using cocaine. During the crash, they feel very sad sometimes, and worried, crabby and jumpy at other times. They get upset over small things. They are tired and can’t do much. They sleep all day. Sometimes, they eat a lot all at once (they "binge"). They may use alcohol or other drugs to keep themselves from feeling anything while they crash.

Phase 2 lasts for two to 12 weeks. People still don’t feel like doing anything, and life seems boring. In a sense, they used up their happiness while they were using cocaine, and now they just have less. Life is more boring than it ever was before they used cocaine. Because they can remember that being on cocaine was fun, they just want to use it again.

The big difference between life while using cocaine and life after using cocaine is the main reason that cocaine is one of the most addictive drugs we know. People are more likely to use too much cocaine than they are to use too much of most other drugs. They are more likely to keep using cocaine even when they are completely ruining their lives, losing their families, their jobs, their homes and their friends. They will spend all their money on cocaine, and spend all their time looking for more cocaine. You never know, the first time you try cocaine, how it is going to affect you. The best decision is not to start.

For more information about cocaine, contact your nearest AADAC office.