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What is Cocaine?

Cocaine is a brain stimulant and one of the most addictive drugs in the world. Originating from the leaves of the coca plant of South America, cocaine has been used around the world for hundreds of years by all classes and cultures.

Cocaine is now often associated with the rich and famous due to a number of high profile cases involving celebrities using the drug and its cost being in the thousands of pounds per kilogram.

Yet until the early 1900’s this substance was a main ingredient in Coca-Cola, used as an anaesthetic and declared by many as safe. However, medical evidence of cocaine’s damaging effects discovered in the 1970’s and 1980’s and it’s increasing widespread public use, lead to governments becoming anxious about its growth and reputation.

Produced as a white chunky powder, cocaine is usually chopped into fine particles ready for consumption. There are generally four accepted methods of taking the drug.

The most common is arranging the powder into small ‘lines’ on a hard surface and quickly inhaling or ‘snorting’ the drug through the nose using a straw-like implement. The mucous membranes of the nose help to absorb the cocaine.

The drug can also be injected intravenously into the bloodstream with the use of a syringe by creating a solution comprising of the cocaine powder mixed with water; this is known as cocaine hydrochloride.

The third method is referred to as freebasing which involves changing the cocaine hydrochloride into a freebase which can then be smoked by its user.

The final and most extreme method is to mix the cocaine hydrochloride with a number of ingredients such as ammonia or sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), which causes the solution to solidify into ‘rocks’ which can then be smoked in glass pipes.

There are a number of mental and physical symptoms caused by cocaine use that may or may not be experienced by the user. The mental symptoms include a feeling of anxiety, panic, paranoia, hallucinations and confusion; with the physical indicators being a bloody nose, increased pulse rate, dilated pupils and an increase in energy. This list of symptoms is exhaustive however.