Cocaine 

Drug Classification: Cocaine

Slang Terms: Coke, Candy Cane, Gutter Glitter, Line, Rail, Snort, All-American Drug, Blow, Nose Candy, Rocks (Crack)

What It Looks Like & How It’s Taken: The major routes of administration of cocaine are sniffing or snorting, injecting, and smoking (including free-base and crack cocaine).

Picture of cocaine and crack

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Effects: Physical effects of cocaine use include constricted peripheral blood vessels, dilated pupils, and increased temperature, heart rate, and blood pressure. The duration of cocaine's immediate euphoric effects, which include hyper-stimulation, reduced fatigue, and mental clarity, depends on the route of administration. Some users of cocaine report feelings of restlessness, irritability, and anxiety.
In rare instances, sudden death can occur on the first use of cocaine or unexpectedly thereafter. However, there is no way to determine who is prone to sudden death. These deaths are often a result of cardiac arrest or seizures followed by respiratory arrest.

After/Side Effects: Short-term effects include constricted blood vessels, dilated pupils, increased body temperature, increased heart rate, and high blood pressure. Large doses can leave the user feeling bizarre, erratic and violent, these users may also experience tremors, vertigo, paranoia and muscle twitches.

Paraphernalia Associated With Use:

Picture paraphernalia associated with it's use.

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Long Term Consequences of Use: Once having used cocaine, most users become addicted. Addiction or long-term use of cocaine has the user feeling irritable, restless, and paranoid, with mood disturbances and auditory hallucinations (hearing things that aren’t really there). Most users become tolerant to the effects of cocaine and require more of the drug to achieve the same high as their first experience. While tolerance to the “high” can occur, the same cannot be said for the side effects such as the anesthetic and convulsant effects.

“Different routes of cocaine administration can produce different adverse effects. Regularly snorting cocaine, for example, can lead to loss of sense of smell, nosebleeds, problems with swallowing, hoarseness, and an overall irritation of the nasal septum, which can lead to a chronically inflamed, runny nose. Ingested cocaine can cause severe bowel gangrene, due to reduced blood flow. And, persons who inject cocaine have puncture marks and "tracks," most commonly in their forearms. Intravenous cocaine users may also experience an allergic reaction, either to the drug, or to some additive in street cocaine, which can result, in severe cases, in death. Because cocaine has a tendency to decrease food intake, many chronic cocaine users lose their appetites and can experience significant weight loss and malnourishment.” www.stopcocaineaddiction.com

Facts & Statistics:
There is great risk whether cocaine is ingested by inhalation (snorting), injection, or smoking. It appears that compulsive cocaine use may develop even more rapidly if the substance is smoked rather than snorted. Smoking allows extremely high doses of cocaine to reach the brain very quickly and brings an intense and immediate high. The injecting drug user is at risk for transmitting or acquiring HIV infection/AIDS if needles or other injection equipment are shared.

The proportion of high school seniors who have used cocaine at least once in their lifetimes has increased from a low of 5.9 percent in 1994 to 9.8 percent in 1999.

*** Cocaine and Alcohol taken in combination has a longer duration of action in the brain and is more toxic than either drug alone. This is the most common two-drug combination that results in drug-related death. ***

Sources:
http://www.nida.nih.gov/Infofax/cocaine.html - National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institute of Health

http://www.stopcocaineaddiction.com/pictures.htm

http://www.angelfire.com/co/Cocaine/index.html