Cocaine Addiction Explained

There are a few little known facts about cocaine that don’t make it into the movies or even the celebrity interviews very often.

Cocaine and crack are highly addictive because they keep a particular chemical- called dopamine- floating around in the brain longer than it normally would.  This chemical makes a person feel great; on top of the world, and humans tend to repeat these feel good actions.  In movies there are more than a few examples of people doing a few lines of coke or smoking crack before going out and dancing, fighting, or attempting to conquer Wall Street.  Celebrities who’ve confessed to cocaine abuse/addiction generally have high energy and manic personas.  Based on pop culture presentation alone, what’s wrong with a little more dopamine?  It seems to get you up and going!

The problem is that dopamine encourages, or reinforces everything in such a state.  Every action feels right, every step is certain, and in high enough concentrations, every thought is also reinforced.  Twitches develop as our brains decide that physical movements made while high must be good because we felt so good the first time we made those movements.  Paranoia and irrational thinking set in, as even the little thoughts we have are encouraged by the presence of dopamine. Hallucinations are common when the brain finally starts rewarding its own imagination.  Regular cocaine abuse can lead to behavior that looks almost exactly like schizophrenia, and that’s something they just don’t show very often in Hollywood portrayals of addicts and addiction.

That’s what can happen if cocaine is abused, especially if it’s done often.  Naturally, something that rewards so much is highly addictive, and the brain tries to punish a person if he or she wants to quit.  Chocolate and caffeine also give a little dopamine rush, and if you’ve ever heard someone complain about giving up coffee, it’s because the brain is lacking dopamine and a few other neurotransmitters.

As you may imagine, cocaine is much more powerful than coffee.  It’s like comparing a pebble to an asteroid.  Cocaine’s rush of dopamine doesn’t just keep away the yawns and lead to talking fast.  It can make a person feel like the world is a toy, like he or she can do no wrong (indeed, the brain is announcing, “EVERYTHING IS RIGHT!! YOU’RE GREAT!  THE ONLY THING THAT WOULD BE BETTER IS…MORE COCAINE!!!”)  Being out of cocaine feels like being out of life.  A person without coffee can be sluggish.  A person without cocaine can want to crawl into bed and die.  Where everything was right before, everything is now WRONG, so terribly wrong!  It’s not just a thought, or an idea that the addict can’t escape.  It’s a feeling throughout the body, a very physical and mental reaction.  How do you go to work while feeling like that?  How do you manage to care about things like food, bills, or even children?

How can you look at yourself in the mirror again and ever be okay with what you see?

Cocaine can be devastating to the abuser and the addict.  It doesn’t have to be.  The shining light at the end of the cocaine tunnel is that the brain can recover from cocaine abuse much better than many other drugs.  The brain can grow new cells to regulate dopamine.  The right cocaine addiction treatment can teach the life skills and habits needed to help that growth happen faster.  A good program can also help alleviate some of the feelings of loss and depression that sabotage recovery so often.