FREE ESSAY ON COCAINE

COCAINE

Cocaine is an alkaloid found in leaves of a South American shrub. It is a powerfully
reinforcing stimulant. The drug induces a sense of exhilaration in the user primarily by
blocking the dopamine from going into your brain. Life-long happiness will be genetically
pre-programmed. Peak experiences will become a natural part of everyday mental health.
Cocaine, alas, offers merely a tragically delusive short-cut. Before Columbian times, the
coca leaf was reserved for Inca royalty. The natives subsequently used it for mystical,
religious, social, nutritional and medicinal purposes. They exploited its stimulant
properties to ward off fatigue and hunger, enhance endurance, and to promote a benign
sense of well-being. It was initially banned by the Spanish. But the invaders discovered
that without the Incan gift of the gods, the natives could barely work the fields - or
mine gold. So it came to be cultivated by the Catholic Church. Coca leaves were
distributed three or four times a day to the workers during brief rest-breaks. Returning
Spanish conquistadores introduced it to Europe. Coca was touted as an elixir of life. In
1814, an editorial in Gentleman's Magazine urged researchers to begin experimentation so
that coca could be used as a substitute for food, so that people could live a month, now
and then, without eating... The active ingredient was first isolated in the West around
1860. Freud, who believed in the virtues of self-experimentation, described cocaine as a
magical drug. He wrote a song of praise in its honour. To Sherlock Holmes, cocaine was so
transcendentally stimulating and clarifying to the mind that its secondary action is a
matter of small moment. Doctors dispensed cocaine as an antidote to morphine addiction.
Unfortunately, some patients made a habit of combining them. Cocaine was soon sold
over-the-counter. Until 1916, one could buy it at Harrods. It was widely used in tonics,
toothache cures and patent medicines; and in chocolate cocaine tablets. Prospective
buyers were advised - in the words of pharmaceutical firm Parke-Davis - that cocaine
could make the coward brave, the silent eloquent, and render the sufferer insensitive to
pain. When combined with alcohol, it yielded a further potently reinforcing compound, now
known to be cocaethylene. Thus cocaine was a popular ingredient in wines, notably Vin
Mariani. Coca wine received endorsement from prime-ministers, royalty and even the Pope.
Coca-cola was introduced in 1886 as as a valuable brain-tonic and cure for all nervous
afflictions. It was promoted as a temperance drink offering the virtues of coca without
the vices of alcohol. The drink was invigorating and popular. Until 1903, a typical
serving contained around 60mg of cocaine. Sold today, it still contains an extract of
coca-leaves. Coca Cola imports eight tons from South America each year. Nowadays the
leaves are used only for flavouring since the drug has been removed. A coca leaf
typically contains contains between 0.1 and 0.9 percent cocaine. If chewed in such form,
it rarely presents the user with any social or medical problems. When the leaves are
soaked and mashed, however, cocaine is extracted as a coca-paste. The paste is 60 to 80
per cent pure. It is usually exported in the form of the salt, cocaine hydrochloride.
This is the powdered cocaine most common, until recently, in the West. Drug testing for
cocaine aims to detect the presence of its major metabolite, the inactive
benzoylecgonine. Benzoylecgonine can be detected for up to five days in casual users. In
chronic users, urinary detection is possible for as long as three weeks. Yet
old-fashioned cocaine hydrochloride still wasn't good enough. Sensation-hungry
thrill-seekers have long sought the ultimate high from the ultimate rush. They haven't
been satisfied with the enhanced mood, sexual interest, self-confidence, conversational
prowess and intensified consciousness to be derived from just snorting cocaine. Normally,
only the intravenous route of administration could be expected to deliver the more potent
and rapid hit they have been seeking. Yet there are very strong cultural prejudices
against injecting recreational drugs. So a smokable form was developed. Since the
hydrochloride salt decomposes at the temperature required to vaporise it, cocaine is
instead converted to the base form. It is concentrated by heating the drug in a solution
of baking powder until the water evaporates. This type of base cocaine makes a cracking
sound when heated; hence the name crack. Crack is base-cocaine which vaporises at a low
temperature. It can thus be easily inhaled via a heated pipe. Crack-cocaine delivers an
intensity of pleasure completely outside the normal range of human experience. It offers
the most wonderful state of consciousness, and the most intense sense of being alive, the
user will ever enjoy. (S)he will access heightened states of being whose modes are
unknown to chemically-naive contemporaries. Groping for adequate words, crack-takers
sometimes speak of the rush in terms of a whole-body orgasm. Drug-naive
psychopharmacological virgins - slightly shop-soiled or otherwise - cannot be confident
(unless in thrall to ill-conceived logical behaviorist theories of meaning) that they
have grasped the significance of such an expression. For to do so, it would be necessary
to take the drug via its distinctive delivery-mechanism oneself. This is at best very
imprudent. Ultimately, the emotional baseline, and affective analogue of Absolute Zero,
characteristic of post-humanity in its hedonically enriched modes of awareness may be
greater than anything we can now grasp. It may be higher than the rapturous transports of
the most euphoric coke-binge in paleo-human history. In the meantime, a drug which
induces a secular parody of Heaven commonly leads the user into a biological counterpart
of Hell. *ALIGN=CENTER When Is It Best To Take Crack Cocaine? */ALIGN=CENTERAs a rule of
thumb, it is profoundly unwise to take crack-cocaine. The brain has evolved a truly
vicious set of negative feedback mechanisms. Their functional effect is to stop us from
being significantly happy for any length of time. The initial short-lived euphoria of a
reinforcer as powerful as crack will be followed by a crash. This involves anxiety,
depression, irritability, extreme fatigue and possibly paranoia. An intense craving for
more cocaine develops. In heavy users, stereotyped compulsive and repetitive patterns of
behaviour may occur. So may tactile hallucinations of insects crawling underneath the
skin (formication). Severe depressive conditions may follow; agitated delirium; and also
a syndrome sometimes known as toxic paranoid psychosis. The social consequences of heavy
cocaine use can be equally unpleasant. Non-recreational users are likely eventually to
alienate family and friends. They tend to become isolated and suspicious. Most of their
money and time is spent thinking about how to get more of the drug. The compulsion may
become utterly obsessive. The illusion of free-will is likely to disappear. During a
mission, essentially a 3-4 day crack-binge, users may consume up to 50 rocks a day.
Whereas empathogens such as ecstasy - which trigger the release of far more serotonin
than dopamine - will typically promote empathy, trust, compassionate love and
sociability, mainly dopaminergic drugs, if taken on their own and to excess, can easily
have the reverse effect. Simplistically, cocaine tends to be a selfish drug. There is
perhaps a single predictable time of life when taking crack-cocaine is sensible, harmless
and both emotionally and intellectually satisfying. Indeed, for such an occasion it may
be thoroughly commended. Certain estimable doctors in England were once in the habit of
administering to terminally-ill cancer patients an elixir known as the Brompton cocktail.
This was a judiciously-blended mixture of cocaine, heroin and alcohol. The results were
gratifying not just to the recipient. Relatives of the stricken patient were pleased,
too, at the new-found look of spiritual peace and happiness suffusing the features of a
loved one as (s)he prepared to meet his or her Maker. Drawing life to a close with a
transcendentally orgasmic bang, and not a pathetic and god-forsaken whimper, can turn
dying into the culmination of one's existence rather than its present messy and
protracted anti-climax. There is another good reason to finish life on a high note. In a
predominantly secular society, adopting a hedonistic death-style is much more responsible
from an ethical utilitarian perspective. For it promises to spare friends and relations
the miseries of vicarious suffering and distress they are liable to undergo at present as
they witness one's decline. A few generations hence, the elimination of primitive
evolutionary holdovers such as the ageing process and aversive experience will make the
social institutionalisation of the hedonistic death advocated here redundant. In the
meanwhile, one is conceived in pleasure and may reasonably hope to die in it.