Crack cocaine is a rock form of cocaine that is anywhere from 70% to 90% pure and is very addictive. The name crack comes from the crackling sound it makes as it is heated. One of the reasons it is so addictive is because the user smokes it and the cocaine is absorbed into the blood vessels in the lungs practically immediately.  The resultant high is very quick and very intense. People who have smoked crack and injected cocaine say that the highs are equivalent to each other. The reason for this is that they both enter the blood stream immediately. When one snorts cocaine the high lasts about twenty to thirty minutes and with crack the immediate high lasts about thirty seconds and within a period of about two to seven minutes the user is looking for another hit.

Side Effects of Crack

When someone takes that first hit of crack it is extremely powerful and there is a very intense feeling of euphoria. After that feeling wears off there is then a very intense desire for more pretty much immediately. It only takes one time of smoking it before someone can become extremely addicted. The physical effects of this drug are:

• The eyes become extremely dilated and glassy
• Heart rate and blood pressure increases dramatically
• Hunger is decreased to pretty much non-existent
• Tensing and Clenching of  the jaw occurs also teeth grinding is quite common
• Also sudden death can occur even upon the initial hit

Mentally the user will often feel nervousness and paranoia. They will often become obsessed with smoking more of the drug and will become desperate to do so. They will often do almost anything to get another hit. It sometimes becomes impossible for the crack user to think about anything else but smoking more and more crack. They will often steal from family and friends to get more. Sometimes they will become crack dealers themselves to support their own habit. Binge users will sometimes work all week and once they get their paycheck go on binges for three or four days often times spending all the family money on crack. Many times their families will have no idea where they are for days at a time just for the crack head to turn up exhausted and broke.

Sometimes the addict will be so obsessed with getting another hit they will even start picking up small pieces of anything that could resemble crack off of the floor and put it in their mouth to see if it is indeed crack. They will think they see crack everywhere. They can get increasingly paranoid. They will often start looking out the window for police officers in fear of being caught. They can hours in between hits peeping out of the windows. Also sometimes they will also have a strong desire to get those around them to also try the drug. It is not really known why that this is but is probably one of the reasons that crack addiction has spread so much. Also in males it may cause a strong desire for sex but this is not found in females as much. However because of the need for more crack females will often sell their bodies sexually to get either more money to buy crack or just for crack itself.

Long Term Effects

If used long term the crack user can suffer from severe depression, severe irritability that can lead to violence, severe paranoia, psychosis, increased tolerance to the drug, hallucinations probably due to lack of sleep and inadequate intake of food, heart attack and heart disease, stroke, respiratory failure, brain seizures, sexual dysfunction in both men and women, reproductive damage in both men and women, increase in criminal and risky behavior to acquire more of the drug, and lastly crack cocaine can cause death. If the smoker has an allergy to cocaine it can take only one hit for the stuff to become deadly.

It’s tragic when a person starts using crack.  A person can go from being an intelligent, loving, creative, productive person to a crack head after one hit. Some one who is addicted is usually not a benefit to anyone around them. They can turn into criminals who can think of nothing but getting more crack. It can become the devotion of their entire life. Obligations to family and friends soon fall by the wayside and nothing matters to them except getting more. It’s devastating to those around them. It’s very hard for the families who love these people to understand how this drug could be more important than anything else in their lives. It almost seems like a conspiracy how all-consuming this particular drug can be. From the first moment a person takes a hit they can start to think of nothing else until the entire crack is gone. The user can start having using dreams. These are dreams where the person is even dreaming about the drug. It seems for these people there is no relief even in sleep from their all-consuming addiction.

A Little History

Free basing cocaine was first developed in the 1970′s. People originally freebased the cocaine by mixing it with ether and a fire source. This was very dangerous and many people were severely injured by fire and some even were burned to death. Illegal drug chemist discovered a safer way to smoke pure cocaine. They formulated a way to reprocess the cocaine with using only water. Thus crack was born. In the late 1970s there were large amounts of cocaine coming across the US borders being sold for very low prices. By breaking up the cocaine into rock forms that could be smoked smaller amounts could be sold to more people. The biggest rise of crack cocaine lasted between 1984 and 1990. This is when the drug spread around to all the major cities in America. The number of people who admitted to using cocaine increased from 4.2 million to 5.8 million during this time. Since this time crack usage has been on the decline in the US although some cities in Europe are apparently having their own crack epidemics.

Current use in the Culture

Through the years at Narconon of Georgia there have been fewer admitted for crack cocaine, though the numbers are still substantial.

One of the reasons that crack usage has been on the decline is because other drugs have taken its place. Another reason is that since abortion has become legal many of children that would have been born addicted to crack and into low income crack families simply have just not been born.  Also before this recent recession, the US saw a major boom in its economy and there were more jobs available for everyone many of the young men who would have otherwise been tempted to sell drugs as a way to get money where now gainfully employed.

There is hope for those addicted to crack. Treatment is available and through the years many have successfully been treated for crack cocaine.