High, from cocaine

To clarify the relationship I am suggesting between acts of consumption and the appetites for these acts Appetites are reward-dependent behaviors in their own right and can have much the same properties whether or not they prepare for a more rewarding act of consumption. Reward-dependent behaviors include both a high from cocaine, which pays off within seconds to minutes and leaves the person depleted in a matter of hours, and the imagining of the high, which pays off within fractions of a second and produces dysphoric cravings in seconds. 

Cocaine is a very addictive drug. Cocaine is a stimulant—it directly affects your brain. Cocaine stimulates certain nerve cells in the brain, producing feelings of intense pleasure. Users talk about feeling carefree, or relaxed, or utterly in control. But this artificial stimulation comes with a price tag. The high from cocaine lasts only from five to 20 minutes, and you will need more and more cocaine each time you try to match the feelings of that first, initial experience. Cocaine causes severe mood swings and irritability. 

The highs from cocaine or crack last only a few minutes. The consequences last much longer. Think about this there are more hospitalizations per year caused by crack and cocaine use than any other illegal drug. 

Nicotine differs from cocaine in that it is powerfully reinforcing in the absence of subjective euphoria. The high incidence of cancerogenicity associated with longterm tobacco use is associated with compounds other than nicotine that are also contained in tobacco. Main... 

The hydrochloride salt is inhaled or injected. It can be converted to cocaine base (crack or rock) and smoked to achieve almost instant absorption and intense euphoria. Tolerance to the high develops quickly. The high from snorting can last 15 to 30 minutes the high from smoking can last 5 to 10 minutes. 

Wright, Karen. A Shot of Sanity You ll Get No Kick from Cocaine if Yau Take this New Vaccine. Discover, June 1999, pp. 47-48. Reports on clinical trials of a vaccine that triggers an immune system reaction that blocks the absorption of cocaine. However, while the vaccine blocks the effect of the drug, it does not block the craving. Users may be able to circumvent the vaccine by taking very high doses of cocaine or they may simply decide to stop taking the vaccine. 

The pleasurable feelings from cocaine use last only 15-30 minutes if it is snorted and only five to 10 minutes if cocaine is smoked or injected into the veins. When the high is over, the user feels tired, sluggish, and low. ... 

Death from cocaine often occurs within 2-3 minutes, suggesting direct cardiac toxicity, fatal dysrhythmias, and depression of medullary respiratory centers as common causes of death (11,12). Thus, cocaine s local anesthetic properties can contribute additional hazards when high doses are used, reminiscent of deaths reported in the era when it was used as a mucous membrane paste for nasopharyngeal surgery (13). 

The same method, with only slight variations (acetonitrile from 10 to 7.5%, detection wavelength from 280 to 230 nm) was adopted for the analysis of illicit cocaine. Benzoylecgonine, cocaine, and cis- and fram-cinnamoylcocaine, obtained from samples taken from cocaine seizures, were separated. MEKC results correlated well with those from gas chromatography (GC), with similar RSD values, and with HPLC. These authors reported that MEKC methods also proved highly reliable for heroin and cocaine analysis in interlaboratory proficiency tests. 

From there, the cocaine is again repackaged and re-cut for sale to local dealers. By now, the drug has passed through several successive handlers and has been re-cut to reduce its purity at nearly every stage. The local dealers often reduce the purity themselves before selling it to users. By the time it reaches the user, the end product often bears little resemblance to the highly concentrated cocaine powder that first crossed the U.S. border. 

Eucaine, the first unnatural analog of cocaine to be synthesized, was reported in 1918. As shown by the bold lines in its structure, eucaine is very similar to cocaine. Eucaine was found to function as a local anesthetic, and it did not produce mydriasis, nor was it addictive however, it was not the "Holy Grail of local anesthetics because it was highly toxic. Another analog of cocaine is piperocaine, which, as shown by the boldfaced lines, retains some of the basic elements of cocaine but is structurally more different from cocaine than is eucaine. Piperocaine has the same beneficial characteristics as eucaine but is only one-third as toxic as cocaine. A further iteration of the structure is seen in the form of procaine, which is commonly known as Novocain, perhaps the most successful anesthetic agent derived from cocaine. Novocain is about one-fourth as toxic as cocaine and is not habit-forming. 

Cocaine comes from the Coca plant, grown in the high arid, mountainous areas of South America. It is usually extracted from the leaves of the plant but the leaves themselves can be chewed and a smokable paste made from the leaves is mainly used in countries where the plant grows. 

Large or quickly repeating doses over a period of hours can led to extreme anxiety, paranoia and even hallucinations. These effects usually disappear as the drug is eliminated from the body. The after-effects of cocaine and crack use may include fatigue and depression as people come down from the high. Excessive doses can cause death from respiratory or heart failure but this is rare. 

Kantak and Miczek 1986). Amphetamine and cocaine, as well as dopaminergic agonists, increase further the already high levels of defensive responses in aggregated rats undergoing withdrawal from opiates, leading in extreme cases to the death of the subjects (Lai et al. 1971 Puri and Lai 1973). 

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