Cocaine Treatment Programs: Treatment for Those Addicted to Crack Cocaine
While the lethal drug wars of the ’80s and ’90s have passed into legend, the need for crack cocaine treatment remains urgent. There are a million crack abusers each year and it is especially pernicious because a single use can make an addict of someone who thought they might be “just experimenting.” Unlike powder cocaine, crack is inexpensive and therefore a threat to a broad segment of humanity.
Source
Cocaine is derived from the cocoa leaf, indigenous to South America and imparting its stimulating effect when chewed. In this form, it’s about as strong as a good cup of coffee. However, the active ingredient in the leaf was identified and powder cocaine was first processed in the mid-19th Century. Its potency was ramped up again in the 1980s, when the drug industry’s chemists learned to process a smoking form of the drug without risking explosion.
Effects
The user smokes the drug and then feels its powerful effect in just eight to ten seconds. It creates a huge dopamine rush, bringing the characteristic intense feeling of elation. The user feels he or she has escaped all mundane problems. This feeling, however, is exceptionally short-lived, lasting only about ten minutes. The elation is followed by a significant crash, making the user almost desperate to return to the elation.
Responsibility
That elation is just a few dollars away, which creates a nearly irresistible temptation for another hit. So begins an intense cycle in which the user is as desperate to remain high as a poor swimmer might be to tread water. During this period, the user is uniquely indifferent to anything except getting more of the drug into their bodies. Anything, including the care of the user’s own children, might be neglected. Addicts are willing to sell all their belongings, even sell themselves into prostitution, in order to keep abusing the drug.
Physical Symptoms
Aside from these “lifestyle effects” are a long list of obvious physical symptoms. These begin with the dilated pupils of someone under the influence. Users are prone to seizures, auditory hallucinations, and stroke. They might have difficulty breathing, and their lungs might collapse. Their heartbeats can become irregular, and they might suffer heart attacks. Sudden death can come from several directions.
Treatment
Treatment begins with detoxification, which takes place on an inpatient basis in a controlled environment such as a hospital. Withdrawal from any cocaine addiction can continue for several days to a week, and is indicated by craving the drug, irritability, sleep problems and loss of appetite. The patient may be administered propranolol to ease the withdrawal and vigabatrin to treat seizures.
Psychological Help
After detox, the psychological aspects of the abuse must be treated as well. Those without permanent damage or whose addiction had been less pernicious, can be treated through counseling on an outpatient basis. However, others will have to come to “rehab” or a treatment center as an inpatient client. Afterward, the patient might be placed in a group home for recovering addicts, monitored by a social worker or therapist.
Recovering from this powerful and dangerous drug is an inner struggle. It is a challenge to one’s will and one’s spiritual resources as well. But crack cocaine treatment has turned lives around and will continue to do so. Once an addict goes through the process of medical detox, most of the physical pain is gone and treatment will focus on the psychological aspects of recovery.
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