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_Cocaine _
By: Benny Chacon
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-naïve
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.
Word Count: 1417
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