Question of Drug Use

[leftyladyfrommo]

Is the government line that people can get addicted to cocaine the first time they use it true? Or are there people who just use it occasionally and are not addicted? Once you use cocaine are you an addict for life?

I'm just curious now that Mexico is moving to decriminalize small amounts. I'm wondering if we are being told a lie.

Is crack cocaine a lot more addictive? What about meth?

I know back in my hippy days they used to say that people could take acid once and fly out the window or have a bad trip on pot. But I have to say it must be pretty rare. Here I am 40 years later I still don't know anyone who had a bad pot trip.

I'm not advocating drug use. I don't think using drugs is really a very good thing. Not even alcohol.

[DoYouEverWonder]

1. No you will not get addicted to cocaine from one use

nor 10 or even 20 uses.

Cocaine is not highly addictive however, for some reason crack is. Meth is another story entirely and makes crack look like candy in comparison.

On the hand, I have met people who get paranoid on pot but I think it's the stress and fear of doing something that is illegal that causes the bad reaction.

[leftyladyfrommo]

3. Paranoid yes. Flying out of windows, no.

It just seems like there is all this info out there about people in all sorts of professions that do cocaine. I was just wondering if the govt. line is really true.

Back all those years ago my friends never touched hard drugs like cocaine. It was so expensive no one could afford it. Only the rich kids.

But it seems like crack cocaine and meth have terrible reputations as debilitating street drugs.

[DoYouEverWonder]

8. I lived in Miami for 13 years

during the Miami Vice days. The standing joke in town was that you couldn't pick up a girl in the Grove unless you had a gram of coke in your pocket. Even Jeb Bush was a known tooter.

At the time, I worked at Jackson Mem and did home visits into areas like Liberty City and Overtown. Before 1985, pot and alcohol were the drugs of choice. We could do home visits and no one ever bothered or threatened us. Then Reagan/Bush launched their bogus War on Drugs. They targeted the big freighters that would come from Jamaica and Columbia and wait offshore to unload. They were easy targets.

At the same time, crack rocks started showing up all over the place. Coke went from over $100+ gram for powder that you snort to $10 for a rock that you smoke. Overnight everything changed. Crack replace pot has the drug of choice and entire communities were destroyed. Another disaster brought to us by our friends at BushCo.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

2. okay, here's the deal...

you cannot have a 'bad pot trip' unless someone gives you pot laced with something else. (they warn you about this, but I have yet to find anyone who actually came across some)

LSD - not addictive, but risky stuff. One bad trip is all it takes.

Cocaine is not normally highly addictive to most people, but crack is.

Meth - HIGHLY addictive, if you like it the first time you do it, you're gonna be hooked. I have met a few people who have done it once, didn't like the feeling and never did it again.

It will be very interesting to see how this works out for Mexico, and whether or not it will prove us right that the War on Drugs is making things worse.

[leftyladyfrommo]

4. I have always wondered how effective the war on drugs is.

We seem to be spending billions and the problem is just getting worse.

So if we legalized small amounts of pot for personal use and maybe small amounts of cocaine I just wonder if things might not improve some.

Its kind of a sticky wicket, isn't it?

[Viva_La_Revolution]

6. one thing it would do immediately

is lower the prison population by anywhere from 20 to 40%. Of course, now that prisons are run for profit, we'll have quite a fight on our hands trying to get those laws changed.

[loyalsister]

10. I think it's realistic

Medicalizing addiction, criminalizing the supply.
Columbia, MO decriminalized small amounts of marijuana. Larger amounts where it is assumed that a person is a supplier are still prsecuted as a felony.
If a person is caught with under a certain amount (I can't remember how much, exactly) they are charged with a misdemeanor, get a ticket, pay a fine, and have to attend some kind of drug counseling\education. Continue to work, go to school, don't lose student loan opportunities and gain an education in prison.
I think it's a good approach.
As for cocaine, I think that a decriminalization strategy might be somewhat different if the social costs for long term use seem to be consistently higher ie, drug treatment might be more thorough.
It is an idea that has merit.

[treestar]

17. That could work, it works on prescription drugs largely

though some drugs inhabit both worlds / can be prescribed but are illegal outside of that. Amphetimine, for instance. Doctors prescribing Adderal, etc. are regulated on that themselves.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

12. Link

http://www.gnn.tv/videos/video.php?id=1

GNN's award winning documentry on the CIA's involvement with selling of narcotics

Tracking the covert history of CIA drug smuggling from Nicaragua to Arkansas and South Central Los Angeles, GNN sheds light on the darkest secret of the Agency’s operational directorate. Cut to the ambient Hip Hop loops of DJ Trek-e, Crack The CIA features explosive footage of Mike Ruppert’s historical televised confrontation with CIA Director John Deutch.
Don’t blink!

Awards
2001 Streaming Media Festival Audience Award
2002 Sundance On-Line Film Festival (‘Live Action’ Category)
1st Annual Drug War Vigil Video Contest (Ist Prize)

[anarch]

16. prohibition laws are just as effective as ever

Alcohol is probably the single worst drug when it comes to crime, health, addiction, you name it. That's why there was an amendment to the constitution to make it illegal. Well, that didn't work, did it? It's exactly the same thing now, with the other illegal drugs.

All these laws do is enable criminal enterprise (just like alcohol prohibition did back in the day) and, because of the racism with which the laws are selectively enforced, allow the state to lock up a disproportionate number of black men. Oh yeah, and I guess they also cater to needs of the pharmaceutical industry, when you're talking about things like medical marijuana.

Prohibition does not work.

[Spider Jerusalem]

5. No, you can't get addicted from a single use of cocaine.

You can't get addicted from a single use of ANYTHING, really. The reason cocaine is addictive is because of the euphoria it produces; for some people this can become a compulsion. Cocaine also blocks dopamine reuptake in the brain; this blocking of dopamine is what causes someone who's been doing coke to 'crash' when they come down (this is feeling of mild depression and emptiness, usually, along with somewhat increased irritability). Crack cocaine is the free base form of the drug; it's got much higher bioavailability of cocaine alkaloids than does regular coke. The sensation is MUCH more euphoric, and the post-high crash is brutal, leading the user to want more to alleviate the effects.


Marijuana can cause psychotic episodes in latent schizophrenics, and can lead to extreme paranoid reactions in some people, but this is relatively rare.

Methamphetamine has a similar addiction mechanism to cocaine, and when smoked rather than snorted or taken orally it's at least as bad if not worse than crack.

As to the opiates...heroin, opium, morphine, oxycodone, et cetera...there's a different addiction mechanism at work. After two weeks of regular use, you develop tolerance to the drug, which means you'll need more of it to get off. It ALSO means you'll need it just to function normally; without it, you experience opiate withdrawal--diarrhea, vomiting, involuntary muscle spasms, cold sweats, bone-deep aches...(this is the reason there are methadone maintenance programs for addicts; methadone treats the withdrawal symptoms without the euphoria associated with other opiates; not only that, it binds to opiod receptors, making it impossible to get feel any effect at all from heroin or any of the other opiates).

[undeterred]

7. I think you can get addicted from a single use of "meth"

Cocaine- I've never heard of that being addictive after a single use.

[mdmc]

9. no.

I am not really sure, however, I am certain of this: If you gave me 100 grams of coke, and I gave 100 test subjects 1 gram each to sniff, I am almost certain that none of these subjects would ever touch coke again.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

11. that's awfully general. I'd say 20% would do it again

at least. Of course 40% would die of heart attacks if they did a whole gram!

[mdmc]

13. nope

with the laws the way they are, all my test subjects would never look for coke again. And none of them would have a heart attack from ingesting a whole gram.

The high would never lure a law abiding citizen down the path to addiction. or use. Really. (imho).

Hell, i will guarentee this. Just let the dea do the study.

Peace and low stress vivalarevolution.

[anarch]

14. I don't know about that

I mean, out of a hundred people, I'd bet at least 20 or so would be familiar with cocaine. Of course, that has nothing to do with the "single-use and you're hooked" theory.

Hell, I can't think of anything that addicts you after a single use. Not even heroin, or meth, or cigarettes. Maybe chocolate?

[mdmc]

15. 20% of all americans have NOT seen coke

In a true random sample of 100 people, i doubt you would find a single "user" of coke. You may find 20 people "that know people that have tried coke". Out of 100, i doubt that you would find a single person that has actually taken coke. imho.

[anarch]

19. yeah, you may be right. It depends on geography I guess

I'd be hard pressed to come up with 20 people in my immediate neighborhood who have never, ever tried cocaine. Of course, I would also be hard pressed to come up with more than one or two people I would say are "addicted" to it...

At any rate, I support your experiment. In case you get a large number of medical grants for it, I would also like to get 100 grams of cocaine, so I can, ummmm, do this experiment in my neighborhood. :evilgrin:

[mdmc]

20. ya know, i bet only 20 out of 100 adults are registered to vote

I bet that for every 100 adults that could vote, only 20 out of 100 are registered. Just a guess.

[Warpy]

18. It's hit and miss, and my guess is that brain chemistry plays a role

I tried everything I could get my hands on in the 60s, pronounced it interesting, and walked away from it. However, I knew people who tried heroin and never wanted to do anything else with their lives. There was no rhyme or reason to who would be like this and whether or not their lives were in the toilet at the time had no effect. You just never knew. Most people were like me. An unlucky few were not.

As for cocaine, the only addicts I know just had the bad luck to find a steady supply and have the money to afford it. Coke causes some pretty profound changes in brain chemistry. The only way to get off coke is to get on antidepressants, and this will be for life.

Crack cocaine is a little different. Generally speaking, the more you refine a psychoactive plant, the more dangerous it becomes. I do know weekend crack heads. I also know people who took that first hit and never wanted to do anything else.

Crank (meth) causes the same brain chemistry changes that coke does and is as devastating to body systems as alcohol is. It's a bad drug. I do know casual users who use it when they've got a large project to do and no energy. I know more people who disappear into it.

I would greatly prefer it if we decriminalized the whole lot, regulated it, and taxed it, then used the proceeds to fund inpatient rehab for people who run into serious trouble. When Nixon started the drug war, rehab was the cornerstone. Carter, full of Baptist morality, changed that to interdiction.

What we're doing now is not working.

[ms liberty]

21. Marijuana and coke: pot is NOT a gateway drug - stats:

For every 100 people who have tried marijuana:

28 have tried cocaine
12 have used cocaine 12 or more times
5 have used cocaine more than 100 times
1 currently uses cocaine once a week or more

72 million Americans have tried marijuana
20 million Americans have tried cocaine
0.7 million Americans are current regular users of cocaine

this info is from US Dept of Human Svcs, 1994/95/96 via "Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts" by
Lynn Zimmer, Pn.D. and John P. Morgan, M.D. (1997, published by the Lindesmith Center)
There are some excellent publications on the subject of the disinformation used in the war against marijuana.

For an excellent history of the war against marijuana/war on drugs, see:

Smoke and Mirrors by Dan Baum
Drug Crazy by Mike Gray

Also the websites of these organizations:

marijuana policy project
norml

They have lots of links to other excellent organizations as well, some of whose names I can't remember right now!!!

Marijuana is actually a much better medicine than many legal prescription drugs, with less harmful side effects, and less damaging to the body, and is successfully used by Americans today for numerous ailments beyond those you may have heard about, such as nausea and wasting disease. For instance, it has been found to be effective as a treatment for migraines, and for depression.

[loyalsister]

22. Alcohol and nicotine, on the other hand

are both gateway drugs. You wind find a heroin addict who hasn't used both of the above.