Effects of Crack

Physical risks associated with using any amount of cocaine and crack:

• Increases in blood pressure, heart rate, breathing rate, and body temperature.
  
• heart attacks, strokes, and respiratory failure
  
• Hepatitis or AIDS through shared needles.
  
• brain seizures
  
• Reduction of the body's ability to resist and combat infection.
  
  

Crack Cocaine Psychological Risks:

• Violent, erratic, or paranoid behavior.
  
• Hallucinations and "coke bugs"--a sensation of imaginary insects crawling over the skin.
  
• Confusion, anxiety and depression, loss of interest in food or sex.
  
• "Cocaine psychosis"--losing touch with reality, loss of interest in friends, family, sports, hobbies, and other activities.
  
• Some users spend hundred or thousands of dollars on cocaine and crack each week and will do anything to support their habit.
  
• Many turn to drug selling, prostitution, or other crimes.
  
• Cocaine and crack use has been a contributing factor in a number of drownings, car crashes, falls, burns, and suicides.
  
• Cocaine and crack addicts often become unable to function sexually.
  
• Even first time users may experience seizures or heart attacks, which can be fatal.
  

Crack smokers achieve maximum physiological effects approximately two minutes after inhalation. Maximum psychotropic effects are attained approximately one minute after inhalation. Similar to intravenous administration, the physiological and psychotropic effects of inhaled cocaine are sustained for approximately 30 minutes after peak effects are attained.

Almost a quarter (22%) of the cocaine emergency department mentions in 2000 are attributed to crack cocaine. During this year, there were 39,266 crack mentions in hospital emergency departments around the U.S.

Early Use of Crack Cocaine

• Magnification of pleasure, euphoria
  
• Alertness and in some cases - hyper-alertness
  
• Increased and sometimes a (grandiose) sense of well being
  
• Decreased anxiety
  
• Lower social inhibitions: more sociable and talkative
  
• Heightened energy, self-esteem, sexuality and emotions aroused by interpersonal experiences
  
• Appetite loss; weight loss
  

Compulsive Use of Crack Cocaine

• Extreme euphoria - "mental orgasm"
  
• Uninhibited
  
• Impaired judgment
  
• Grandiosity
  
• Impulsivity
  
• Hyper sexuality
  
• Hyper vigilance
  
• Compulsivity
  
• Extreme psychomotor activation/agitation
  
• Anxiety; irritability; argumentative
  
• Transient panic
  
• Paranoia
  
• Terror of impending death
  
• Poor reality testing; delusions
  
• Extreme weight loss
  

Physical Effects

• chronic sore throat
  
• hoarseness
  
• shortness of breath
  
• bronchitis
  
• lung cancer
  
• emphysema and other lung damage
  
• respiratory problems such as congestion of the lungs, wheezing, and spitting up black phlegm
  
• burning of the lips, tongue, and throat
  
• slowed digestion
  
• weight loss
  
• high incidence of dependence
  
• blood vessel constriction
  
• increased blood pressure
  
• increased heart rate
  
• brain seizures that can result in suffocation
  
• dilated pupils
  
• sweating
  
• rise in blood sugar levels and body temperature
  
• disability from drug-induced health problems
  
• suppressed desire for food, sex, friends, family, and social contacts
  
• heart attack
  
• stroke
  
• death
  

Emotional/Psychological Effects

• sadness and depression
  
• loss of interest in appearance
  
• loss of household valuables or unexplained vanishing cash due to the expense of the drug
  
• sleeplessness
  
• extreme paranoia
  
• intense craving of the drug
  
• schizophrenic-like psychosis with delusions and hallucinations
  

Crack and Pregnancy

• increased incidence of still births
  
• increased incidence of miscarriages
  
• premature (often fatal) labor and delivery
  
• In males, the cocaine in crack may attach to the sperm causing damage to the cells of the fetus.
  
• Babies exposed to cocaine experience painful and life threatening withdrawal, are irritable, have poor ability to regulate their own body temperature and blood sugar and are at increased risk of having seizures.
  

Effects of Crack on the Fetus

• seizures or strokes
  
• cerebral palsy
  
• mental retardation
  
• vision and hearing impairments
  
• urinary tract abnormalities
  
• autism and learning disabilities
  

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