Cocaine Addiction Treatment Near Me

You move to a new city, make new friends from work, and find yourself invited to a party. You are getting ready, excited that you are fitting in right away. Everybody is very welcoming when you get there, so you grab your typical beer and head into the living room. You eventually find your way to the restroom and walk in on someone doing a line of cocaine. You excuse yourself, think nothing of it, because to each his own, and continue on with the evening. As the night wears on, and people are high on thing or another, someone sitting next to you asks if you have ever tried cocaine and offers you some. They are very accommodating in teaching you how. It’s no biggie if you do it just this once, right? While you may not get addicted to it the first time, it is truly a highly addictive drug. You may find your thoughts increasingly veer toward how it made you feel.

Regular use of cocaine can cause a vast array of life-threatening medical conditions, and even with that knowledge, it is common for people to quickly become regular users after having used it only once. A worrying trend is the increase in cocaine use and deaths from overdose, which is closely linked to the opioid epidemic in America. The prevalence of fentanyl, an extremely potent synthetic opioid, is a major part of this significant increase because it is unsuspectingly mixed in with the cocaine. Overdoses from cocaine doubled from 2014 to 2016. With it being more readily available, users have more access to it than some safer options that were helping them escape the reality of their stressful life. When someone begins to recognize that they have become addicted, it’s never too late to seek out the assistance of cocaine addiction treatment.

What is cocaine?

Cocaine is a potent stimulant that comes as a fine, white powder. It is snorted recreationally and is highly addictive because of the extreme psychoactive effects it creates in the part of the brain responsible for the reward system. It affects the dopamine levels in the brain and changes its chemical composition. It also induces change to other neurotransmitters that affect the brain’s reward system, like serotonin and norepinephrine. This influential drug is derived from the coca bush, which is found primarily in South America and had been used in their local tribes to fight sickness and boost energy. It was even an active ingredient in Coca-Cola products in the early 1900s. It can be prescribed as a solution to numb the eye, ear, and throat areas for surgeries but is not often used due to the existence of other safer alternatives, like lidocaine. It can be snorted, smoked, injected, or rubbed onto the mucous membranes.  

Why is cocaine so addictive and deadly?

• It is more readily available due to increased growth of the coca plant in Columbia.
• It is used with other substances (polydrug abuse).
• The likelihood of it unsuspectingly being mixed with fentanyl is high, leading to the risk of overdosing.

What long-term problems accompany cocaine use?

When trying to find motivation for the cessation of using a drug as harsh as cocaine, one simply must determine how much they value their own and that of the ones they love. If it’s not too late and they haven’t pushed away or lost the people they love, understanding what problems may arise may help motivate someone to pursue therapy. The immediate effects of using cocaine are ones that make them want to use more. The user becomes euphoric and has increased energy, reduced fatigue, and intensified mental alertness. People who are high are talkative, extraverted, and have lost their desire to eat or sleep. Lack of nutrition causes a plethora of health issues and sleep deficiency comes with its own problems. Some include:

• Abnormal heart rhythms or chest pain
• Headaches
• Respiratory failure
• Strokes
• Stomach pain and nausea
• Heart attacks
• Seizures
• Severe allergic reactions
• HIV
• Viral hepatitis
• Blood-borne diseases
• Severe bowel gangrene (or dead tissue)

Someone on a binge takes repeatedly higher doses of cocaine, which can lead to a state of irritability, restlessness, and paranoia. This gradually slides into a paranoid psychosis, where they lose touch with reality. Users are constantly on a mission to achieve the feelings that the first high produced, consistently increasing their dose in an effort to do so. The two main situations in which overdoses commonly occur include:

• It is unknowingly laced with synthetically produced fentanyl, which has unknown effects on every person.
• A tolerance to the high can occur, which is why people start to increase the dose. The body, however, may have become more sensitive to the anesthetic and convulsant effects when compared to the lowest dose.  

What is the best treatment for cocaine addiction?

There is no one size fits all cure for any drug abuse, and it is no different for those who use cocaine. There are currently no drugs that specifically help someone to battle their addiction to cocaine, but clinical trials have found promise in medications that affect serotonin receptors, as well as disulfiram, which helps in fighting alcoholism. A cocaine vaccine is also being researched to prevent relapses. It causes the immune system to make antibodies that are specific to cocaine which bind to the substance, stopping it from reaching the receptors in the brain. While there are many ways to treat addiction, the best results for continued sobriety occur when multiple therapies are used together in inpatient and outpatient setting.

• Contingency management (CM)
  • A form of incentivization that is rendering positive results, particularly in cocaine addicts. Recovering addicts are given prizes that encourage healthy lifestyles, such as movie tickets, gym memberships, dinner out, and more.
• CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy)
  •  Helps prevent relapse by helping recovering addicts develop critical skills that support long-term sobriety. These skills include:
    • Being aware of situations in which they use cocaine
    • Avoiding those situations
    • Coping with the negative thoughts that led to abuse in the first place.
• TCs (therapeutic communities)
  • Drug-free residency where peers help each other deal with the issues. It generally requires a six to twelve month stay and can include on-site vocational rehab and other supportive services.
• Cocaine Anonymous
  • A 12-step program where peers lean on others who are going through similar situations.

Being a teenager or even an adult can be challenging, and people who have not learned coping mechanisms that would help them deal with life’s issues may turn to the use of cocaine. With the number of long-term side effects that can occur in addition to the high level of addictiveness of cocaine, it’s important to get professional help in order to overcome its use. Detox is difficult and there are a variety of prescription medications that can lessen the harshness of withdrawal. Medication assisted detox is not the only benefit. Programs also provide therapies and coping skills for those who are trying to recover to face life’s challenges head on and without the use of drugs. 12-step programs are a fantastic way to get the support from others who understand all too well what you are going through. Get back to the goals that will lead to the happy life of which you always dreamed by trusting a cocaine addiction treatment center.