Cocaine Intoxication

What is cocaine intoxication?

Cocaine intoxication is when you become restless and overactive while or shortly after using cocaine. You feel very sensitive and "picked on." You feel angry and destructive.

Cocaine is a drug made from the leaves of the coca plant, which grows in South America. It is a stimulant that causes physical and psychological arousal, increased confidence, talkativeness, increased breathing and heart rate, increased energy, and sleeplessness. Cocaine can also numb an area of the body quickly.

Some people are more sensitive than others to cocaine. Cocaine intoxication can kill you.

How does it occur?

Cocaine intoxication occurs when you smoke, snort, or inject too much cocaine.

Cocaine stimulates some of the chemicals in the brain and body that change physical states and emotions. At first you feel pleasure, increased energy, and enhanced self-esteem. You also have less anxiety and are less self-conscious.

Cocaine also affects sexual behavior. In small doses cocaine increases sexual arousal and makes orgasms and erections easier. In large doses cocaine makes you feel increased sexual desire but you are less able to achieve orgasm. Men may have problems with impotence.

These pleasurable feelings make you want to repeat the high. You may need larger and larger doses of cocaine to produce the feelings of the first few doses. This may lead to becoming dependent on cocaine.

The effects of cocaine are short-lived. This may cause you to binge (take the drug continually over several hours, or even a week). This may lead to an overdose.

What are the symptoms?

You may have these symptoms when you use cocaine, or shortly afterward:

• a fast or slow heartbeat
• dilated pupils
• high or low blood pressure
• hallucinations (seeing or feeling things that are not there, such as bugs under your skin)
• sweating or chills
• dangerous rise in temperature
• nausea or vomiting
• muscle pain or weakness
• chest pain
• convulsions
• increased or decreased level of activity
• confusion
• coma.

Chronic snorting of cocaine can lead to:

• sore nasal membranes
• a tear or other damage to the membrane that separates the left and right nostrils
• nosebleeds
• sinusitis
• rapid heart rates and heart attack
• stroke
• premature birth or stillbirth of infants whose mothers use cocaine.

How is it diagnosed?

To diagnose cocaine intoxication, your health care provider will review your symptoms, examine you, and take a history of drug use. You may also have tests such as CT scans, head x-rays, or an electrocardiogram (ECG). Your urine may be analyzed. Cocaine can remain in urine for many hours after you have used the drug.

How is it treated?

Your health care provider will treat your physical symptoms, including:

• effects on the heart, including heart attack, disturbances in the rhythm of the heart, and high blood pressure
• effects on the nervous system, including paranoia, hallucinations, potentially lethal high fever, stroke, and seizures.

If you become intoxicated with cocaine often, and your cocaine use is so out of control that it interferes with your life, seek treatment for cocaine dependence. You can join a self-help group (for example, Cocaine Anonymous), a support group, a therapy group, or be part of a supervised treatment program. The health care providers and counselors in any treatment program will work with you to help you adapt to a life free from cocaine.

How long will the effects of a dose of cocaine last?

How rapidly you will feel the effects and how long they will last depends on whether you smoke, sniff, or inject cocaine. Most effects begin within seconds and last up to an hour.

During a binge, effects may last up to 48 hours after the last dose.

How can I take care of myself?

The best way to help yourself is to see your health care provider and make plans to stop taking cocaine. If you are already seeing a health care provider, it is important to take the full course of treatment he or she prescribes.

You may want to call the National Clearinghouse for Alcohol and Drug Information (NCADI) at 1-800-729-6686.

Changing your lifestyle can help you to stop using cocaine. Make the following a regular part of your life:

• Exercise 30 minutes 3 times a week.
• Participate in relaxing recreation activities at least once or twice a week.
• Do progressive relaxation exercises daily.
• Imagine, or call to mind, your positive life experiences often.
• Eat balanced, nutritious meals.
• Get 6 to 8 hours of sleep per night.
• Practice deep breathing exercises during times of high stress.
• Talk with friends and develop other support systems.
• Drink little or no alcohol or caffeine.
• Listen to music to help you relax.
• Develop and maintain an attitude that things will work out.
• Ask for help at home and work when the load is too great to handle.
• Seek help from a therapist to talk through anxiety-producing life events. Ask for help in developing positive coping methods.