Captured at www.cocaine.org/coke.html
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As 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.
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 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 newfound look of spiritual peace and happiness suffusing the features of a loved one as (s)he prepared to meet his or her Maker.
