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Drug Rehab and Cocaine Addiction

Cocaine is a white powder extracted from the coca plant and one of the most highly addictive substances known. There are different ways on how to use cocaine in order for its effects to be felt quickly. This includes snorting the powder and dissolving the powder in water then injecting it intravenously. During the 1970s, users developed a method for separating the most potent chemicals in cocaine by heating it with ether which paved its way for the appearance of freebase cocaine. This freebase cocaine is more potent. It is usually smoked in a water pipe or is combined in a tobacco or marijuana cigarette. A form of free-base cocaine that is boiled down into tiny chunks, or rocks, which are usually smoked is known as crack.

The nucleus accumbens and the ventral tegmental area are the parts of the brain being activated by cocaine. These parts of the brain are known to register the feelings of pleasure and reward. The releasing of dopamine into the synapses in these areas of the brain and then binds to receptors on neighboring synapses happen when a pleasurable event happens. Cocaine blocks the reuptake of dopamine into the transmitting neuron, causing dopamine to accumulate in the synapse, maintaining the pleasurable feeling.

Initially, cocaine produces a sudden rush of intense euphoria, followed by great self-esteem, alertness, energy, and a general feeling of competence, creativity, and social acceptability. The feeling of being drugged is not often felt. A feeling of becoming the person they always wanted to be happens instead. When taken at high doses or chronically, however, cocaine leads to grandiosity, impulsiveness, hypersexuality, compulsive behavior, agitation, and anxiety, reaching the point of panic and paranoia. Feelings of exhaustion and depression happens after stopping the use of the substance which is often followed by sleeping for long amounts of time. With the person’s physiological and psychological dependence, users feel an intense craving for the substance.

Many cocaine abusers and dependents started with heavy alcohol or marijuana use and then graduated to harder substances, including cocaine. The unusually fast and potent effects of cocaine on the brain’s reward centers, however, seem to create this substance more likely than most illegal substances to result in patterns of abuse and dependence, even between people who have never been heavy users of any other substances.

Cocaine has been blamed as one of the primary reasons why crime has been rising. One of the best ways to get rid of the problems brought by cocaine addicted is through letting the cocaine addict to go through a drug rehab. As cocaine addiction is on the rise, different drug rehab centers have been sprouting in order to help the cocaine problem. Several treatment and drug rehab programs have been established to be able provide help to those victims of cocaine dependency and addiction. These patients are provided with medical treatment as well as cognitive-behavioral therapies. Moreover, the problem of addiction and dependency does not stop with the elimination of the drug intake. It goes as far as teaching the patient a new life free from drugs. Discussing how the addiction came about are also being tackled as part of other treatment programs all for the abolishing of cocaine addiction. There have been cases wherein drug dependency was associated with physical and sexual abuse during childhood. When people couldn’t seem to handle such stressful events, they tend to resort to certain behaviors that may allow them to escape the mere thought of the undesirable experience, which is craving for the euphoric feeling given by drugs.

Cocaine addiction has been blamed for the rising crimes in the society that one of the effective ways to solve them is by letting a cocaine addictive person to go through a drug rehab.