Today, most of the world’s supply of coca is grown and refined into cocaine in Colombia. For at least 4,500 years, people in Peru and Bolivia have chewed coca leaves to lessen hunger and fatigue. Cheaper “crack” cocaine became available in the 1980s.Ĭocaine is extracted from the leaves of the Erythroxylum (coca) bush, which grows on the slopes of the Andes Mountains in South America. The use of cocaine declined until the 1970s, when it became known for its high cost, and for the rich and glamorous people who used it. In 1911, Canada passed laws restricting the importation, manufacture, sale and possession of cocaine. After this, cocaine became widely and legally available in patent medicines and soft drinks.Īs cocaine use increased, people began to discover its dangers. In the 1880s, psychiatrist Sigmund Freud wrote scientific papers that praised cocaine as a treatment for many ailments, including depression and alcohol and opioid addiction. Today, we mostly use synthetic anesthetics, rather than cocaine. Researchers soon discovered that cocaine numbs whatever tissues it touches, leading to its use as a local anesthetic. Pure cocaine was first isolated from the leaves of the coca bush in 1860. Vaccines to produce antibodies to cocaine in the bloodstream are in clinical trials.Blow, C, coke, crack, flake, freebase, rock, snow What is it? These symptoms may come from an actual shutdown, or crash, in dopamine and serotonin function, as well as an increased response of the brain systems that react to stress. A crash occurs after this period of intense drug-taking, resulting in such symptoms as emotional and physical exhaustion and depression. Alterations in dopamine activity in the accumbens, induced by chronic cocaine intake, are thought to result in a progressively increasing motivation to take the drugs, eventually leading to addiction.Ĭocaine users often go on binges, consuming a large amount of the drug in just a few days. The key biochemical factor underlying the reinforcing effects of psychostimulant drugs is their ability to greatly elevate the brain chemical dopamine in specific brain regions, such as the nucleus accumbens. A form of methamphetamine that can be smoked, “crystal meth,” also has become popular. It enters the brain in seconds, producing a rush of euphoria and feelings of power and self-confidence. A popular, chemically altered form of cocaine, crack, is smoked. In 2009, in the United States, an estimated 4.8 million people age 12 and older had abused cocaine. Pleasure circuits are stimulated again and again, producing a sense of euphoria. Cocaine molecules block the pump, or transporter, causing more dopamine to accumulate in the synapse. Then, to end the signal, dopamine molecules break away from the receptors and are pumped back into the nerve terminals that released them. This triggers an electrical signal that is relayed through the receiver. Dopamine crosses the synapse and fits into receptors on the surface of the receiving cell.
Dopamine-containing neurons normally relay their signals by releasing dopamine into many synapses. The basis for increased pleasure occurs at the synapse. Within seconds, it is carried by the blood to the brain.
Thebrain 12 crack crack#
Crack cocaine enters the bloodstream through the lungs.
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