What Are the Long-Term Effects of Cocaine Use?
Cocaine is a powerfully addictive drug. Thus, it is unlikely that an individual
will be able to reliably predict or control the extent to which he or she will continue to want or use the drug.
And, if addiction takes hold, the risk for relapse is high even following long periods of
abstinence.
Recent studies have shown that during periods of abstinence, the memory of the cocaine
experience or exposure to cues associated with drug use can trigger tremendous craving and relapse to drug
use. With repeated exposure to cocaine, the brain starts to adapt, and the reward pathway becomes less
sensitive to natural reinforcers and to the drug itself.
Tolerance may develop — this means that higher doses and/or more frequent use of cocaine is
needed to register the same level of pleasure experienced during initial use. At the same time, users can also
become more sensitive (sensitization) to cocaine’s anxietyproducing, convulsant, and other toxic
effects.
Users take cocaine in “binges,” during which the cocaine is used repeatedly and at increasingly
higher doses. This can lead to increased irritability, restlessness, and paranoia — even a fullblown paranoid
psychosis, in which the individual loses touch with reality and experiences auditory hallucinations. With
increasing dosages or frequency of use, the risk of adverse psychological or physiological effects
increases.
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