COCAINE: NOT JUST FOR OL' DIRTY BASTARD ANYMORE

I recently found myself in a stuffy back room in a club. Six white
powdered lines were laid out on the counter. Five people stood around
me. I was handed a strategically bent Costco card and, with a
hospitable smile, offered my turn. Just the night before that, I was
offered a line three times. For consecutive weekends prior, I have
encountered the drug in washrooms, behind bars, in cabs, on the
street, and in restaurants.

Am I shocked that cocaine is out there? Hardly. I know it is, and I
know it is common. But it seems to me that the use of cocaine as an
"occasional" or "casual" drug is becoming increasingly prevalent. I
have informally surveyed people I know and many more of them than I
would have guessed do coke; some regularly, some on an ad hoc basis.
Every single person I have questioned, though, friend or acquaintance,
responds quickly with a defense. Some of my favourites include: "Well
yes, but I'm not addicted, I just do it when I drink," "It gets me
sober," "I never pay for it - so it's not that serious," "It's just a
party drug," "I don't need it, it's a good stress release" and the
infamous, "Everyone does it, it's no big deal."

Am I missing out on something amazing? Hardly.

My intent is not to lecture or reprehend - surely, I have my vices and
my insalubrious addictions. I have done my share of "experimenting"
and I do my share of partying, but I really have no desire to do coke.
To be frank, it scares me. What I wonder is why it does not seem to
scare anyone else.

Two of my lifetime friends have, by the age of 22, been through rehab
for cocaine, and incidentally, alcoholism. A few others are dealers.
Numerous current friends, past coworkers, and acquaintances use it. I
am sure there is more where that came from: North Americans 18 to 25
years of age currently have the highest percentage of cocaine use than
any other age group.

There are 100-page studies that list countless reasons why cocaine
scares me, and should, I think - I hope - scare others.

The powerful stimulant can affect all parts of your body. Consequences
include increased blood pressure, tremors, paranoia, anxiety, loss of
sense of smell, and lung damage. Habitual and higher dosages have been
linked with seizures, strokes and cerebral infarction, heart attacks,
respiratory failure, sleep, eating and sexual disorders, kidney
failure, and more.

More worrisome are the psychological and cognitive impairments.
Cocaine produces erratic behaviour, mood swings, depression, and
paranoid psychosis. Even a casual snort of the powerfully addictive
drug changes brain chemistry and creates a craving - physiological or
psychological - that makes it very difficult to stop using.

As for those who use it to "get sober," the liver combines cocaine and
alcohol to produce cocaethylene, which causes a longer duration of
effects in the brain that is more toxic than each drug used alone.
This mixture results in more drug-related deaths than any other
combination of drugs.

If you are using cocaine and you have not experienced any problems
yet, worry not because complications from cocaine use may take more
than a decade to manifest, and by that time the cumulative effects
will become evident, and more health problems will arise.

You can be sure that cocaine will affect your mental and physical
health in some way; what is scary is that you never really know how.
Depending on an individual's metabolism, frequency, and type of use,
you could love it, die from it, or be a lifetime victim of its
effects. Half of all drug related emergency room visits are due to
cocaine abuse, and in the 1990s double the number of people in
Vancouver never made it back out of the emergency room. The number is
only getting higher.