RobeCocaine Addiction

RobeCocaine Addiction
Basic Facts About Cocaine:
Cocaine is a powerfully addictive central nervous system stimulant and drug of abuse. Once having tried cocaine, users cannot predict or control the extent to which they will continue to use the drug.
Street Names include:
Coke, Dust, Toot, Line, Nose Candy, Snow. Sneeze, Powder, Girl, White Pony, Flake, C, The Lady, Cain, Neurocain, Rock.
What Is Cocaine?
Cocaine is a drug (paste) extracted from the leaves of the South American coca plant. It is a strong stimulant that effect the body’s central nervous system.
What Does Cocaine Look Like?
Cocaine is a white crystalline powder. It is often mixed with sugar, cornstarch, vitamins and flour. Crack cocaine looks like a small rock, chunk or chip and it is sometimes off-white or pink in color.
How Is It Taken?
Cocaine can be injected, smoked, or snorted.
Who Uses It?
Cocaine is the second most commonly used illicit drug in the U.S. Nearly one percent of Americans are currently using cocaine. Users can be from all socioeconomic backgrounds, ages and genders.
What Are the Effects of Cocaine?
The drug creates a strong sense of exhilaration. Users generally feel invincible, carefree, alert, and euphoric and have a lot of energy. This is usually followed by agitation, depression, anxiety, paranoia and decreased appetite. The effects of cocaine generally last about two hours, but the cocaine addict will almost always seek more of the drug to maintain the pleasurable effects. Cocaine addicts will go to almost any length to obtain the drug and can often think of little else other than taking cocaine.
What Are the Hazards of Cocaine?
Cocaine is potent and dangerous. The short-term and long-term effects of cocaine are equally dangerous. The dangers of experiencing cardiac arrest or seizures followed by respiratory failure are equal in both short and long term abuse.
• Insomnia
• Loss of appetite
• Blurred vision
• Vomiting
• High anxiety
• Irritability
• Constricted blood vessels
• Dilated pupils
• Nasal infections
• Nose bleeds
• Rapid breathing
• Sweating
• Violent behavior
• Twitching
• Hallucinations
• Chest pain
The long-term effects of using cocaine can include extreme agitation, violent mood swings and depression. Prolonged use of snorting cocaine cause ulcerations in the mucous membrane of the nose and holes and in the barrier separating the nostrils.
It can also result in a loss of appetite, extreme insomnia and sexual problems. Heart disease, heart attacks, respiratory failure, strokes, seizures, and gastrointestinal problems are not uncommon among long-term users of cocaine and crack.
What is Crack Cocaine?
Crack cocaine is a highly addictive and powerful stimulant that is derived from powdered cocaine. Crack is made by dissolving powdered cocaine in a mixture of water and ammonia or sodium bicarbonate (baking soda). The mixture is boiled until a solid substance forms. It is removed from the liquid, dried, and then broken into the chunks (rocks) that are sold as crack cocaine.
Crack is nearly always smoked, delivering a large quantity of the drug to the lungs, producing an immediate and intense euphoric effect. Because of its availability and intense effects, crack has grown in popularity. Health risks and problems resulting from crack use are the same as those listed for cocaine, however because of the intensity of the drug it places users at a higher risk for addiction.
Is Cocaine Addictive?
Cocaine is highly addictive, leaving users with an overwhelming craving for the drug. The addiction to crack develops quickly, sometimes after just a few times of smoking it. Those addicted to cocaine or crack can find help with our behavioral treatments including both residential and outpatient approaches.
Tags: cocaine addict, cocaine addiction, cocaine addicts, cocaine detox, ecstasy addiction, long term effects of cocaine
rt Ferguson, MS, CN

Prescription Medication Addiction

It has become all too common to view press conferences announcing that football, baseba ll, and other legendary sports icons are entering a drug rehab to help overcome an addiction to painkillers. Like thousands of other individuals — lives and careers are destroyed by chronic pain.

Having endured numerous surgeries as a result of sports injuries, accidents, carpel tunnel syndrome and other mishaps, development of dependence on a narcotic analgesic has become all encompassing.

Though few people are capable of matching huge fame and fortune, millions share the struggle to manage chronic pain and thousands have endured similar battles to overcome drug dependence.

Unregulated Internet pharmacies have made acquiring prescription drugs as easy as ordering from an online catalog, it comes as little surprise that thousands of suffering “normal folks” are attempting to self-medicate their pain away. However, as many have discovered, taking highly addictive medications can cause many more problems than it solves.

Though not all of these off-label or recreational uses of prescription painkillers can be attributed to struggles with chronic pain, evidence indicates that many individuals develop dependency after using the drugs for legitimate purposes.

Chronic pain is under-treated, and the most common reasons patients gave for changing doctors included “too much pain,” and “the belief that the doctor didn’t take their pain seriously enough.”
The following are signs that the “as needed” use of pain-killing medication has become dependency or addiction:

• Needing increasingly larger doses to achieve the same level of comfort
• Undergoing changes in personality and withdrawing from family, friends, and social situations one previously enjoyed
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• Expressing a need for continued medication long after the injury for which the drugs were initially prescribed has healed
• “Doctor shopping,” going online, or taking other steps to get more pain medication than was originally prescribed
• Experiencing blackouts, memory loss, or forgetfulness
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Malibu Recovery Center is a place where residents gain the ability to learn a new way to live, free from the bonds of addiction and/or chronic pain. It is useful to distinguish between two basic types of pain, acute and chronic, and they differ greatly.

Acute pain results from disease, inflammation, or injury to tissues. This type of pain generally comes on suddenly, and may be accompanied by anxiety or emotional distress. The cause of acute pain can usually be treated. It is confined to a given period of time and severity. However in some rare instances, it can become chronic.

Chronic pain is described as pain that lasts 6 months or longer or a pain that extends beyond the time for normal healing for an injury, disease, or surgery. It is believed to represent disease itself. It can be made much worse by psychological factors. Chronic pain persists over a longer period of time than acute pain and is resistant to most medical treatments.

Acute pain is normal and triggered in the nervous system to alert you to possible injury with the need to take care of yourself. Chronic pain is different. Chronic pain persists. Pain signals continue firing in the nervous system for weeks, months, even years. There may have been an initial mishap, but some

Common chronic pain complaints include headache, low back pain, carpel tunnel pain, cancer pain, arthritis pain, pain resulting from damage to the peripheral nerves or to the central nervous system itself, or pain not due to past disease or injury or any visible sign of damage to the nervous system.

Fortunately, if you are ready, Malibu Recovery Center is here to help. Call 888.246.8063

Tags: chronic pain, ecstasy addiction, malibu detox, oxy detox, pain management, perscription pills detox, vicodin addiction help