Cocaine Addiction is very similar to any other drug addiction. It starts with an attempt to resolve some type of emotional or physical pain that has manifested itself in the addicts life. Cocaine addicts, and addicts in general, are basically good people that have simply gone down the wrong path to correct a real problem. Their inability to cope or deal with the painful areas of life lead to the road of addiction. These problems can be any number of things from self esteem issues, intense anxiety, identity crisis or loss of a loved one. Physical discomfort could be the source as well such as chronic pain or damaged muscles.

 

Cocaine is turned to in attempt to remove discomfort in the addict's life. This issue or problem the addict has, seemingly has no resolve, so cocaine becomes the answer to these problems. This is pretty common stuff to most of us. We have all had hard times or periods of pain or discomfort in our lives. The difference between someone who becomes addicted to cocaine and someone who does not is dependent upon each individual and their surroundings. In other words, when this traumatic event that causes pain or discomfort in the persons life, there are individuals around them that offer the remedy of cocaine or some other drug as a way to relieve the pain.

 

Cocaine provides its "high" by working on the pleasure receptors in the brain. It regulates feeling and mood swings while modifying those chemicals that control these emotions. Cocaine's euphoric feeling that it provides is short at best, lasting somewhere around 15-20 minutes. If the addict is injecting the drug or smoking it (freebasing), then the effects are almost instantaneous. However, cocaine's effects are even shorter when used in those manners.

 

Cocaine addiction happens when the addict decides that the numbing sensations and feelings of pleasure provided by cocaine become the solution to the problem that started them using in the first place. By making cocaine the solution, addiction happens very easily, because any time feelings of pain or discomfort begin, the person immediately turns to cocaine to subdue these feelings. However, cocaine is a physically and mentally addictive substance to begin with so attaching an emotional value to using cocaine makes it even harder to overcome its addiction. Since the relief is only temporary, a repetitive pattern is put in place that causes the addict to constantly look for cocaine as all it has done is temporarily relieve the problem instead of actually fixing it. This is the way cocaine addiction begins and without a plan or treatment program, cocaine addiction can be very difficult to overcome.

 

Addiction to cocaine happens very quickly and this fact alone makes it hard to stop as most addicts don't even recognize it is a problem until it is too late. Studies that used animals as test subjects have shown that the animal test subject will work up to Ten-Thousand times harder for another dose of cocaine than it would for food or water. In fact, animal studies have shown that they would choose cocaine over food and water, even if they are starving! In test studies, animals have access to cocaine limited to keep them from ingesting toxic levels of the drug. In the real world though, humans have no such barriers but behave very similar as animal test subjects do. Addicts will go to great lengths to obtain cocaine and parts of their life that use to be important, fall to the way side of cocaine addiction.