How dangerous is cocaine?
In my opinion, cocaine is extremely dangerous. In fact, it's probably one of the most dangerous drugs that are available. The dangers of the cocaine can be divided into two large groups. There are psychological dangers because cocaine is highly addictive, and there are physical dangers, affecting a number of organs in the system. The psychological dangers are that cocaine simply makes you feel very good; it puts you in high, it stops you from feeling sleepy or tired, and when that effect wears off, you feel very tired, you feel dreadful, you feel the opposite to what you felt when you were under the influence of cocaine. Therefore, cocaine leads you to want to quickly take it again. It has a positive reinforcing effect. The positive effect will make you want to take it again and quickly. Therefore cocaine becomes addictive, even if you don't use it everyday. It is a type of addiction that leads the patient into false sense security that they are not addicted because they don't use during the week. It is an easy trap to fall into. From a physical point of view, it is a stimulant; that's why it stops you from feeling sleepy. But at the same time, it stimulates your heart, makes your pulse rate go higher, increases your blood pressure and stimulates your brain. It stimulates neuronal activity in the brain. When you get an excessive stimulation of either of these two organs, the activity within these organs becomes chaotic. That happens in the heart, it goes into ventricular fibrillation. From a physical point of view, this is same as cardiac arrest. Your heart does not beat effectively and therefore no blood gets pumped out of the heart. It is cardiac arrest and requires a defibrillator, in order to control ventricular fibrillation. That could be cause by cocaine. When cocaine over stimulates the brain, it can lead to a convulsion. This is an epileptic type of fit. You have uncontrolled involuntary movements in arms, legs and other muscles. It often involves respiratory muscles, which means that when you are convulsing, you are unable to breathe. Logically, if the convulsion is to be prolonged, you develop poor oxygen levels in the blood and therefore you can develop brain damage as a result of a lack of oxygen supply to the brain.
