Crack Cocaine Symptoms and Warning Signs

Crack Cocaine Info

• Crack Cocaine Addiction and Abuse
• Crack Cocaine Symptoms and Warning Signs
• Crack Cocaine Treatment and Rehab
• Crack Cocaine Withdrawal and Detox

Crack cocaine is a dangerous, highly addictive substance that can induce intense euphoric ‘highs’. Its powerfully addictive nature means it cannot realistically be used in purely recreational, non-dependent fashion for any significant duration. Crack cocaine abuse is deadly serious for both you and your loved ones, and addiction to crack cocaine results in both physical and psychological symptoms.

When you smoke crack you experience extreme euphoria, which makes everything seem more intense, giving you a boost of alertness and energy. Crack stimulates reward centres in the brain, reinforcing repeated and continuous use of the drug. As soon as the high wears off, you may feel compelled to smoke more crack to dispel feelings of agitation, restlessness, paranoia and irritability.

One of the most important warning signs of persistent drug abuse is the development of tolerance for the doses of crack cocaine previously smoked. Tolerance occurs when your body becomes habituated to the active ingredients of crack so that greater amounts of it are required in order to produce the same effects.

Increasing amounts of crack are required to overcome tolerance, once it has developed. Substance dependence can be expected to follow soon after. Crack cocaine dependence is likely to be present if you are engaging in high risk, problematic or dangerous behaviours to guarantee uninterrupted access to and use of the substance. Also, you may be addicted to crack if you engage in risky sexual behaviours, violence and other illegal activities surrounding its use.

In addition, crack cocaine addiction makes you act in a less rational way. It can be difficult to maintain interpersonal relationships as a result. This doesn’t mean that you should abandon relationships, only that additional support and a new plan of action may be required.

Professional treatment can help you cope with the symptoms and act on the warning signs of crack cocaine addiction. A range of treatment options is available, from outpatient therapy to support groups and inpatient rehabilitation centres. Treatment for your addiction is a long road, but recovery is possible.

Recognising the Top Five Crack Addiction Symptoms

Crack cocaine addiction may develop after a single use of crack, because it produces fast-acting, but short-lived euphoria encouraging frequent use in order to maintain the ‘high’. A wide range of symptoms can occur, varying from one person to the next.

When you’re on crack, you may exhibit excessive and abnormal bursts of stimulation and energy. Manic activity may include talking rapidly, nervous agitation, lack of appetite (despite a long period of not eating), or consuming food at an extremely fast rate.

After the dose wears off, you may experience complete exhaustion, where you might fall asleep wherever you are and remain asleep for days.

The constant alternation between high energy and deep fatigue has obvious effects on day-to-day behaviour. Telltale changes in behaviour include increased irritability or unusual sleeping habits. Regular sleep habits become all but impossible, as does regular work or school attendance. Violent and unpredictable mood swings are also a common symptom of crack addiction.

Crack cocaine creates feelings of happiness and confidence. Unfortunately, these feelings are short-lived and each time the drug wears off, you will feel sad, fatigued and sometimes irritable. Erratic behaviour might develop, placing a strain on both personal and working relationships. Extreme mood swings will be noticeable to others.

Being off crack for a period of time can also lead to suicidal thoughts and depression. The latter is an uncontrollable symptom of crack cocaine addiction. Crack elevates levels in the brain of dopamine, a ‘feel good’ chemical that stimulates highs. However, as soon as the drug wears off, dopamine levels become depleted, resulting in feelings of fatigue and depression.

Crack cocaine can also cause involuntary jitters and tremors. Even when you’re off the drug, this can be difficult to control. Belief that more crack will ease or mask tremors is another driver for continued or increased abuse of the drug.

Although crack is most commonly smoked, it can also be snorted. Snorting crack cocaine damages nasal passages, leading to nosebleeds. Consequently, you may also experience a constant runny nose. The lining of the nose may also become permanently damaged from long-term use, robbing you of the ability to perceive anything through your nose, impairing smell and taste. Also, snorting crack can tear the mucous linings of the throat and cause difficulty in speaking or swallowing. Crack cocaine users can often be identified by their hoarse voices and constantly sore throat.

Ten Other Signs of Crack Use You Shouldn’t Ignore

Crack is a powerful form of cocaine that is easily produced from powder cocaine, and which can be smoked. Smoking delivers higher doses to the brain, and produces more rapid response than taking cocaine powder. When you’re addicted to a drug as powerful as crack cocaine, you might deny the substance is at the root of your problems. You may also lack the will to control your intense physical and psychological compulsion for more and more hits of the drug.

Here are ten more signs of crack use you should be on the lookout for:

Crack Cocaine Overdoses Can Be Fatal

Crack cocaine has a very short half-life, i.e. it only persists in your system for a short period of time. As it clears you may go through what is called a ‘crash’, where the neurotransmitters that regulate emotional balance and wellbeing become depleted after bingeing.

A crash can lead to severe depression and crack cocaine overdose, as addicts seek to avoid further crashes. It is also possible to overdose when trying crack cocaine for the first time, especially when trying to impress or keep up with a more experienced crack addict.

Overdose can lead to dangerous increase in body temperature , hallucinations and convulsions. You may have to be hospitalised as a result of a confused and delirious state. If treatment is not prompt, death could result.

Overdoses can also occur when a stash of cocaine is swallowed in order to avoid arrest. Such ingestion can lead to a major intoxication and may need hospitalisation to avoid death.

Another major risk factor for overdose is combining crack with any other drug. Heroin, alcohol and other depressant substances can dampen the perceived effects of crack, and lead you to take more of the drug than intended, significantly increasing the risk of brain disorders and other health problems.

The symptoms of crack cocaine overdose are more or less the same as those of a cocaine overdose. You begin to feel anxious and may experience strong feelings of nausea, followed by vomiting. Bleeding from the nasal cavity is also common, in addition to loss of muscle control and feelings of faintness. You may lose consciousness or have a seizure.

A crack overdose can be highly dangerous or even fatal. Signs of a crack cocaine overdose include:

Changes in vital signs:

• Pulse (initially may increase, but may decrease if serious complications occur)
• Temperature changes (may increase initially, but decrease if serious complications occur)
• Respiration rate (initially may increase, but decrease if serious complications occur)
• Blood pressure (initially may increase, but decrease if serious complications occur)

Other signs are: clammy skin, chest pains, heaviness of the chest, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, hyperactivity, confusion, disorientation, hallucinations and paranoid delusions.

How Crack Addiction Develops

When you are addicted to crack, getting a fix becomes more important than anything else, including abiding by the law. Knowing why people use crack and how crack addiction develops could save your life.

You might be using crack in order to achieve a ‘high’. This ‘high’ describes a range of feelings, including:

As with other drugs, desirable effects end up being replaced with negative ones, as use continues.

Crack addiction develops because crack cocaine is a very addictive drug, known for producing intense psychological dependence. Compared to other drugs, it provides a stronger sensation of euphoria, as well as a false sense of well-being that makes you want to continue taking it. After a point, you will become addicted and feel a strong need to have the drug in your system in order to survive.

Crack addiction is a serious problem, and its adverse effects develop as soon as you begin to use the drug. A major driver of compulsive crack usage is that it  is easy to develop a tolerance to crack. As tolerance worsens, you no longer feel the same high from your regular dose, so you begin to use more of the drug in order to get high.

How do People Take Crack?

Generally, crack is smoked using a glass pipe. It can also be injected into the veins or snorted, but these two methods of use are less common. Most users make use of a ‘crack stem’ in order to smoke crack. When the substance is heated, a crackling and popping occurs that can cause burns on the lips, mouth, face and hands. There is a high risk that during the process, the drug will crackle and burn you, or pop right out of the pipe.

The long and slender glass tube of the crack stem (as it is known on the streets) allows you to put the drug far inside the device. Therefore, crackling cannot result in an ejection of the drug from the pipe. However, glass heats up very quickly, and most users experience intense burns on the hands, lips and fingertips, because they are using the drug repeatedly over and over again in a single setting. It’s therefore quite easy to spot a crack cocaine addict through burnt hands and black fingertips.

Crack may be mixed with other drugs like heroin or marijuana. When multiple drugs are abused at the same time, there is a greater risk of an overdose and other serious consequences.

What Does it Mean to be Addicted to Crack?

Crack is highly potent and far more addictive than regular cocaine. An addiction to crack therefore develops rapidly, and you may become addicted to it after your first try. The high it induces is fleeting, which drives users to seek further hits rapidly. Addiction occurs rapidly, because smoking crack radically disrupts your ability to modulate levels of dopamine, the happiness-inducing chemical in the brain.

Short-Term Effects

As a result of the unpredictability of the contents of crack cocaine, its effects can vary from one person to the next. The drug’s effects are both physical and psychological, and the severity depends on the quantity taken. When crack is smoked, the immediate, short-term effects include euphoria, increased blood pressure, heightened paranoia and reduced appetite. The initial high lasts for up to ten minutes, followed by cravings for more of the drug to maintain the intense euphoria. If use of the drug is not continued, these effects will generally dissipate within a few hours. Usually, as the effects wear off, there will be intense cravings to chase the high, which can result in bingeing on crack for hours or days. Some short-term effects which tend to occur within seconds of inhalation of the crack vapours from a pipe include:

Long-Term Effects

Your overall health and mental stability can be significantly affected by repeated use of crack cocaine. Chronic use of the drug can lead to paranoid psychosis, where you lose touch with reality. The long-term effects of crack cocaine addiction can be detrimental, causing damage to most of the vital organs of the body like the heart, lung, liver, and kidneys. In addition, there is a high susceptibility to infection, as your immune system can be compromised by the drug.

More long-term effects of crack cocaine addiction include:

Behavioural Symptoms of Crack Cocaine Addiction

• Inability to stop taking crack, despite a strong desire to do so
• Persistent and obsessive thoughts about smoking crack
• Prioritising obtaining the drug
• Aggression and volatile mood swings
• Smoking crack at the expense of your finances, relationships, or other important aspects of your life

Physical Effects of Crack Addiction

You might have a dry mouth, experience little or no appetite and excessive sweating. Also, you might become more talkative and highly active. You may have too much energy to fall sleep.

How Relationships are Affected by Crack Cocaine Addiction

Drugs and relationships are a destructive and explosive combination, which reach far beyond one’s immediate family. As recreational drug use evolves into addiction, you become driven by cravings for more and more of the drug. In time, getting the drug you need becomes the most powerful driving force in your life, which means that other motivations, such as meaningful relationships, become less important. An addict can’t care for their relationship with others, so that when addiction takes hold relationships are often destroyed.

You may find yourself keeping secrets from your loved ones about how you spent rent or food money on crack, or start to lie about your whereabouts. Sometimes, you might run out to get drugs in the middle of the night. Subsequently, because you can’t tell anyone where you’re going, you’ll lie to their face. If you’re questioned about your actions, you’re likely to become defensive and even verbally or physically aggressive, in an attempt to cover your tracks. You will also often criticise others to deflect attention from your drug usage.

Crack cocaine addiction changes you emotionally and ruins relationships, because you are no longer the same person you were before the addiction began. Continued abuse leads to apathy, draining the life out of your relationships.

Who Crack Cocaine Addiction Affects

Besides the mental and physical health implications on you, your crack cocaine addiction also affects your family, neighbourhood and society at large. Drug dealers pose risks, threats and dangers to society. Many sellers recruit children as scouts, because of lighter juvenile sentencing. Accidents can also occur whilst driving or operating a machine under the influence of crack cocaine. The addiction puts a lot of stress on parents, siblings, grandparents and anyone else at home or within the extended family. Loved ones can also bear the brunt of aggressive mood swings.

Crack Cocaine Abuse Exposes People to the Following Risks

Abusing crack may place you (and others) in harm’s way as a result of dangerous compulsive drug-seeking behaviours. Some behaviours in which you might start to engage include:

Do I Know If Someone Is On Crack?

When using prescription medicine and other pharmaceutical drugs, it can sometimes be difficult to differentiate between normal usage and abuse. This is not the same with crack. Crack is powerfully addictive and there is a very low possibility of doing it recreationally, without becoming helplessly dependent on it. Therefore, if you sense someone is using crack, even recreationally, you should take it very seriously.

One of the ways you can easily identify whether or not a person is using crack is to know what it looks like. Generally, pure crack will look like off-white ‘rocks’ with a crystalline appearance.
Being aware of the paraphernalia used to take the drug is another important way to determine if someone is on crack. Common crack paraphernalia includes smoking pipes, tubes, a lighter or small torch, as well as an antenna or something similar.

Signs that someone is taking crack and potentially on a binge cycle include restlessness, paranoia and extreme irritability. In some cases, a large amount of crack may lead to total psychosis. Losing touch with reality and hallucinations are signs that a person is on crack and experiencing psychosis. Other effects to look out for include erratic, strange behaviour, vertigo and tremors.

Confronting the Crack Cocaine User

Treatment, Withdrawal and Next Steps

It’s very important to seek treatment for a crack cocaine addiction quickly. A crack habit can be fatal, or cause permanent psychological damage if left unchecked. Treatment begins by breaking the need for crack. The withdrawal process should take place at a treatment facility or in a hospital where doctors can provide constant monitoring and ensure there are no risks of relapse.

As the body struggles to function without the crack it has come to depend on, a number of distressing symptoms start to manifest, including muscular pain, depression, anxiety, cravings, diarrhoea and suicidal tendencies. Treatment at home is therefore impractical, as it might be impossible to control cravings and administer the appropriate medications for the symptoms.

If you’re addicted to crack, it’s important to seek professional help with addiction treatment. Without professional help, crack cocaine addiction may be fatal. Inpatient care is one of the best forms of drug treatment. This treatment option comes with different benefits, from nutritious meals to a clean environment and professional counselling.

Inpatient care for crack addiction also keeps you away from negative influences, so there is no fear of being exposed to people who are likely to cause a relapse. Inpatient care has been shown to have the highest success in terms of a lasting and effective recovery.

• Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) – this method teaches you to cope with negative thoughts and actions: how to recognise negative thought triggers, and how to replace them.
• Motivational Interviewing – therapists use this method to increase your motivation to kick the habit by providing guidance to realise that your life is much better without crack. Positive psychology and enforcement are also used to ensure future sobriety.
• Contingency Management – after you’ve recovered from a physical dependence on crack, this method teaches you to overcome its psychological causes. Studies show that this type of therapy reduces the likelihood of participants relapsing while recovering from crack cocaine addiction.

Peer Support and the Road Ahead

To improve the odds of achieving a successful recovery, you may be put in touch with a peer-led recovery group at the end of your formal treatment. Peer-led recovery groups are also known as 12-Step groups, as they are typically based on the 12-Step method used by Alcoholics Anonymous. They help you to connect with a community of other recovering addicts, provide emotional and social support, and act as a platform where you can be held accountable.

Having trusted friends and sponsors just a phone call away is especially useful as a method of relapse prevention. It becomes easier to make the right decision when faced with a situation that could make you succumb to temptation and undo the hard and painful work of treatment. Research by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders shows that participating in peer groups as part of a treatment procedure lowers rates of substance use. There was also an improved engagement with recovery programmes, fewer risks to health and more control over substance cravings.

Quitting Crack Cocaine – Professional Help and the Road Ahead

Detoxing from crack is the first major step in long-term recovery from addiction. There are serious physical and emotional changes that accompany withdrawal from crack cocaine, and they can be painful. However, quitting crack holds notable benefits for you, including:

• Improved mental health: an extended crack cocaine addiction can cause irritability, depression and anxiety. In certain cases, you may even experience serious hallucinations and paranoia. Quitting crack and seeking appropriate treatment can therefore improve your mental state.
• Improved physical health: even after just a single use, crack cocaine can lead to some serious health problems, such as stomach upsets, lung disease, cardiac arrest, headaches, stroke, or even death. Receiving proper treatment when you quit may lead to a reversal of some of the negative health effects of being on crack.
• Better nutrition: you may become malnourished, underweight and dehydrated from using crack, as the substance decreases appetite. Quitting crack provides the opportunity to re-nourish your body and address any nutrient-related complications.

Quitting crack can be difficult to manage without the oversight of people with the right medical specialities and substance abuse treatment experts. Therefore, professional help should be sought to provide a safe and effective environment for kicking the habit and moving on to an addiction-free life.

Before Rehab

During Rehab

During rehab, detox is undertaken to flush out all traces of psychoactive drugs in the body. Medications that might be used in the process include Methadone, Buprenorphine, Benzodiazepines, Dextropropoxyphene and Barbiturates.

After Rehab

The recovery process is not completed, even after your drug rehabilitation programme is completed. Recovery is a lifelong process, and ongoing work and attention is needed in order to maintain it. There are periods when you’ll be faced with a real temptation to relapse, so lifelong support is necessary. Before leaving your addiction treatment programme, counsellors will meet with you to discuss a plan for aftercare. Many rehab facilities provide follow-up programmes to help you cope with day-to-day activities.

These may include weekend stays at the rehab centre, if you feel a need to re-engage. Sober living facilities are also available, where you can participate in functional groups and therapy sessions, perform chores and find support as you transition into living a normal life.

Support Groups

Group therapy provides a useful method of building a support system in your local area. Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA) are two popular 12-step groups attended by recovering individuals on a regular basis. Both are easily accessible and hold meetings across the UK.

There are also a range of divisions in the AA model for different types of addictions. These support groups include:

Cocaine Anonymous (CA), Crystal Meth Anonymous (CMA), Emotions Anonymous (EA), Overeaters Anonymous (OA), Pills Anonymous (PA), Sex Addicts Anonymous (SAA) and Gamblers Anonymous (GA).

In these aftercare support groups, participants usually get what they give. The more you interact with group members and share your experiences, the more you will benefit. As you become more established in your sobriety, you may also consider mentoring newly recovering crack addicts.

Therapies

Family Therapy: Family therapy is offered by many addiction rehabilitation facilities as part of their programme. The effects of addiction are felt far beyond the addict, and family members are often the most deeply affected. Your family is also an important component of your recovery process. During family therapy sessions, members can talk about their desire to see you recover, and the pain caused by your addiction. They can also serve as a source of support once you leave the rehabilitation facility.

Group Therapy: Group therapy sessions let recovering addicts interact with others in the same condition. This type of therapy is often helpful for you as a recovering person, to know that you’re not alone in your struggles. Other members of the group also find comfort, as people share their stories of addiction and recovery.

Individual Therapy: You will learn to identify your crack cocaine use triggers and to deal with such situations when they arise. When you have a plan in place for a range of tempting situations, you are more likely to successfully avoid a relapse. Individual therapy also provides strategies for you to direct your time to focus on new interests and hobbies.

Rehab

After completing an initial detox from crack cocaine, you will continue through rehabilitation. Rehab is the stage at which you get to identify the real reasons behind your addictions and address them and other social and psychological issues. With rehab, you can effectively move on with your life, without falling back to drugs, alcoholism or old addictive behaviours.

Detox

Certain drug addictions need a phase of detoxification at the beginning of the rehabilitation process. Detox is a stage designed to eliminate all traces of drugs and alcohol from the body. Morphine and other maintenance medication may be provided in some cases to act as an analgesic for the withdrawal symptoms that occur. There are different factors that determine the severity of a detox process:

• How long the drug has been taken for
• The individual’s unique body composition and metabolism
• The particular drug and dosage that was being used
• If there are any other addictions involved

Detox is a safe process when carried out in a supervised medical setting. It is ill-advised to detox on your own at home, because for certain individuals and substances, detox can be severe – and in some cases, deadly.