What does it look like?
There are three types of cocaine: coke, crack, and freebase.
- Coke looks like a fine white powder.
- Crack looks like small lumps or rocks.
- Freebase looks like a crystallised powder.
What does it taste/smell like?
Cocaine powder has a bitter ‘chemical’ taste and smell, while crack cocaine can smell like burnt plastic or rubber.
How do people take it?
By snorting:
Most people snort cocaine – they crush it into a fine powder, divide it into lines and snort it through the nose. This is the most common way to take cocaine.
Snorting cocaine can damage your nose, especially if it’s not been chopped very finely. Some people find that switching between nostrils helps, and some people rinse their nostrils with water or saline solution after taking it.
By smoking it (crack):
Crack or freebase can be smoked through a glass pipe, tube, plastic bottle, or foil, but this is less common.
By injecting it:
Powdered coke and crack can be prepared to make a solution for injecting, which is much more dangerous than snorting or smoking cocaine.
How does it make you feel?
Taking cocaine can make you feel:
- happy
- excited
- wide awake
- confident
- on top of your game
It can also:
- make your heart beat faster.
- raise your body temperature – so you feel hot.
- stop you feeling hungry.
- make you feel sick.
- make you need to poo.
- make you anxious and panicky.
- make you paranoid.
- make you so confident that you do things you wouldn’t normally do (which might be risky)
How does it make people behave?
Cocaine affects people differently, but most users become:
- chattier
- more animated
- more confident
Some people become:
- overconfident and arrogant
- agitated
- restless
- edgy
Cocaine can increase your sexual desires, too, and some people take it to have more intense sex, but taking lots of cocaine can reduce your sex drive.
Generally speaking, a user’s sex drive should go back to normal once they stop taking cocaine excessively.
The risks:
Physical health risks:
- Cocaine is risky for anyone with high blood pressure or a heart condition, but even healthy young people can have a fit, heart attack or stroke after using the drug.
- The risk of overdose increases if you mix cocaine with other drugs or alcohol.
- Over time, snorting cocaine damages the cartilage in your nose that separates your nostrils. Heavy users can lose this cartilage and have one giant nostril and a misshapen nose.
- Taking cocaine when pregnant can damage your baby, causing miscarriage, premature labour, and low birth weight.
- Regularly smoking crack can cause breathing problems and pains in the chest.
- Injecting cocaine can damage veins and cause ulcers and gangrene. Sharing needles or other injecting equipment can spread HIV and hepatitis infections, too. It’s also easier to overdose from injecting cocaine.
- Speed balling (injecting a mixture of cocaine and heroin) can have fatal results. A form of heroin called white heroin is easily mistaken for cocaine, and people have died or been hospitalised after snorting it, thinking it was cocaine.
Mental risks:
Regular use of cocaine can make people feel:
- depressed
- run-down
- anxious
- paranoid
Cocaine can bring previous mental health problems to the surface, too, and if a relative has had mental health problems, there might be an increased risk for you.
Addiction:
This is because regular use changes how the brain releases dopamine, a chemical that makes you feel happy.
Cocaine is mainly known for causing psychological dependence (addiction), but users can sometimes continue to use cocaine just to overcome the negative aftereffects of using. This can lead to a binge pattern of use and increase the risk of dependence.