DRUGS, Marijuana, Cocaine, Xanax , Adderall, Ecstasy, Heroin, LSD, PCP, Magic Mushrooms, Alcohol

From Chewing Coca Leaves To Crack
Chewing Coca Leaves. Coca consumption was originally the prerogative of the Inca elite. Today, most of the natives indulge as well. Coca is also consumed as the highly esteemed coca de mate.

Drinking coca tea tends to soothe the stomach, so it's good for digestive problems. Coca de mate is less likely to induce jitteriness than coffee. It is a rather more effective mood brightener too.



Cocaine Sulfate - pasta, basuco, basa, pitillo, paste. This is the low grade stuff that reaches the urban slums of South America. The sulfate is the intermediate stage between the coca leaf and the finished cocaine hydrochloride crystal.

Coca leaves are stripped from the plant. They are put in plastic pit with a solution of water and sulfuric acid. A bare footed man will climb in the pit, step on the mess and move it around with his hands.



Cocaine Hydrochloride - an odorless, white crystalline powder. It has a bitter, numbing taste. This is the type of cocaine available in most cities.

Making cocaine hydrochloride is quite complicated. The pasta is first washed in kerosene. It is then chilled. The kerosene is removed. Gas crystals of crude cocaine are left at the bottom of the tank.

Typically, the crystals are dissolved in methyl alcohol. They are then re-crystallized and dissolved once more in sulfuric acid. Further washing, oxidation and separation procedures involve potassium permanganate, benzole, and sodium carbonate.



Freebase And Crack Cocaine. Freebase and crack cocaine are derived from cocaine hydrochloride which has been chemically treated to free the potent base material from the salt.

Freebase was originally produced by a dangerous four or five step process in which the hydrochloride salt was heated with water and a volatile liquid such as ether.

Base cocaine in the form of crack is safer to produce but it is no less addictive. Crack and freebase are indissoluble in water, so they can't be injected or sniffed easily.

Instead, base is usually smoked from pipes, burnt on a piece of tin foil, or mixed with tobacco and marijuana in a smokable joint.

The euphoric rush comes within a few seconds (even faster than from injecting cocaine hydrochloride). Initially, the user may experience a profound sense of power, mastery, cleverness and uninhibited desire. But the exhilaration usually starts to fade within a few minutes.



Cocaine Use
Physical constraints ensure that even the most ardent coquero can get only a modest amount of cocaine into his bloodstream. Coca induced heart-attacks and strokes are thus extremely rare among traditional users.

In recent decades, however, there have been changes in cocaine's route of administration, patterns of use, the technology of cocaine production, and typical dosages.

Crack is actually a less pure sort of freebase cocaine. Unlike old fashioned freebase, however, its production doesn't involve any flammable solvents.

Crack is usually made by mixing two parts of cocaine hydrochloride with one part baking soda in some water. The solution is then heated gently until white precipitates form. Crack is then cut or broken into small rocks weighing a few tenths of a gram.

The traditional method of taking cocaine in the west involved snorting the hydrochloride salt. But absorption through the nasalmucousa is relatively modest.

This is because their surface-area is small and cocaine is vasoconstrictive. Freebase, on the other hand, is smoked and inhaled directly into the lungs. Therefore much higher doses are possible. Inhalation is followed by an intense euphoric rush.

Chronic cocaine use causes a decrease in the production of enkephalin, one of the brain's natural opioids. This in turn causes a compensatory increase in the number of mu-receptors. The number of unoccupied mu-receptors may be associated with the craving and abstinence syndrome.

After chronic exposure to cocaine, the number of post-synaptic dopamine receptors in the CNS is reduced. The amount of dopamine transporter protein is increased.

Tolerance to cocaine's effects does exist over prolonged use; but the extent of this physiological adaptation is relatively modest. The cocaine user still gets high; but in the absence of cocaine, his pre-synaptic neurons sequester dopamine in the synaptic cleft with greater efficiency.

This may induce depression, sometimes severe. Read More......

Before the 1860's cocaine was only available in leaf form. The cocaine content of coca leaf is under 1%. After cocaine was isolated from coca leaf, it was available legally in concentrations that were nearly 100% pure.

The active ingredient from the coca leaf was first isolated by Albert Niemann. In 1860 he gave the compound the name cocaine.

Cocaine was first used recreationally in the 1860s. People were using cocaine as a recreational drug almost as soon as it was synthesized. A few years after its synthesis, cocaine appeared in cigarettes, ointments, nasal sprays, and preparations sold as tonics.

These legal tonics had coke mixed with other substances, including morphine, codeine, and opium. They were sold in a liquid form, and cured "whatever ailed you". The powder itself was used recreationally almost as soon as it was isolated.

The most popular of cocaine laced products was Mariani Wine (Vin Mariani). It was a wine and cocaine mixture that was launched in 1863. Nearly all popular personalities of the day used and endorsed it. These Vin Maria lovers included: Queen Victoria, The Pope, Thomas Edison, and others.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "Sign Of Four" was written about 30 years after the synthesis of cocaine. In the book Sherlock Holmes (an intravenous cocaine and morphine user) gives reasons for his cocaine and morphine use "...I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation..."

The negative effects of cocaine addiction were soon noticed and between 1887 and 1914 forty six states had passed laws aimed at controlling it.

The press began to associate cocaine powder use with societies outcast in the 1890s. Criminals, prostitutes, pimps, gamblers, and racial minorities were usually the target.

Then in 1914 the U.S. federal government classified cocaine as a narcotic (which it is not) and outlawed it. After passing the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914, the only way a person could get cocaine was with a prescription, or illegally.

In the 1920s cocaine use declined, and that decline was to become more so in the 1930s, when amphetamine (speed) became popular among drug users.



Amphetamine
Amphetamine was appealing to the cocaine user because the high it produced was much like cocaine's. It did not deliver quite the same peak, but its effects lasted longer.

More significantly, it was cheap, readily available and legal. With the appearance of legally obtainable amphetamine (readily available by the late 1930s), cocaine use declined considerably. Its use remained low until all amphetamines, including meth became illegal in the 1960s.

This made amphetamine more difficult to obtain, so dealers and users switched back to the neglected cocaine, and the first flurries of the current blizzard arrived. Cocaine is not a drug that burst onto the scene sometime in the 1960s. It was used as a recreational drug, a century before. Read More......

Toothache Cures and Patent Medicines
Cocaine was first synthesized in pure form by Albert Niemann. In 1860, he extracted pure cocaine powder from the leaves of Erythroxylum coca (more commonly known as the coca plant). Soon after it was isolated, cocaine was used to try to cure almost all the illnesses and maladies that were known to man.

It wasn't long after the isolation of pure cocaine until people became aware of the addictive potential of the drug. Today, use in medicine had been tempered by experience. Medical use has been largely restricted to producing local anesthesia. Even in this area, the dangers of cocaine led to the early development of safer drugs.

One of its first non medical uses was military. In 1883 Theodor Aschenbrandt administered cocaine to members of the Bavarian army. It was found that the drug enhanced their endurance on manoeuvre. His positive findings were published in a German medical journal, which brought the effects of this wonder drug to a wider medical audience, including Sigmund Freud (see below).

In the USA, cocaine was sold over-the-counter until 1916. It was widely used in tonics, toothache cures, patent medicines, and chocolate cocaine tablets. Prospective buyers were advised (in the words of pharmaceutical firm Parke-Davis) that cocaine "could make the coward brave, the silent eloquent, and render the sufferer insensitive to pain".

When combined with alcohol, it yielded a further potently reinforcing compound, now known to be cocaethylene. Thus cocaine was a popular ingredient in wines, notably Vin Mariani. Coca wine received endorsement from prime-ministers, royalty and even the Pope.

One medical use that was found early in the history of cocaine, and which the drug is still used for today (rarely), is that of a good surface anesthetic. Beginning in the late 1880s surgical procedures using local anesthetics (numbing a specific area to pain) were starting to be used instead of general anesthesia (rendering a person unconscious).

This was due to experiments that were conducted by William Halstead, using cocaine. William Halstead was one of the four founders of The Johns Hopkins Medical School. He is often referred to as the Father of American Surgery.

Unfortunately William experimented on himself by injecting cocaine, to see if surgery could be performed using cocaine as a local anesthetic. After experimenting for a time, he became addicted.

The addiction grew so bad it put his career on the line. He stopped shooting cocaine and began taking morphine instead. A habit that probably lasted the rest of his life.

Cocaine Toothache Drops Ad, 1885


Coca-Cola was invented in 1885 and first sold to consumers in 1886. At that time, it was sold as a patent medicine. It was promoted as a temperance drink offering the virtues of coca without the vices of alcohol. The new beverage was invigorating and popular.

Until the early 1900's, one of the ingredients was cocaine. Today, coca-cola still uses coca leaves for flavoring. The company imports several tons of coca leaves from South America each year. However, the leaves are used only for flavoring, since the cocaine has been removed.

A coca leaf typically contains between 0.1 and 0.9 percent cocaine. If chewed in such form, it rarely presents the user with any social or medical problems. When the leaves are soaked and mashed, however, cocaine is extracted as a coca-paste. The paste is 60 to 80 per cent pure. It is usually exported in the form of the salt, cocaine hydrochloride.

This is the powdered cocaine most common, until recently, in the West. Drug testing for cocaine aims to detect the presence of its major metabolite, the inactive benzoylecgonine. Benzoylecgonine can be detected for up to five days in casual users. In chronic users, urinary detection is possible for as long as three weeks.

Sigmund Freud the father of psychoanalysis, in the early 1880s began to experiment with cocaine. At a time when he was undergoing a low period in his life, he reported that cocaine lifted his spirit, and took his mind off his professional and financial difficulties. He sent cocaine to his fiancee, telling her it would make her strong and give her cheeks a red color.

Freud was to play a significant role in the development of the Western cocaine industry. I take very small doses of it regularly and against depression and against indigestion, and with the most brilliant success, he observed. Drug giants Merck and Parke Davies both paid Freud to endorse their rival brands. He wrote several enthusiastic papers on cocaine, notably Uber coca (1884).



Taken from "On Cocaine" by Sigmund Freud
A few minutes after taking cocaine, one experiences a certain exhilaration and feeling of lightness. One feels a certain furriness on the lips and palate, followed by a feeling of warmth in the same areas; if one now drinks cold water, it feels warm on the lips and cold in the throat. One other occasions the predominant feeling is a rather pleasant coolness in the mouth and throat.

During this first trial I experienced a short period of toxic effects, which did not recur in subsequent experiments. Breathing became slower and deeper and I felt tired and sleepy; I yawned frequently and felt somewhat dull. After a few minutes the actual cocaine euphoria began, introduced by repeated cooling eructation. Immediately after taking the cocaine I noticed a slight slackening of the pulse and later a moderate increase.

I have observed the same physical signs of the effect of cocaine in others, mostly people my own age. The most constant symptom proved to be the repeated cooling eructation. This is often accompanied by a rumbling which must originate from high up in the intestine; two of the people I observed, who said they were able to recognize movements in their stomachs, declared emphatically that they had repeatedly detected such movements.

Often, at the outset of the cocaine effect, the subjects alleged that they experienced an intense feeling of heat in the head. I noticed this in myself as well in the course of some later experiments, but on other occasions it was absent. In only two cases did coca give rise to dizziness. On the whole the toxic effects of coca are of short duration, and much less intense than those produced by effective doses of quinine or salicylate of soda; they seem to become even weaker after repeated use of cocaine. Read More......