Risks of Cocaine Abuse
The risks of cocaine use are too powerful to ignore. It’s available all over the world, and not just in urban areas. It’s quickly addictive and can drain a person’s wallet in a hurry. What else do you know about the risks of cocaine use? Find out how this dangerous drug can put someone’s life at risk.
Increase In High-Risk Activities
Cocaine can make someone feel like they have endless energy and confidence. Unfortunately, it also impairs their ability to judge risk. Some cocaine users become aggressive. Others attempt to do dangerous things like driving or criminal behavior.
Another risk is unprotected sex, a common activity among cocaine abusers and addicts. This is sometimes a form of payment for cocaine since heavy users are not likely to keep employment. All of these activities could land a cocaine user in jail or in the hospital.
Physical Harm To The Body
Two of the biggest health risks for cocaine addiction are lung and heart complications. Cocaine-related death often occurs because of cardiac arrest or seizure with respiratory failure. Cocaine increases the risk of heart failure even in people who were not at high risk before their cocaine use. The typical age for a heart attack among cocaine users is 44 years, nearly twenty years younger than the average heart attack victim.
Experts are still studying the most likely reasons for cocaine triggering heart failure. So far, the leaders include rapid increase of blood pressure, constriction of coronary arteries, and rapid elevation of heart rate.
Emotional Symptoms and Distress
Cocaine use can lead to increased feelings of depression and anxiety. All forms of cocaine have a powerful psychological pull on the user. This is what makes it so dangerously addictive. Cocaine puts a person on a roller coaster of emotional extremes. While this may seem thrilling at first, emotional imbalance is difficult to cope with every day.
Any previously existing psychological disorder will likely be made worse with cocaine use. Instead of learning to regulate and manage emotions, a cocaine user is likely to have higher levels of distress and chaos. Cocaine can also produce high levels of paranoia and sometimes aggression.
Risk Of Infectious Disease With Needle Use
When someone has an addiction, they will do whatever it takes to get their drugs when they need them. Often that means sharing needles or reusing needles without sterilizing them. Diseases like Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS are easily spread among intravenous cocaine abusers.
Many cocaine addicts are unaware of their risk, aware but not concerned enough to make changes, or concerned but unable to stop their drug use or afford clean needles.
Complications With Pregnancy
A pregnant woman using cocaine is not likely to be eating properly and taking good care of herself. Also, cocaine use reduces the flow of nutrients and oxygen to her unborn baby.
Her baby is likely to be born prematurely and with low birth weight. These complications put her baby at high risk for illness or death. A pregnant cocaine user is also at a much higher risk for miscarriage.
Cocaine Use Carries High Price
Cocaine does all kinds of harmful things to a person’s life. It just takes one of these dangerous consequences to cause someone permanent injury or even death. If you know someone who has gotten caught up in cocaine use, you know the facts. Tell them about cocaine rehab and do whatever you can to help them get sober.
