Social and health consequences of cocaine use-Addiction

Social and health consequences of cocaine use-Everyone is affected

The use of cocaine has negative effects on the society

Almost on a daily basis on my way to my work place I pass a small park on the way. In this park and along the road a group of people is sitting, standing or lying down with bottles of wine in their hands or tins with beer. They are not very good looking and not presentable at all, sometimes they show up in rags and some have hairdos that look like a Zoo. They seem engaged in quite energetic talking but at the same time some sit listening quietly and some even seem to sleep.

This group is a group of street drinkers. They all know each other and their place of congregation is the little park. Quite clearly they have no jobs, at least not at the time I meet them socializing, majority of them are men.

On the other hand at my work place I have a different experience I talk to another group of people usually very well dressed people in a nice room, during lunch, dinner or at the occasion reception. A reception will be created when for instance someone says good bye as a professor and goes to another university. Also we have receptions after a doctoral thesis has been defended. During these receptions people stand and almost all have glasses in their hands, filled with red wine, white wine or sometimes even stronger drinks like gin or whiskey. People laugh, have energetic discussions or wander quietly from person to person. All of these people have jobs. They are both men and women, in almost equal proportions well-mannered and dressed sophistically.

Looking at these two groups observations serve as lesson. Tow lessons one in the sociology of drug use. The common drug that played a role in the two described situations was of course alcohol, hence the topic of my presentation in this, Cocaine use and its social and health consequences, will be modeled along the structure that these two situations allow me to create.

Cocaine users can be found in poor ghettos of cities of the world, but also in the suburbs or rich dwellings. But in our own cocaine user studies we found crack cocaine users among well employed highly functional completely integrated cocaine users. How then are we going to approach the question what health and social consequences cocaine use can have?

Lesson number two. We have to be prepared that a simple answer to this question does not exist. Quite clearly, as is the case in the two groups of alcohol users I started to describe, we should be ready to accept that the answers to the question may be very different from one kind of cocaine user to the next. Very much depends two things (1) on the group to which the user belongs and (2) the use patterns of the user.

In groups where unemployment is the rule, criminal behavior as well, poor housing conditions prevail and where social integration into dominant labour or family culture is low, the user of cocaine, or of alcohol, or of whatever drug will behave very differently from when the user is part of another sub culture. If you do not go to work, why would you stop using cocaine at 9 o’clock at night? If you do not have to impress your boss every morning by looking brilliant, the contextual restraints on your time management are really different than when you have.

If you are not part of a culture in which you eat every day, and eat well, the health consequences of alcohol, but also of cocaine, will be different than when you eat well and regularly. If you smoke cocaine to escape constantly some sort of social misery, the effect you seek are different from when you smoke cocaine to take off on an adventure of sexuality and excess.

Apparently people seek effects that they sometimes get from drugs, and try to get those effects again. The type of drug effects people seek can be very different, even with the same drug. The two types of alcohol users I introduced to you in the beginning, are seeking different types of effects from alcohol. The choice of effects depends very much on your social home, but also on your character and the interplay between situation and moods.

Social and health consequences of cocaine use-Scores of Variables

With alcohol we all know a typical kind of user, who will consume some alcohol every day, but in low amounts and to very low or even zero levels of intoxication. They visit a bar after work or have a drink at home while chatting with kids. One could give such a use pattern a name, like frequent use zero intoxication. This is a very neutral type of name. Another possibility is that a daily wine user, who chooses the wine very carefully to match the chosen food of the day, but not as a vehicle for intoxication, could be named as a gourmet alcohol user. The same is true for cocaine, although with cocaine users taste can be important, but in a very different way as for a wine user. A cocaine user will appreciate the mellow bitter taste, or the subtle freeze in the back of the tongue.

We have found a substantial proportion of cocaine users who would use the substance every day but with very little amounts, less than 0.5 gram a week, who like to experience the freeze, or the very mild post dinner stimulation, very much like people who have coffee after dinner. For this they need very small lines of cocaine, even if their wealth or available stock of cocaine in their office drawer would allow much greater quantities of use.

Social and health consequences of cocaine use-The story of the consequences

Looking at pattern of use plus looking at social or cultural group a user belongs; one can see distinct types of cocaine use where the social and health consequences are almost zero. If cocaine use does not interfere with eating, if it does not interfere with social functioning both in the inner group as in relation to outside groups the social consequences are nil.

However, it is possible to identify daily users of cocaine, where the amount of use is higher or very high, and where the level of intoxication is desired to be high, and where the user’s group is willing to create the social background for this type of frequent high intensity use. Here the social consequences will be small in the primary group to which the user belongs, but quite dramatically negative in relation to outside groups.

But we can see with alcohol, as with cocaine that some users will use to excess, or consume so much to support a particular behavior or emotional effect that even the inner group is not going to accept this. If this happens, as will occur with some users, the social consequences are severe. Heavy consumers will find themselves with deeply disturbed social relations, sometimes resulting in complete ostracism and even death. Quite probably these rare use patterns are driven by complex problems that justify the choice of these patterns although ultimately they may prove to be very counterproductive. Most often, such extreme use patterns are left behind as soon as the user finds some possibility of more useful adaptation.

However, also quite destructive social consequences can happen to a consumer of cocaine who has no conspicuous use pattern at all. Imagine someone who lives the life of a highly valued and well known adviser to the Minister of Health. However, in her free time she invites artists and actors to her very nice flat on the river side. Cocaine is snorted and one of the elderly guests makes a mistake, snorts too much cocaine on top of his whiskey and has a heart attack. The guest is taken to the hospital and fortunately survives, but the story is out and in the papers. You can avoid this by visiting AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center under Doctor Akoury for help on addiction. They focus on Neuroendocrine Restoration (NER) to reinstate normality through realization of the oneness of Spirit, Mind, and Body, Unifying the threesome into ONE.

Social and health consequences of cocaine use-Addiction