Cocaine use Among Teens

Cocaine is a powerful drug that can be snorted, injected when dissolved in water, swallowed, or smoked as crack. It is often referred to as coke, snow, flake, blow, or other terms. Cocaine is highly addictive and dangerous. According to the NIDA about eight percent of high school seniors had used cocaine.
What are the signs of cocaine abuse?
Immediate signs including increased energy and mental alertness, dilated pupils, decreased appetite, increased heart rate, blood pressure, and temperature, as well as rapid speech.
Users often have a runny nose or bloody nose often.
Paranoia, anxiety, and panic can be a response to the drug.
Drastic weight loss and not irregular sleep are signs of cocaine use.
Depression caused by stopping the use of drugs.
Drug paraphernalia such as a mirror and a razor blade, rolled money bills, small bottles with lids, small plastic packets, small spoons such items.
Loss of interest in activities and withdrawal from or change in friends.
Often require or steal money.
Why teenagers cocaine abuse?
Cocaine affects the brain chemistry that creates the sensation of pleasure and usually improve sight, sound, and touch. Users often claim that cocaine helps them perform physical and mental tasks faster and easier, although it can also have the opposite effect. Cocaine users typically find that they need to take more of the drug to produce the same effect or even just feeling normal. So cocaine use often leads to addiction replacing school, friends, and family.
What health hazards associated with the use of cocaine?
Those who suffer from cocaine nose problems such as loss of smell, nosebleeds, problems with swallowing, and a chronically runny nose.
Ingested cocaine reduces blood flow and cause gangrene in the colon where the dead tissue.
People who inject cocaine have puncture marks, can have an allergic reaction, and suffer the risk of getting a sexually transmitted disease by sharing needles.
For all users of cocaine can cause heart attacks, strokes, seizures, abdominal pain and nausea, malnutrition, muscle spasms, and respiratory failure.
Frequent users often suffer from increased irritability, restlessness, and paranoia. They also suffer from the risk of full-blown paranoid psychosis in which the user loses touch with reality and suffers from hallucinations.
What about mixing cocaine with other substances?
Many cocaine users mixing cocaine with alcohol because the combination intensifies the euphoric effects of the drug. Human liver combines cocaine and alcohol and creates cocaethylene. Mixing alcohol and cocaine significantly increases the risk and according to NIDA "is a combination of the two drugs are the most common cause of drug-related deaths."
Cocaine is often mixed with other substances during processing. These substances are often unknown to the user and can be harmful to the body.