General Cocaine Information

Tomado de: http://www.lycaeum.org/

"Cocaine Pharmacokinetics in Humans." The Journal of Ethnopharmacology, 3 (1981) 353-366.
By: A. Barnett, R. Hawks, and R. Resnick.

"Therefore, on the basis of this new information that has come as a result of technological development we can conclude with a pratical observation. The size of the quid of coca leaves that can be comfortably accomodated by a person is such that it is unlikely that coca chewing, as practiced for centuries in places like Macchu Piccu, presents the dangers that may result from the modern forms of recreational use."

Particularly interesting about this article is that the report came out of the Division of Research of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

"I have lived among coca-using Indians of the Andes and the Amazon basin in Columbia and Peru and have not seen any signs of physical deterioration attributable to the leaf. I have never seen an instance of coca toxicity. Nor have I observed physiological or psychological dependence on coca. Even life-long chewers seem able to get the effect they want from the same dose over time; there is no development of tolerance and certainly no withdrawal syndrome upon sudden discontinuance of use."

My grandfather, like many medical doctors of his time (and like Freud) was a cocaine addict. It caused him no problems at all as far as we could see, or he reported, and he always claimed that without the cocaine he would have been an alcoholic. He died at the age of 96, shortly after his third wife had died on him, and it would seem because he was fed up with living so long. In those days in Britain addicts could register with the NHS, and thus there were no black market profits to be made on illegal drugs, and no pushers. The drug problems all started when we became sanctimonious about these addicts on the NHS, kicked them off, and just like the US before us, created the whole apalling modern drug scene of criminality, pushers, and drug barons.

WASHINGTON - Quenn Victoria did it. Winston Churchill in his youth did it, and millions of peasant farmers in South America do it. So why not allow it in America? Why not let people chew on low-potency cocaine lozenges or gum? "Millions have used these products, and we have no evidence of harm associated with it," says Ethan Nadelmann, a professor at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of International and Public Affairs. "It may be less addictive than coffee." Nadelmann and others who advocate changing the government's zero-tolerance approach to drugs want to create a weakened version of cocaine that could be sold over the counter as a substitute for the hard stuff. Then potential consumers would have an alternative to crack cocaine, which is smoked, and high-purity regular cocaine, which is snorted, the way beer and wine are alternatives to high-proof vodka. The idea of marketing cocaine-lite is not making much head-way at a time when the American public is fearful of crime and when the crime bill moving through Congress is promising more prisons and punishment for drug offenders.

But raising the possibility of such a product goes to the core of the debate over the best way to undercut criminal drug enterprises. Nadelmann and others argue that low-potency cocaine might draw potential customers away from drug-trafficking organizations smuggling tons of cocaine from South America and violent street gangs peddling crack."If some people want to distill those products down to something more potent, let them," Nadelmann wrote in an editorial with Rolling Stone publisher, Jann Wenner, in the May 5th issue of the magazine. "But most people won't want to buy it."

However, Herbert Kleber, a psychiatrist and a White House anti-drug official in the Bush administration, says low-potency cocaine would not undercut criminal drug gangs because no one would use it as an alternative. Now a vice president of Columbia University's Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, Kleber calls the idea of a cocaine substitute "scientifically naive," adding that it "totally misunderstands the reason why people use and misuse drugs." Kleber compares the temptation of low-potency cocaine for the uninitiated or the recovering addict with his experience in quitting smoking. "I smoked for 25 years and if i have just one, I'm back to two packs a day," he said. "It's the same with low-dose cocaine."

Dr. Andrew Weil of the University of Arizona medical school disagrees. He says the widespread chewing of coca leaves among Andean peasants suggests that, in low dosages, cocaine is not addictive. Weil also says that the product is good for treating stomach ailments and motion sickness. "It's a shame that we've made disappear from our world a form of a drug that has a whole bunch of benefits," Weil says.

Watered-down cocaine was common in turn-of-the-century America and Europe. Recently uncovered records in Scotland suggest that Queen Victoria and her young house guest, Winston Churchill, consumed cocaine-filled lozenges for sore throats and other maladies contracted while staying at Balmoral Castle.

At the same time, cocaine was an ingredient of Coca-Cola and several varieties of patent medicines sold in America. All that changed in 1914 with the Harrison Act, which banned cocaine without a prescription. Drug-law defenders say cocaine was banned because it is dangerously addictive. "There are some genies you can't let out of the bottle," Kleber says. Low-potency cocaine differs from regular cocaine powder and crack in terms of its purity level, and how fast and thoroughly it alters brain chemistry.

According to Weil, the coca leaf chewed by peasant farmers in Bolivia and Peru is half of 1 percent pure cocaine. By contrast, cocaine smuggled in by traffickers is 50 percent to 60 percent pure. The effect of crack is even more intense because it is smoked and its chemicals reach the brain in seconds. Cocaine inhaled through the nose takes 30 minutes to be fully effective. Orally ingested cocaine in lozenges or gum takes an hour, according to Kleber.

John Gregich of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy argues that "the notion you can create a safe stimulant out of something as addictive as cocaine doesn't match our experience." Still, the University of Arizona's Weil notes that decades of tough law enforcement measures against drug traffickers and dealers have "made worse what we want to make better, destroying the peasant society of South America and creating the crack culture in American cities."

Insofar as cocaine use is concerned, I have - after many years of foolishly self-destructive behavior discovered a very nice way to do coke. Take a nasal decongestant sprayer bottle, empty it. take a small amount of powdered cocaine - 1/4 to 1/2 a gram - and dissolve it in maybe a cubic inch of water. add a drop or two of vodka or other ethanol. stir it. the cocaine dissolves into the water, leaving the cut(s) on the bottom, a side benefit I didn't originally anticipate. pour the solution - a 7% solution, if I may offer a nickname - into yon vile vial, and apply to your nasal cavities, judiciously.

If overfilled, you will get a jet of solution. otherwise, you get a nice mix of solution and air in a mist that dissolves easily into your nasal passages, with consequent bodily effects approximately equivalent to a cup of coffee. this is advantageous for many, many reasons ...

1. No waste. you get exactly what your body can absorb, and no crumbs clinging to your nasal passages and falling down your front. you don't get so much that the effect borders on toxicity, as you do when doing lines. and you can make a 1/2 gram last up to a week, in this fashion.
2. No paraphernalia. this fits nicely into a night bag with toothbrush or toothpaste, and is bust-free, in the car, on one's person, at one's desk, or crossing international borders. no razors, no straws, no mirrors, no 'bullets' or little brown vials waiting to fall out of your pocket.
3. No addictive sequence. it's much easier to forego tooting when using at this level, and put it aside for the night, instead of staying up 'til the wee hours. and it combines with being productive about the same way that coffee does.( I have also applied small amounts of methamphetamine in this fashion, with similar low-impact effects).

It's really a shame that the Establishment doesn't apply itself to teaching people how to use drugs intelligently and creatively, since, clearly, such paths to competence and maturity exist. If I had known ten years ago what I have learned through much reading and thinking, I would have saved myself a lot of money, and, more importantly, a lot of grief and self-destructive behavior which I have, fortunately, survived.

Please perpetuate this information as widely as possible, the better to teach people how to avoid addictive behavioral sequences while continuing to explore the realms of awareness in a mature and thoughtful manner.

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