ed with restlessness, extreme excitability, insomnia, suspiciousness, weight loss, constipation, impotence, and difficulty in urinating. Chronic cocaine snorting often causes stuffiness, runny nose, eczema(skin disease), around the nostrils, and a perforated nasal septum. Users who inject the drug risk not only overdosing but also infections from unsterile needles and hepatitis or AIDS(acquired immune deficiency syndrome) from needles shared with others. Tolerance to any drug exists when higher doses are necessary to achieve the same effects once reached with lower doses. Psychological dependence exists when a drug is so central to a person=s thoughts, emotions, and activities that it becomes a craving. Cocaine can produce very powerful psychological dependence involving extremely compulsive patterns of use. Among heavy cocaine users, an intense psychological dependence can occur; they suffer severe depression if the drug is unavailable, which lifts only when they take it again. Physical dependence may also develop. When regular heavy users stop taking the drug, however, they experience what they call Acoke crash@ shortly afterwards. Overall, during withdrawal, many users complain of sleep and eating disorders, depression, and anxiety, and the craving for cocaine often compels them to take it again. Treatment of the dependent cocaine user is therefore difficult, and the relapse rate is high. Not only is cocaine a dangerous addiction, but also an expensive one. Along with a cocaine addict, you could also become a thief, murderer, or homeless. Most addicts would do anything for some cocaine (Aa fix@). Nevertheless, some heavy users have been able to quit on their own. The battle with cocaine is not a hopeless fight. There are plenty of programs that help cocaine addicts rehabilitate. Group therapy is a program there to get help from people who are fighting the same battle. Along with group therapy there is interpersonal therapy which was ...
