When a Cocaine Addiction Goes from Bad to Worse: Accepting the Need for Treatment
For anyone who has a busy schedule – career, family, extracurricular activities – the extra boost that cocaine offers can seem like a godsend; at least for the first few weeks. Likewise, students or anyone who’s just plain bored with daily life may well take to cocaine as of the first time using it.
Unfortunately, the “high” effect and seemingly boundless energy from cocaine starts to wane after using this drug so many times. It’s at this point where the nightmare begins. By the time the thought of stopping or even reducing drug use enters your head, cocaine addiction’s effects have already taken hold.
Accepting the need for treatment help is only possible when a person realizes he or she can’t break cocaine addiction alone. While difficult, seeing the damage and destruction cocaine has caused in your life is a good first step towards accepting the need for treatment help.
The Cocaine “High”
Anger and violent behavior are common cocaine withdrawal symptoms.
For most people, the feelings of confidence, energy and euphoria that come with a cocaine “high” become the carrot-on-the-stick that keeps cocaine abuse going. As pleasurable as these effects may be, they actually develop out of abnormal brain chemical processes that cause widespread damage to the brain’s cells and structures over time, according to Macalester College.
By the time cocaine addiction takes hold, the drug has become just as important as food, air and water. If you’re considering getting treatment, call our toll-free helpline at 800-934-3781(Who Answers?) to inquire about available treatment options.
The Cocaine Addiction Cycle
Rapid Tolerance Level Increases
Cocaine produces short-term effects, so maintaining a “high” requires using the drug more often, and at higher amounts. This process soon leads to bingeing behavior, which entails ingesting multiple doses at a time.
These tolerance level increases will continue for as long as you keep using cocaine, with increasing brain damage developing along the way. In the absence of needed treatment help, the only foreseeable end to increasing tolerance level effects is death.
Withdrawal Episodes
The further along you progress in the cocaine addiction cycle the more severe withdrawal episodes become. Withdrawal symptom severity reaches a point where a person experiences:
- Fits of anger and violent behavior
- Severe paranoia
- Inability to experience joy or contentment
- Exhaustion
- Depression
- Bouts of anxiety
At this point, the cocaine “high” is no longer accessible, but the brain still requires the drug all the same. Ultimately, gaining relief from distressing withdrawal effects becomes the only reason a person keeps using at this stage.
Obsession
A full-blown cocaine addiction works in much the same way as an obsession that takes over a person’s life. According to the Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology, cocaine’s role takes on top priority in the addict’s life at the expense of anything that may try to get in its way, be it friends, family, health or career.
Much like the never-ending tolerance level increases, in the absence of needed treatment help, there’s no end in sight in terms of how extreme this obsession becomes.
Accepting the Need for Treatment
Taking a hard, cold look at the effects of cocaine addiction in your life is a good, first step towards accepting the need for treatment help. Denying or making excuses for the ongoing decline that’s taking place in your daily life only opens the door for a bad situation to turn worse.
Please don’t hesitate to call our toll-free helpline at 800-934-3781(Who Answers?) to speak with one of our addiction counselors about available treatment options.