How the Side Effects of Cocaine Can Ruin Your Life

Everyone knows that cocaine use can ruin a person’s life. Not many people discuss how the side effects of cocaine can ruin your life. When talking about the different side effects, most people do not consider their impact. They understand that there are side effects but never quite see the consequences of them. Cocaine’s side effects are capable of overrunning and ruining every aspect of your life and health.

Physical health

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, two of the most common effects of cocaine use are increased heart rate and blood pressure both of these can lead to heart attack or stroke and can kill you. Some of the side effects of cocaine can also cause constriction of the blood vessels in the intestines and bowels. This causes gangrene and the need for surgery or if allowed to persist, death. Dying will definitely ruin your life.

Some people who use cocaine feel invincible or unstoppable. This leads to risky behaviors. These risky behaviors can include:

driving recklessly – resulting in disfigurement and death in the event of an accident.
having high risk sex – resulting in HIV, Hepatitis B, and Hepatitis C.
engaging in behaviors such as fighting, engaging law enforcement, or criminals.

Many people state that these risks will never happen to them or that they can avoid these risks. Unfortunately, they happen to thousands of cocaine users per day.

Mental health

The side effects of cocaine affect a person’s mental health by making them anxious, irrational, and paranoid. Each of these can have a lasting effect on a person’s life.

Anxiety – when the body is in a state of heightened anxiety for an extended period this state can become normal. This creates a situation where the body slips into fight or flight mode without a reason. Some of the conditions associated with anxiety are generalized anxiety disorder and panic disorder. Both of these cause panic attacks.
Irrational behavior – a pattern of irrational behavior destroys relationships with family, friends, employers, and coworkers.
Paranoia – paranoid behavior is creates anxiety and suspicion, this suspicion causes a person to be afraid of everyone and everything. It creates permanent trust issues for the person experiencing it.

According to the National Library of Medicine, another way that cocaine’s side effects can ruin your life is if you end up with a condition called cocaine induced psychosis. This is a condition that causes psychotic behavior when someone is using, did use, or is withdrawing from cocaine. The behavior can range from suicide to self-mutilation to homicide. Almost all of the behaviors related to cocaine induced psychosis can cause you to do things that will ruin your life.

Social life

Most recovering addicts will tell you that cocaine ruins relationships. The mood swings, paranoia, and irritability are difficult for someone who is close to an addict, watching it happen. People on cocaine alienate those around them who do not use drugs. In particularly bad incidents, they may steel, lie, or cheat those that care most for them. This creates a permanent mistrust between you and those that you love. Even if you go through rehab and stop using, you will always wonder if they blame you for the things you did and they will always wonder if you are using again.

Economic health

Cocaine addiction can cause serious financial problems.

Although many people who casually use cocaine do not suffer a full economic impact, those who are addicted to it do. Cocaine use is expensive and the drive to use it is extremely powerful. This causes a person to use more, as they use more a tolerance builds, the tolerance causes them to use even more to achieve the same effect. As their use increases so does the cost. Addicts often find themselves using money for rent and bills to purchase cocaine. They might lose their home or have their electricity turned off. Being late to work or absent from work causes them to lose their job. This eventually leads to homelessness and poverty. Many of the homeless on the streets are there because of a drug addiction.

Legal issues

The obvious legal side effects to using cocaine are arrest and incarceration. Both of these can easily ruin your life. Since there is a hefty sentence for cocaine or crack cocaine possession and it is a felony in many places, you might have issues getting a job, loan, car, residence, and many other things once convicted.

The legal issues do not end there. If you cause injury or death to a person while on cocaine even accidently, you can be looking at both a criminal and a civil suit, not to mention that injury or death on your conscience. There are also the legal issues associated with eviction and homelessness to consider when deciding whether the legal side effects of cocaine use will ruin your life.

How to prevent these side effects from ruining your life

The first way to prevent these side effects from ruining your life is not use cocaine. If you do use, the cocaine side effects can only ruin your life if you do not stop using. In order to stop using you can talk to a doctor, look to your community for support, quit on your own, or visit a rehab. All of these options are available to you to stop the side effects of cocaine from ruining your life.