Drug effects

Cocaine effects appear almost immediately after a single dose, and disappear within a few minutes or hours. Taken in small amounts (up to 100 mg), cocaine usually makes the user feel euphoric, energetic, talkative, and mentally alert, especially to the sensations of sight, sound, and touch. It can also temporarily decrease the need for food and sleep.

Cocaine is classified as a stimulant, and while there is no clear evidence to suggest that using small amounts is necessarily harmful to health, understand that human nature will play a significant role in just how dangerous this drug can be. Because its effects are pleasurable for the user, they want more. As they use more they increase the risk for toxicity and that is where the health problems begin.

Taking cocaine makes users feel on top of the world. Its effect is like the stimulant ‘amphetamines’ (speed) but is stronger and doesn't last as long. People taking it feel wide-awake, confident and on top of their game.

Cocaine is a stimulant, so it can raise the body’s temperature, make the heart beat faster and stave off feelings of hunger.

Effects on the body

The short-term physiological effects of cocaine include constricted blood vessels; dilated pupils; and increased temperature, heart rate, and blood pressure. Large amounts (several hundred milligrams or more) intensify the user's high, but may also lead to bizarre, erratic, and violent behavior.

Effects on the brain

These users may experience tremors, vertigo, muscle twitches, paranoia, or, with repeated doses, a toxic reaction closely resembling amphetamine poisoning. Some users of cocaine report feelings of restlessness, irritability, and anxiety.

Cocaine side effects

Panic attacks are not uncommon to recovering users and addicts.

Insomnia is also recognized as side effect to those forcibly withdrawn from cocaine addiction though it is different in terms of effect than the regular insomnia.

Snorting cocaine can cause irritation and cause a chronic runny nose. But this mild side effect pales in comparison to what else can happen with increased use. People can become increasingly more irritable, restless and paranoid with sustained use. In some cases, full paranoid-psychosis occurs, as the patient completely loses contact with reality.

One of the biggest effects of the drug is that it acts as a stimulant to the sympathetic nervous system thus interfering with the functioning of epinephrine and adrenaline. This in turn results in high blood pressure, the narrowing of the blood vessels and an increase in the heart rate. This could often lead to a heart attack.

Effects on the fetus

Women who are carrying babies are discouraged from using cocaine, because of the risk for spontaneous abortion and a torn placenta.

During the early months of pregnancy, it may increase the risk of miscarriage. When the drug is used late in pregnancy, it may trigger premature labor. It also may cause an unborn baby to die or to have a stroke, which can result in irreversible brain damage.

Women who use cocaine during pregnancy are:  A.  twice as likely to have a premature baby;  B.  More likely to have a low birth-weight baby;  C. More likely to have babies born with smaller heads and smaller brains proportionate to body size.

Studies show that women who use cocaine during pregnancy are at least twice as likely as other women to have a premature baby. And because cocaine cuts the flow of nutrients and oxygen to the fetus, the baby may be much smaller at birth than it would be otherwise. Cocaine-exposed babies also tend to have smaller heads, which may indicate a smaller brain. These problems appear more commonly in babies of women who use cocaine throughout pregnancy than in babies whose mothers stop using the drug in the first trimester.