What is cocaine and how is it used?

Cocaine is a stimulant. This means it gets you up and keeps you going. Unlike speed, cocaine is a natural stimulant extracted from the leaf of the coca bush.

Historically, in the U.S., pure cocaine was used as a mild anesthetic, primarily by dentists and ear-nose-throat specialists. Cocaine is also what the "Coca" originally stood for in Coca-Cola but the cocaine was eventually replaced by caffeine. On the street today, you don’t get pure cocaine. Instead, to increase profits, a variety of cuts are added. These can include lactose (which makes you go to the bathroom), local anesthetics such as procaine (which makes you lose feeling), and heroin (rarely) or other drugs.

People use cocaine in various ways. It is sniffed, snorted through a straw or rolled up dollar bill, injected into a vein (mainlining) and smoked (freebasing). Crack cocaine has become a more common form of freebasing (See additional pamphlet for information on Crack).

Cocaine is a short-lived, intense high. How quickly you get high depends on how you take it, the purity of the drug and how much of it you do. Smoking is the quickest method. Generally, it takes three minutes when snorted, thirty seconds when injected, and only a few seconds when smoked.