Ive been doing a fair amount of coke over the past half year. While I havent been on an epic coke bender per say....I ve at least been doing it everyweekend...sometims ill go a few days periods doing a couple lines a day. But my daily in take has never really exceeded 1 gram; usually not even that much. I hate coke so much tho...its never been my thing and ive never liked it that much but its been thrown at me and shoveled under my nose for free recently. I know there are people on the forums that have gone on daily benders for days and days stretching on for up to a year. Im just wondering If any of you people consider my use mentioned above highly problematic. Im really worried about permantent damage i may have done to my dopamine system. How many of you one time long term coke user feel any difference coke abuse may have caused you in the long run. Online it talks about the possibility of permanent dmagae; but right noiw i just feel alittle burnt out to be honest. Who knows though, i just did like 2 grams (the most ive done in a single night in a LONG time) 2 days ago and i think that attributed to the burnt out feeling....do the effects go away or are they really permant. Please im sort of a hypocondriac....i fucked myself up bad with MDMA and I really need to know from experienced users about these effects ASAP. BTW ive already quit, im most worried about the damages done in the long run.
There probably isn't anyway to know if your brain is damaged unless you get some kind of brainscan that can detect damage of that type. What maybe is more important is if you feel ok, the brain can heal itself to a certain extent.
I really wouldn't be too worried about having suffered any permanent or even noticable temporary brain (or heart which is much more prevalent with coke use) damage from the amounts you've been taking bud. A few lines on a friday and saturday or even a couple of grams a week isn't a major amount of coke to be doing, especially as it was only over a 6 month period and wasn't consistantly frequent during that time. When swim used to sell coke and hang around with people that sold it, there was always an abundance just lying around and it wasn't unusuall for people to do a couple of grams pretty much every single day or to go through well over an ounce between 3 or 4 people over a weekend. That was a few years ago now and no one has ever had any permanent or consistant problems despite the fact the use was pretty excesive. Two people did OD and die during the time and alot of other bad shit happened to people but no lasting noticable permanent health effects have come up. As to wether I would consider your use highly problematic, if you hadn't finished by saying you have now quit then I would have said yes, because from the way your wrote you sounded like how every single big time addict I know started out. Just doing really small amounts but doing it every weekend, and about 70% of the times really small amounts every weekend became not so small amounts every weekend and sometimes on a Monday because your so tired from staying up doing coke all weekend that you need it to stay awake in work on a monday and then sometimes on a Thursday because it's pay day, and everysecond wendsday because theres a football match on or a fight your all getting together to watch, and then sometimes on Tuesday because its someones birthday, or someone got a new job, or someone bought a new car, or because your so paranoid from doing coke all week that you need a few lines to get your head together.......but I'm sure you've heard all that crap before. Basically you have nothing to worry about bud so just try and chill out about it.
to psychmyke-----I wouldn't worry too much about Dopamine levels as long as you quit the yayo. MDMA as i'm sure you know floods the brain with Serotonin, which takes about six months to regenerate (from a single pill or 100mg of MDMA--0.1 of molly) Cocaine, on the other hand releases mostly dopamine and some neurepinephrine. Dopamine only takes about 3-6 days to regenerate (depending on how much gak you snort) However, you only crash 3 days after an E roll and i've never experienced such a bad crash, obviously coke is more addictive than ecstacy so a lot of coke users will do more coke while their brain is still regenerating the dopamine---BAD. ALSO---cocaine creates a chemical in your brain called C-FOSS, which never goes away and is involved in Mania. If you've ever noticed someone who use to do a lot of coke and is still really hyper and exuberant--that's from the c-foss. ex:Robin Williams. In short MDMA=6 months serotonin regeneration, Cocaine= 3-6 days dopamine regeneration. Dopamine regenerates about 30 times faster than serotonin. I would urge you to quit though. I smoke lots of weed and trip on acid a few times a year. occaisionlly i'll smoke opium (so i'm not a tea toddler or anti-drug) but i recently quit coke after 6 yrs of occasional heavy use. My nose is intact-but wouldn't be for long if i continued. Good luck
