Cocaine Addiction: Psychopharmacology of Cocaine

Cocaine Addiction
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Cocaine Addiction
Brief History
Cocaine is derived from the leaves of Erythroxylon coca or coca plant. The leaves have been used as a stimulant from the early 16th century and its concentrates extracted in 1859 from the plant. However, the powder cocaine found its usage in the 20th century. Around 3,000 BC, the cocaine leaves were first used in South America by the ancient Incas in the Andean regions of Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia (Karch, 2005). The revelation of it usage by the Europeans was in the 16th-century y the Spanish explorers who noted its usage by the indigenous South Americans. This plant concentrated in the region due to the restricted climate, rich soils, and the cool temperatures until the mid 19th century. In these early days, the leaves of the coca plant were chewed by the Incas to produce a stimulant effect of speeding breathing rates to adjust to their living in the higher regions with low levels of oxygen. Other people used the plant to raise their moods, lower their appetite and in aid for digestion. The coca leaves also found their usage in religious ceremonies for stimulation of the mind to the point of hallucinations which transformed the Native Peruvians to the spiritual transcendence state (Karch, 2005).
The cocaine found its routes to the United States in the mid 19th century where the American drug research companies began to explore another world for medical solutions. A German chemist Albert Niemann extracted cocaine from coca plant in 1859 for further medical examination. In the early days, the American used cocaine as nausea pills, toothache drops, as an agent for numbing and in sinus medication to relieve pain. By 1884, Sigmund Freud who was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis noted in his book "Uber Coca" to have magical properties and benefits to cure depression and sexual dysfunction. In 1885, John Pemberton used cocaine to develop French Wine Coca as a patent medicine (Levinthal, 2005). Later in 1886, prohibition legislations made him developed a non-alcoholic version of the French Wine Coca and named it Coca-Cola; a drink that cured morphine addiction, nerve disorders, headaches, erectile dysfunction and difficulty in digestion. The cocaine powder found its immense usage in 1905, especially for recreational purposes. However, it received negative attention in 1910 as a source of nasal damage based on the hospital records and was banned in1914 with an exception for medicinal usage (Levinthal, 2005).
In the 1970s, cocaine drug appeared as the drug for the rich due to its high price tag. The advent of freebasing at the time led to the increased smoking of the substance via a pipe that introduced the drug into the system with immediate impacts on the users. At the same period, traffickers from South America developed networks of trade on the drug to the USA peddlers (Levinthal, 2005). However, its association with the rich vanished in the 1980s due to its negative impacts on the society hence it became associated with poverty and crimes. On the same period, the crack cocaine came surfaced that delivered intense high effects. At the time, the American users rose to approximately six million on a re...