What is Cocaine Addiction?
Cocaine addiction is a serious substance use disorder with markedly detrimental effects on physical and mental health. Cocaine addiction is widespread and affects many women.
Villa Kali Ma is committed to assisting women with drug addiction, such as cocaine addiction to remove the destructive influence of this substance from their lives and to be therefore able to restore themselves to health and wholeness.
Cocaine in any form is classed as a highly addictive narcotic; a stimulant with many consequences for the physical body and mental well-being. Regardless of the method of ingestion, which may be snorting in powder form, injecting with a needle, or smoking as crack cocaine, cocaine’s overall popularity as an illegal drug is owed to its strong euphoric effects.
Processed cocaine in any form is designed to deliver a specific chemical payload to the user. This chemical payload is so pleasurable and habit-forming that it sets women up for failure when it comes to resisting and returning to it again, even in the face of the drug’s many negative consequences.
If you or a loved one in your life are affected by cocaine addiction, please understand that this is a serious problem, but also that in the face of this problem, you do not have to be alone. There is a cure, requiring cocaine addiction treatment and timely action. Lifestyle changes will be necessary, as well as willingness and courage to embark on a path of personal healing and self-responsibility.
With the assistance of an integral team of healing professionals such as the team at Villa Kali Ma, and with the support of a community of others walking the path of recovery, cocaine addiction is vanquishable. Learn how we heal women with substance use issues and begin your recovery today.
Symptoms of Cocaine Addiction
Because of the complex nature of the disease, symptoms of cocaine addiction are found in many channels of a woman’s being. How is cocaine addiction treated? Villa Kali Ma’s integrative approach aims to address and treat cocaine addiction through many pathways of intervention and support.
Symptoms of cocaine addiction are detectable as physiological damages, which change a woman’s functioning at the body level. Some physiological changes include heart attacks, chest pains, heart rhythm disturbances, high blood pressure, strokes, seizures, nosebleeds, respiratory problems, and early death.
Because cocaine is a stimulant, it artificially overdrives systems of the body that would normally be activated only during naturally-earned periods of elevation of energy and mood.
The physiological consequences of chemically forcing body systems to artificially access states of euphoria as a shortcut to feeling better without making the inner changes required to feel better naturally are manifold. Most devastatingly, the neurotransmitter and hormone regulation systems sustain damage, which has long-lasting impacts on these vital pathways.
In the psychological channel, symptoms of cocaine addiction include subjective mental-emotional problems such as depression, irritability, anxiety, anhedonia (inability to experience pleasure), paranoia, and sleep disturbances. In other words, cocaine addiction will severely disrupt the ability to feel happy and at ease in life.
Finally, from the outside, loved ones will likely experience a change in the character and personality of many users who have developed a cocaine addiction. The most typical transformation is to observe the cocaine-addicted woman losing her empathy and morality as cocaine abuse becomes the primary focus of her life. For the same reason, serious life consequences in the realm of relationships, work, and legal trouble are also common.
Cocaine addiction is characterized by progressive usage over time. Cocaine addiction maps onto the general pattern followed by all addictions, also in that it will include physical dependence, tolerance, and withdrawal symptoms. Tolerance is the phenomenon of needing more and more of the substance to achieve the same effect. Withdrawal means that in the absence of a sufficient amount of the substance, the cocaine-addicted woman will go into acute physical, emotional, and mental discomfort, including intense cravings that are very difficult to resist.
Addictive substances have distinct withdrawal symptoms depending on which pathways of the body are accessed by the drug. In general, you can use the principle of opposites to understand what the withdrawals will be – whichever substance created a pleasurable effect, its opposite is experienced intensified during the cocaine withdrawal process.
Since cocaine is a stimulant, experienced as energizing and uplifting, cocaine withdrawal symptoms constitute a severe crash of energy and mood. This drop in energy and mood can be dangerous, leading not only to a strong desire to engage in drug use again but also potentially creating the risk of suicide.
Causes of Cocaine Addiction
How to develop cocaine addiction? Like all addictions, cocaine addiction follows a predictable progressive pattern that begins with infrequent use but ends up as a condition of physical, emotional, and mental dependence on cocaine for coping in everyday life.
Cocaine gains a foothold so easily and enduringly for two main reasons. One is that cocaine is processed and manufactured specifically to enhance its pleasurable, and therefore addictive, properties.
The second reason is that many women are pre-disposed through mental and emotional problems such as trauma and other kinds of inner pain. Women tend to endure trauma, and we offer a trauma informed approach at our residential trauma treatment center, The Retreat for women in need of holistic treatment.
Cocaine addiction originates in inner imbalances of body, mind, and spirit that lead a woman to be especially vulnerable to getting entangled in using mood-altering substances as a misguided attempt to correct these. People who feel well enough in their skin as they are will, generally speaking, not be drawn to the use of cocaine nor will they be as entranced by the effects of cocaine.
Specifically with cocaine, it tends to be addictive for people whose baseline personality may be so formed as to not naturally be experiencing enough mood elevation and well-being. In other words, for people with a tendency to feel low and down about themselves and their lives, cocaine’s ability to artificially induce increased energy, confidence, pleasure, and optimism, including the stereotypical “ego boost” associated with cocaine, can make it especially alluring.
In addition, lifestyle settings and work or party environments that favor a need for overstimulated energy states and being “up” may likewise lead a person to seek out states of artificially induced stimulation.
Finally, it’s important to remember that genetic factors, such as a family history of addiction (to any substance), as well as trans-generational trauma and dysfunctional family struggles contribute to a propensity towards addiction.
Glamorization in the media, association with specific underground scenes, and cocaine’s widespread availability also play a role.