Today cocaine is considered the world’s most powerful naturally occurring stimulant. Cocaine is extracted from Erythroxylon coca, a leafed plant native to South America. Countries like Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Columbia are currently producing about 80 % of the world’s cocaine. Cocaine and its derivatives are usually used in four ways: the leaves are sucked or chewed, cocaine paste is eaten or smoked,  cocaine powder is sniffed or diluted and then injected and crack cocaine is smoked.

Crack cocaine is obtained by cooking cocaine hydrochloride with ammonia or baking soda. Freebase was originally produced in an explosive, multi-step process. Crack is safer to produce, no explosions. Crack and freebase are smoked from pipes; burnt on a piece of tin foil; or mixed with tobacco or marijuana in a smokeable joint.

How is “crack” different from “cocaine?” For most of its history, cocaine has been abused in a powder that is sniffed or diluted then injected. Sniffed powder cocaine produces a high in about 15 minutes. The high lasts about half an hour. Powder cocaine has been abused by the wealthy and middle classes since the late 1800s, and has destroyed many thousands of those abusers. Some abusers have cooked cocaine with other chemicals to make a smokeable form of the drug that creates a quicker, more intense high. This process is called freebasing.

Freebasing never became popular because it often caused sudden deadly explosions. In the early 1980s, drug dealers discovered a way to cook cocaine without the risk of explosions. Crack cocaine was born. Crack is actually a less pure type of freebase cocaine. It has the super-strong, quick high of freebase cocaine without the explosiveness.

In addition, a dose strong enough for a huge high can be sold very cheaply. Suddenly cocaine, which had been a rich person’s drug, became available to the poor. Drug dealers swarmed over the poorest inner-city neighborhoods selling this poison in the 80s and 90s, ruining hundreds of thousands of lives.

If a person has used within the past hour his or her pupils will be huge and glassy. This goes along with symptoms that can occur anytime along which may include; sweating, drastic weight loss, sensitivity to light and sound, very hyper and does not sleep followed by exhaustion, not eating then eating like crazy, sexual dysfunction, extreme sexual fantasy but cannot follow through, dramatic mood changes, extreme self confidence that you know will never happen, anger, depression, paranoid, suicide thinking, unable to hold a job, intense arguing, very chatty, financial and legal problems, not paying bills, no food in the house, highly skilled at covering up the where’s, the who’s, and the what’s, denies and lies. He or she may have burns on mouth or hands from smoking crack and unable to control urination or bowel movements. Sometimes there are allergic reactions to crack cocaine or the additives in street drugs, menstrual cycle problems, malnutrition, and infections in the brain. If you think they are using they are.

We strongly recommend to everyone reading this article to stay out of crack cocaine abuse or get to a crack cocaine  treatment, however, if you or someone close to you have problems with crack cocaine addiction, we suggest you to visit Drug Rehab Canada