Drugs are an important theme in society, even if you or anyone near you doesn't consumes, you can see on the news about someone that did something while he or she was drugged. In my life, I've only tried one drug, marihuana. It's no big deal. Yes, I felt relaxed, and that's all, maybe it didn't "hit" me like it would, but it doesn't felt like something special. There are a lot of drugs, some of them are legal, like alcohol or cigarettes (and marihuana in some countries or states) and the most of them are illegal (like cocaine or heroin). Despite if they are legal or not, they're all harmful, more or less depending which one.
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| Coke leaves |
The Cocaine is a strong nervous system stimulant, originally used as an anesthetic. It acts inhibiting the reuptake of serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine. The coke can cause addiction in a very short period of use. The observable symptoms include fast heart rate, sweating, and large pupils. In high doses it can also cause very high blood pressure and hyperthermia. The drug user also may feel loss of contact with reality, and intense feeling of happiness, and agitation. The consume of cocaine also increases the risk of stroke, myocardial infarction, lung problems in those who smoke it, blood infections, and sudden cardiac death. Also the cocaine sold by the drug dealers is commonly mixed with local anesthetics, cornstarch, quinine, or sugar, which can result in additional toxicity (fun fact: in 1879 cocaine was used to treat morphine addiction, later replaced with heroin).
When the drug is discontinued immediately, the user will experience what has come to be known as a crash along with a number of other cocaine withdrawal symptoms, including paranoia, depression, exhaustion, anxiety, itching, mood swings, irritability, fatigue, insomnia, an intense craving for more cocaine, and in some cases nausea and vomiting. Those symptoms can last months. So, it's a very dangerous drug.
Drugs of abuse are a very important theme in the Pharmacy career, because it's a chemical that interacts with the body (like a medicament) and it's in our hands to help preventing the addiction to the drugs of abuse.
As you say, as future pharmacists, it will be in our hands help to prevent drug addiction, but the strangest thing is that many of the pharmacists are the same people who synthesize these drugs of abuse
ReplyDeleteI've read that this drug doesn't cause addiction as fast as heroin, however, I've known people addicted to cocaine and getting out of addiction is worse than getting out of hell.
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