Cocaine use among the College Age Group: Biological and Psychological Effects—Clinical and Laboratory Research Findings

Abstract

Though cocaine has been used by man for centuries for both medical and nonmedical reasons, a knowledge of its effect on the human mind and body remains limited and not yet clearly documented. Sources of information consist of myth, street knowledge, animal studies, and clinical and laboratory studies of man. This paper focuses on findings from the latter two sources. The biological effects of cocaine include the local effects of producing anesthesia and constriction of blood vessels in areas where it is applied topically. Solutions of the drug applied directly to the eye cause the pupils to dilate. Systemic effects include an increase in heart rate and blood pressure. In some individuals, an increase in alertness occurs, and in others a state of drowsiness. The drug also decreases total sleep, REM sleep, and appetite. The psychological effects of the drug vary with dosage, chronicity, and a host of other variables. Increasing doses over long periods of time appear to cause increasingly severe impairment of affective and cognitive functioning. These effects include a strong psychological craving, making cocaine one of the most powerfully reinforcing of all known substances. In addition, cocaine may induce symptoms ranging from mild euphoria to hyperalertness, hyperactivity, anorexia, insomnia, hypersexuality, and proneness to violence. In others, cocaine may produce sadness, melancholia, apathy, and various symptoms of dysphoria. Depression has been reported to occur in people who stop taking the drug, especially those who have taken the drug intravenously. At high doses taken over a long period of time, cocaine may produce symptoms that mimic acute paranoid psychosis with hallucinations, stereotyped behavior, paranoid delusions, insomnia, and proneness to violence. Finally, cocaine may cause delirium, convulsions, and death from cardiorespiratory failure. With over 30 million individuals in the college age group reported to have taken cocaine, college health personnel must be prepared to diagnose and treat symptoms resulting from cocaine toxicity.