Crack is one of the most evil drugs because of the speed at which people can consume it.

If you have a thousand bottles of booze in your possession, it really doesn’t matter, as you can only drink so much at one time. The human body will limit your consumption for you. The same is true if you have unlimited quantities of most other drugs. You can’t just keep consuming them on a non stop basis.

This is not really true of crack cocaine. The drug disappears fast. For example, a crack addict might buy several hundred dollars worth of the stuff, thinking that it should last him for several days. In a case like this they will usually smoke it all up within the first few hours, and actually go out again that same night to purchase more. That is how evil it can be.

Because of this tendency with crack, the drug seems to push people to do things they would not normally do, because there is such an urgency to smoke it quickly and then get more of it. The big problem, of course, is money. Crack addicts need cash, and will sometimes do desperate things to get it.

Psychological addiction

One of the good things about crack addiction (imagine that, something good!) is that there really is no physical detox from the drug. If crack is your drug of choice and you decide to go to a drug rehab, they will not even need to put you in detox for withdrawal, because there really is none. Sometimes a crack user will have been awake for several days, so they might be in need of sleep, but as far as withdrawal symptoms and physical discomfort from stopping the drug, there really is no major problem with it.

This means that you can actually deal with crack addiction much on your own if you want to, simply by finding support and possibly making some major changes in your life. At least you do not have to go through an expensive detox process like you have to with some other drugs (which is good, of course, because you have likely spent all of your money at this point!).

One thing you might try to do is to just start hitting some NA meetings (Narcotics Anonymous) in your area. There you can start getting some support from other people who are living a drug free life, and also learn about a way to live without drugs yourself. If you can’t find any NA meetings you can always just substitute AA meetings instead, the basic message is the same. Of course there are other ways to live a drug free life, but starting out with 12 step meetings can give you a good foundation for your recovery in terms of exposing you to a good network of people.

Do not underestimate crack addiction

Even though crack does not produce a physical withdrawal, this does not mean that it is an easy addiction to overcome, or that crack addicts never relapse. Just like with any drug, there is always going to be a danger of relapse, regardless of how long a person has been clean.

In fact, there might be an added danger with crack because the withdrawal process is so easy compared to other drugs, that it becomes much easier to justify relapse. The person knows in the back of their mind that they will stop smoking crack when the money runs out, and that will be that. They don’t have to go to rehab or detox or anything, they will simply stop cold turkey. Because it is relatively easy to stop smoking crack, it becomes that much easier to justify starting up again.

Do not underestimate the drug. I have seen crack addicts in recovery who had several years clean who ended up going back out again. In a lot of cases, it is the lifestyle that pulls people back into addiction. It is not just the drug itself, nor is it the high from the drug….but it is all the things that go along with it. It’s the people, the dealers, the late nights, the parties, and so on. In a lot of cases that is what pulls people back into a life of drug addiction. As such, any good solution for recovery will need to focus on creating a new life for yourself that is stimulating enough to replace the old lifestyle of addiction. Being bored is not a good place to be for a recovering addict. Luckily, we can take control of this and do things in order to find real passion and purpose in our lives.