Crack Cocaine Addiction
Being addicted to crack is a bit different from other addictions.
On the one hand, a drug is a drug is a drug. We use a drug at first because it is fun, then it becomes a habit, and eventually we are completely hooked on it. This pattern should not change much from one drug to the next….be it crack, alcohol, painkillers, and so on.
But based on my experience, crack is a unique beast.
For one thing, there is no physical withdrawal with crack cocaine addiction. People who are detoxing from crack do not experience any physical withdrawal symptoms, other than intense psychological cravings for more crack. This is markedly different from most other drugs, for example, alcohol and opiate, in which fairly intense physical withdrawal symptoms are present during detox.
How does this change the game involving recovery from crack cocaine? From what I have seen while working in treatment, the idea is “easy come, easy go.” Those who go through an intense physical withdrawal and suffer a great deal of pain have a strong motivator to stay clean and sober. But with crack, the withdrawal is fairly easy, and I think this has the power to lure people back into using based on psychological reasons. The pain of withdrawal with most drugs can be a deterrent to relapse. Not so with crack.
Another thing I have noticed is that many people who are exclusively addicted to crack cocaine do not seem to have cross-addiction tendencies. The idea of “cross addiction” is that if you are addicted to one drug, you are addicted to all drugs, and therefore you should abstain from all addictive substances if you want to stay clean and sober. Cross addiction also means that sometimes an addict will substitute one drug for another in trying to quit, and therefore end up becoming “cross-addicted.”
The people I have met who are addicted to crack do not seem to experience cross addiction as much. They seem to be only addicted exclusively to crack cocaine and not to other drugs. This might be denial, of course, but I have noticed this trend with more than one person.
One last thing that makes crack unique is the ceiling level of the drug. Most drugs like alcohol and opiates have a fairly low ceiling for how much a person can consume. If you get drunk, you really can’t drink a whole ton more without killing yourself. If you use opiates, the level that overdoses you is only a few times more than what gets you high. So you can’t really use enormous amounts of most drugs, because the threat of overdose prevents this.
With crack cocaine, the ceiling is very, very high. It is so high in fact that a person can smoke up tens of thousands of dollars worth of crack in less than a weekend. The high is short and intense. You can just keep smoking it and smoking it and buying more and more of it. This “unlimited ceiling” factor on the use of the drug changes the whole dynamic of it a bit. It is not like a drunk who get his fifth of liquor for the day and then is all set to go get smashed. With such a high ceiling for more and more use, the drug has a tendency to change people and their behavior quite a bit.
Does this mean we should treat crack addiction differently from other drugs? Not necessarily. But it can help explain a person’s behavior in early recovery. And, we might be able to use these ideas to design a better recovery program for someone.
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