Crack-cocaine was a popular drug in the 1980’s. In America in particular and echoed throughout the world a drug epidemic spread. Few countries were hit with the devastation that America was. After the height of cocaine use in the disco era of the 1970’s, the eighties turned cocaine addiction into crack cocaine addiction. Maintaining a cocaine addiction became difficult for many people to do as the drug became more difficult to find and more expensive to buy after the market for cocaine started crashing.
Crack is a form of cocaine. Cocaine is cooked down into crystallized rocks, which is where crack gets one of its nicknames, “crack-rock”. The small crystallized rocks are smoked through a small glass pipe, shorter than most other pipes because the potency of crack wears off very quickly compared to other drugs. A sign of crack addiction often includes black marks on the lips, cracked and bleeding lips, or burned lips because of the hot pipe and the close proximity of the flame. Curiously, an addiction to crack cocaine is not any more economically efficient despite its very cheap price. Though a hit of crack is cheap in cost, the high only lasts about 15 minutes. A powerful, potent high, a tolerance to and dependency on crack cocaine develops quickly, necessitating repeated highs over and over again.
Compared to regular cocaine, which cannot be guaranteed in purity, crack cocaine is often anywhere between 75%-100% pure. Smoking the stimulant central nervous system drug puts it in contact with the brain more quickly creating that extra potent, extra powerful high. Recent brain imaging studies have revealed that one time users of cocaine already have a shift in their brain programming toward cravings for cocaine when triggered with using cues. Crack is significantly more addicting than cocaine, creating a very immediate addiction.
According to Irish Times, there is a noticeable rise in the amount of crack cocaine addiction in Ireland. When health workers started taking chest X-rays of some of Dublin’s homeless they noticed a trend of scarring on the insides of people’s lungs. The cause of the scarring, across dozens of people, was smoking crack cocaine.
Smarmore Castle Private Clinic is proud to offer residential treatment programmes to Dublin, Ireland, all of the EU as well as UK. Our facility is the first in Ireland to employ the Castle Craig model, proven to have a high success rate in recovery for over 25 years. Call us today for information on our treatment programs for crack/cocaine addiction: +353 41 214 5111
