Is crack cocaine really so bad?

Drugs cost money, and the more you use, the more money you need. Since the high of crack, from what I have heard, seems to last less than most, the amount of crack necessary to keep one going is larger than other drugs, and I have heard the crack is the most addictive out of any. This means that crack addicts need more money than other users, unless they are getting a good deal (I don't know the price of crack). A user may become a nasty motherfucker when they need the money, which they will eventually if crack is addicting as the ME-dia says.

what in the world are you talking about??

i don't know much about crack, but i hold cocaine in fairly low regard. it divides people, plus my friend killed himself while on it.

Ron - I'm not talking about addiction and the downside of that. I mean the actual physiological harm caused by (non-OD doses of) an opiate. Which is non-existent, as far as I know. Why, what did you think heroin did to you??

I also had a friend who was a former cocaine addict, who tried crack and enjoyed it, but did not become addicted. (She did later get hooked on tobacco again after smoking pot or hashish in Berlin, where it is apparently always mixed with tobacco.)

I think cocaine in whatever form is potentially very nasty stuff, and my friend's description of her withdraw from cocaine made it sound horrible.

http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Misc/60minliv.htm

prescribing heroin to long term users, to be used in a clinic rather than taken away, has been introduced to the Netherlands and has proved a success in reducing crime and the health damage to users. I used to work in a drugs crisis centre and with those convicted of drug related crime in prisons. Crack Cocaine did seem especially voracious in creating dependency, particularly those who combined it with heroin.

It meant that assuming you know what you're taking (which obviously with street heroin you don't), you'd have to take many, many times over your normal fix to overdose. 'Many, many' times being more than the multiple required to damage yourself with overdosing on paracetemol, where even a few tablets over the 2 tablets recommended limit can cause liver damage in some people.

Reason for deaths by heroin overdose now: the purity varies hugely.

A very old friend did 16 months for 3rd strike possession, released on friday... his father came by his house early tuesday morning to take him to a dentist apartment only to find him lying on the floor in his new apartment, od'd on freebase/crack cocaine, legs blue due to 12 hours of bloodloss, brain dead. The doctors spent 6 hours reviving him, amputating his legs in the process and then pulled the plug.

i was reading ian penman's book the other day,and in it he claims that every single person he knows has tried crack,and it seems to be something that was done for a laugh every so often...
i was fairly surprised by this,i presume it was in media circles in the eighties,i didn't think it was ever really a casual drug...

i think it sounds like an awful drug,and the state of the crackheads in amsterdam was worse even than dublin junkies...

if someone isn't upset by this thread the world shall collapse I tells ya!
-- Julio Desouza (juli...), September 2nd, 2002.

No, crack is considered pretty much a low point in the UK too. I know a lot of people who have taken it during prolonged bouts of drug tourism, and they were pretty much excommunicated by everyone that knew them. So, I'd say there's a pretty big stigma, yes.

I have learned that, compared to the majority of other people I've known who've tried hard drugs, my will power is extraordinary. I was able to keep my habit in control, and once I sensed things getting out of hand, I stopped cold turkey. Too few people are able to maintain any sort of control over their use, though.

What are they, pets?

I mean I have "met"

ah

i guess 8 inches just pales in comparison

trying to think of some glib flipness to add to the fun, but sadly i know too many recovering and active users through work.

i've met some great fucking people. really articulate and humane, funny and sweet. kind of folks i would be proud to take round to my folks house and introduce to my mum as friends - OFF DRUGS.

on crack and/or heroin they become a danger to themselves and a danger to society.

quoth one: 'when i drink i get using thoughts. when i use, breaking into someone's house to get money becomes a completely reasonable idea.'

everyone's bracing themselves for the first full-on meth wave here in the uk - yikes, could our inner cities get any more decimated? could our jails get any fuller?

meth in the US is a surburban/rural problem. Thus the clampdown of Wal-Mart on selling its basic ingredients.

Yup. I'm genuinely bitter about this. My head, man, the itching is in my head, it's in my ears man and I need to get well...