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  • BDD Moderators: Keif’ Richards | negrogesic

Cocaine How much damage am I doing to myself

blushyrei

Greenlighter
Joined
Oct 21, 2024
Messages
7
Hi everyone. I’m trying to quit IV coke. I feel like maybe if I took the risks more seriously it would help. I think I don’t really care about how much I’m hurting myself. I’ve been doing coke for 3 months or so, but I started IV’ing it mid September. I would use it 3-4 times a week, 100-150mg in each shot. I quit taking any drugs because I was completely losing control. Today I messed up and shot up coke again. It was about 150mg. My veins look fucked up and they hurt. I’m only 18. I’ve gone through a lot in life. Depression, a personality disorder, adhd, trauma. I look for relief in drugs which isn’t always bad, but with something as bad as what I’m doing I’m really worried.

Can someone please try and scare me or something? Or just tell me how much I’m fucking myself over? I’m scared that I’ll spiral again.
 
IV meth will fry your brain but IV coke will fry your heart. You wanna be 30 years old with a pacemaker? Needing open heart surgery afraid to eat a cheese burger ?? No you fucking don’t kid. It’ll kill you faster than any drug on the planet and trust me cause it killed my brother and it shoulda killed me.

Smoke crack if you need to do cocaine but shooting cocaine is the fastest way to a coffin I know.
 
Yo man. I hope you're doing alright. I'll throw my hat in the ring here. You're young. I'm sure you've seen some shit. I started using Heroin when I was 16 and I was a serious addict by 18. I used all drugs including Alcohol. I have insufflated, injected and smoked Cocaine.

As you know, not all drugs are equal in their impact on a person's health and well-being. Cocaine is a drug for which the route of administration greatly impacts how the drug affects the user. Smoking and injecting... you might as well just jump off a cliff right now and save yourself the pain of years living on the street, getting gawked at and laughed at by people who look at you as human garbage. You're not gonna be allowed in stores like a normal person. Society will exclude you completely. It's just gonna be you and your Cocaine.

It will take everything from you. After that, it's gonna start taking things from you that you didn't even realize could be taken from a person, like your mind, your thoughts and your soul.

I was thrown in county jail for 27 days when I was maybe 19. I had no help. No medicine. I just laid on a steel slab, getting up intermittently to puke or shit or scan the room one more time for something I could use to kill myself. Would I have sucked dick for Heroin? Please, I would have prayed for the very opportunity to degrade myself for relief.

That drug will take you to a place where you look back on the days that you worked as a rent boy with fond memories because now you're so dirty and hideous you can't even prostitute yourself.

You'll eventually end up in jail for 3 months for doing something stupid for money. You'll eat, get healthy, your family will start talking to you, you'll find God, then you'll be released and immediately relapse on Cocaine without even a second though. After all, you've been using it for years by this point and it will probably take 6 months to a year of constant sobriety before your brain resets to the point you're able to put basic thoughts together without Cocaine cravings getting in the way.

You're 18. You've got your whole life ahead of you dude. Don't you want to meet a nice chick? Don't you want her to respect you? You will never have love in your life of any kind, romantic, platonic whatever, if you're injecting Cocaine. You just become a machine whose prime directive is to find and consume Cocaine.

You have an opportunity to prevent this. You don't even need to stop using drugs necessarily, though given your personality, it's likely that you're going to be faced with that decision at some point. Stop injecting Cocaine. Stop using Cocaine altogether, because if you have it, you're going to inject it, period. If you need a stimulant, take an Adderall or something.

Cocaine will take everything from you. If you continue using it, expect complete destruction. Every time you inject, you're letting it sink it's hooks in further.

If you want to talk, I am available.
 
Hey man. My last IV coke shot was July 22nd and I yearn for it every day. I remember before I did my first shot in June reading on here about how awesome it was, but that it's up there with heroin in terms of the big daddies of addiction. I tried it, got good at it, started hitting veins in my hands and feet because I was using my arms too much. If I bought a gram, I was gonna shoot through it all nonstop. "This is the last shot of the night" hahahaha yeah right. I knew I was kidding myself then and there even at the time. Started calling out of work, peeking through blinds, jumping at any damn sound. If I had a 10 pack of needles and ran out, I'd reuse the best looking ones for another shot. Any rule you make for yourself is gonna go out the window. It's just how it is. God I don't miss trying to cover up and lie about the marks and bruises all over my arms.

Those 3-4 shots a week will quickly start multiplying. You're gonna start trading your valuable and cherished shit for a G. Stop shooting unless you are 100% truly suicidal, because that's what it is. Slow suicide in the most depressing way, albeit much faster than almost any alternative addiction. Just quit, there are more interesting drugs to do anyway.

PM if you need to talk or hear more etc. Sorry for bad formatting, I'm on mobile and on lots of ketamine at the moment.
 
You kinda remind me of myself. I remember when I OD'd on IV coke, and I was so fucken scared... in the moment I felt FOR SURE I was in the process of losing my life. In fact, I remember the few final breaths I was able to force in and out. By the grace of God I was able to live another day. Maybe I'm still alive today, to tell the 18yr old kid on this forum to stop shooting coke, and to take that advice myself.

That being said, I'm really sorry you've had a rough life bro. Honestly, if I had a rough life at a young age of 18 it would be expected that I do hard drugs. But fortunately, I have a really nice family. Which makes me a huge fucken idiot, because I have no reason to be slamming drugs. My heart goes out to anyone who's had it rough. Feel free to DM me and we can chat if you ever need someone to talk to
 
I've endured addictions to alcohol, benzos, meth(all ROAs), opioids(oral & IV), and cocaine. I enjoyed snorting coke but I could put it down fairly easily. Oddly enough, I never liked crack at all. But IV coke took me down harder and faster than any other drug. I nearly killed myself with that shit in less than a year-- I was 27 at the time.

The good news is that cocaine addiction is 100% psychological. There's no physical dependence. The bad news is that, initially, the cravings can be excruciatingly intense. It's rough.

But once I was done, I was done. The cravings came less&less frequently and became less&less intense over time. One day I realized that I hadn't even thought about it at all in over a year.

Years later, and I DON'T recommend this, I was able to snort coke now & then with no repercussions. But IV cocaine is one of the few things I will absolutely NEVER do again.
 
I like that you pointed out the difference between physical dependence and psychological addiction.

It does absolutely not help that those terms get used interchangeably.
With opiates in particular, that specific confusion is PRECISELY how people who would not otherwise have been addicts convince themselves that they're addicts - and so become addicts.

In my research I've come across this constant stream of people who were given opiates for pain relief for an extended period of time, then cut off their prescribed meds and predictably experienced withdrawal, and then proceeded to classify themselves as addicts for no reason.


The doctors didn't care to taper that patient off the medication once the acute physical need was over, and didn't care to inform the patient about the nature of the drug's effects. In the past, medical patients abruptly taken off a morphine regimen would simply suffer the WD symptoms and sweat it out in blissful ignorance, making no mental connection between their bodily sensations and the absence of the drug, and just concluded they must have caught some infection during their recovery because their body was weak from previous disease / surgery.

Now, you have common narratives of people where the treatment worked, they have no more pain, but they experience WD once they stop; THEN read up on what's making them feel out of sorts, and seriously conclude they now HAVE to go buy street heroin to satisfy NO physical or mental need, because the thinking is 'withdrawal = hooked = automatic requirement for more drugs.'

This equation of two different phenomena (physical dependence and 'addiction') was and is fatal to so many people.
 
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Hey everyone. Been a while since I posted here. I IV’d like once or twice since then. Been clean from that for about a month or 2. I don’t really feel that much better, physically I’m fine, my veins are all healed. I bought some syringe filters in case I ever inject something again, just for harm reduction purposes.

Life has gotten more functional, but it still feels like a constant grind for nothing. Depression is getting worse and I can unfortunately not deal with it well. I doubt I’m ever IV’ing coke again. Even thought the comedown wasn’t that bad, it’d just not as enjoyable as it was the first few times, while I’ll definitely do more coke in the future, I highly doubt I’ll IV again as it’s not that enjoyable, plus money has been pretty tight unfortunately.

Thanks for all the comments, it feels like you guys really understand. I’m glad to not have to feel alone through this goddamn life.
 
Good for you @blushyrei we all care about you. You've been through some shit. You're young. When people discuss pharmacology related to recreational drugs there is often little information regarding what happens in the weeks-months after a person stops. People will say Cocaine lasts 1-2 hours and is completely gone within 24 hours. Not enough importance is placed on the longer-term aspects of using as it relates to cravings. A person can pretty easily say they will take one hit of Crack, it's over in 10-15 minutes and that's it, they're back to normal.

Cocaine was never my thing. I've used it, sure, but it was never my thing. Since beginning my recovery years ago, I've had slips/relapses. Maybe 3 years ago, I ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time and couldn't say no to some free Crack. I took 3-4 hits that day. I was thinking about Crack for at least 2 weeks after that experience. For the first 3-4 days, I was waffling and considering taking another 3-4 hits. If this is a guy who isn't even really into Cocaine, I hate to imagine what it's like for a person with a daily habit trying to quit.

Basically, if you can smoke/inject Cocaine once in your life, you are capable of doing it for the rest of your life. You know when a bunch of long-time drug users tell you something is destructive and not to do it, there is likely a good reason.
 
I've been on a crack binge for nearly 10 days now. I have to stop now, not because I want to. I want to take a big hit so bad, but it has gotten so bad. If I even take a tinny hit, which I keep doing because I can't fucking stop. There is like zero euphoria. My heart races, but it the rest of the effects are neck up. My neck muscles will swell up, not my throat, so I can still breath easily, but it constricts my jugular on both sides now(it started just on the left side) the pressure in my face and my scalp is so strong. I literally thought my eye was going to pop out on the right side. I thought I was having a stroke. It feels like someone is pressing both hands on each side of my neck to where I almost pass out. Wtf is going on? I've never had this reaction before. Could it be the cut or have I just pushed it too far? Does anyone know the physiology of what's going on with my neck when I take a hit. I can literally see both sides of my neck swell up and pulsate with my heart beat.
 
Yo man. I hope you're doing alright. I'll throw my hat in the ring here. You're young. I'm sure you've seen some shit. I started using Heroin when I was 16 and I was a serious addict by 18. I used all drugs including Alcohol. I have insufflated, injected and smoked Cocaine.

As you know, not all drugs are equal in their impact on a person's health and well-being. Cocaine is a drug for which the route of administration greatly impacts how the drug affects the user. Smoking and injecting... you might as well just jump off a cliff right now and save yourself the pain of years living on the street, getting gawked at and laughed at by people who look at you as human garbage. You're not gonna be allowed in stores like a normal person. Society will exclude you completely. It's just gonna be you and your Cocaine.

It will take everything from you. After that, it's gonna start taking things from you that you didn't even realize could be taken from a person, like your mind, your thoughts and your soul.

I was thrown in county jail for 27 days when I was maybe 19. I had no help. No medicine. I just laid on a steel slab, getting up intermittently to puke or shit or scan the room one more time for something I could use to kill myself. Would I have sucked dick for Heroin? Please, I would have prayed for the very opportunity to degrade myself for relief.

That drug will take you to a place where you look back on the days that you worked as a rent boy with fond memories because now you're so dirty and hideous you can't even prostitute yourself.

You'll eventually end up in jail for 3 months for doing something stupid for money. You'll eat, get healthy, your family will start talking to you, you'll find God, then you'll be released and immediately relapse on Cocaine without even a second though. After all, you've been using it for years by this point and it will probably take 6 months to a year of constant sobriety before your brain resets to the point you're able to put basic thoughts together without Cocaine cravings getting in the way.

You're 18. You've got your whole life ahead of you dude. Don't you want to meet a nice chick? Don't you want her to respect you? You will never have love in your life of any kind, romantic, platonic whatever, if you're injecting Cocaine. You just become a machine whose prime directive is to find and consume Cocaine.

You have an opportunity to prevent this. You don't even need to stop using drugs necessarily, though given your personality, it's likely that you're going to be faced with that decision at some point. Stop injecting Cocaine. Stop using Cocaine altogether, because if you have it, you're going to inject it, period. If you need a stimulant, take an Adderall or something.

Cocaine will take everything from you. If you continue using it, expect complete destruction. Every time you inject, you're letting it sink it's hooks in further.

If you want to talk, I am available.
HOLY SHIT!!! What an awesome & extremely factual reply. I have never injected coke, but I did inject heroin for a couple decades. It follows the same trajectory. I didn't prostitute myself. Instead, I robbed a bank while I was supremely junk sick. Thanks to no prior criminal record, I did 2 years at a maximum-security prison. Mostly kept to myself and got shipped to a minimum-security correctional center to finish my bid. Did I think about heroin? Indeed. Nearly every day I had a conversation on loop trying to convince myself, that once I was released, I could be a casual heroin addict!! It's hilarious sounding now. I made it a week and a half before I was shooting up again. Didn't help that my boyfriend continued using while I was away, cuz I couldn't wait to reunite with him either.

I guess what I'm getting at is this: if you cannot get to the root cause of why you are using your DOC, you will likely keep using or keep filling that hole inside of yourself with a different addiction. I read an awesome book on all of this by Gabor Mate, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts. I agreed with him in that one cannot fill that emptiness with outside stuff. Gotta work from the inside out.

anyway, great post Keif'
 
Once, I was visiting family in a different state. My Mom, my little brother and myself all went out to the midwest. I had stocked up on Heroin for the week, carrying ~7g Heroin double packaged in two condoms hidden securely in my body. I ended up with a lot of anxiety in seeing my family. That's the truth. At the time, love and connection frightened me in a way that is hard to explain even today. I'm digressing though.

By day 4, I was completely out of Heroin and becoming extremely sick. Everyone wanted to go see the new Mission Impossible. I was still relatively inexperienced at this point. I though Alcohol would help take the edge off so I drank maybe a pint of liquor over the span of a few hours before going to the movie. Do not drink Alcohol when you're dope sick.

My malaise shot up to maximum capacity. I felt so shitty but I was also very drunk. ~30 minutes into the movie, I decided something had to be done. I decided I was going to walk into a big box store pharmacy, feign having a gun an demand drugs from them. They would give me the drugs, I would get high. Would I get arrested? That was an afterthought. What mattered was ending the withdrawal.

I 100% committed. I was going to do this or at least try. My heart is pounding as I round the corner. The pharmacy comes into view and I see that it was closed on Sundays. I still look back at that day and I feel like God was looking out for me. After I walked out, the frenzy was over and I was back to thinking about consequences. If I had done that, I'd probably get my ass kicked and arrested followed by another county jail withdrawal and a Felony conviction. We've all done stupid shit.

I am in social work these days and my favorite work is at homeless shelters. A lot of these guys have been exiled from society. A lot of them can't get good jobs because they're felons. They are driven to the street and drugs in the process. If I ever feel like looking down my nose at a convicted bank robber, I'm trippin. We made the same decisions, I just didn't get the consequences. You've gotta be grateful and you can never look down on anyone for being an addict or being homeless. This mentality is what has helped me get better myself.
 
Hi everyone. I’m trying to quit IV coke. I feel like maybe if I took the risks more seriously it would help. I think I don’t really care about how much I’m hurting myself. I’ve been doing coke for 3 months or so, but I started IV’ing it mid September. I would use it 3-4 times a week, 100-150mg in each shot. I quit taking any drugs because I was completely losing control. Today I messed up and shot up coke again. It was about 150mg. My veins look fucked up and they hurt. I’m only 18. I’ve gone through a lot in life. Depression, a personality disorder, adhd, trauma. I look for relief in drugs which isn’t always bad, but with something as bad as what I’m doing I’m really worried.

Can someone please try and scare me or something? Or just tell me how much I’m fucking myself over? I’m scared that I’ll spiral again.

You’re young and likely don’t have much physical damage yet.

I damaged an organ from years of drug use and I am somewhat disabled from it now. Tens of thousands of medical costs, surgeries, getting hooked on opiates permanently to medicate the pain, and suicidal thoughts

If it wasn’t for my wife I would absolutely kill myself because of the permanent damage I did to my body with drugs makes life so unpleasant.

All your problems are in your head right now. That can be fixed. If you keep using you will eventually suffer organ damage and no amount of psychology or life style changes will fix it and you will be stuck in a hole till you die.
 
I was just musing to myself. People often refer to the "psychological" basis of Cocaine dependency as opposed the the physical/mental nature of Opioid dependency. You can call Cocaine "psychological" all you want if that makes you less afraid of it. It really doesn't mean shit in the scheme of life if you end up using Cocaine compulsively until you die and this is what happens. I hate to be that guy, but:

Jails, Institutions or Death. You're either going to go insane, commit an insane crime for Cocaine money and get locked up for 10+ years or you're going to die.
 
People who pin coke usually aren't following the best health and safety protocols once they're on a bender

More likely or not you'll fuck a shot up at some point and potentially lose an arm, or get sepsis and die

I wouldn't normally recommend smoking crack, but it's probably a safer way of ingesting coke than pinning
 
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